Can you add a roll-up door to a container?

Yes on either size, and the ceiling is the only fixed limit

The steel will take a roll-up door on any container we sell or rent, and we cut, weld and finish here rather than farming it out. What decides the outcome is not the container. It is what you plan to drive or wheel through the opening.

A standard container stands 8 feet 6 inches tall outside. Take away the roof structure, the header welded over the opening, and the barrel the curtain winds onto, and the height you can drive under is a fair bit less than the height of the box you are looking at.

• Zero turns, push mowers, carts, bikes and ATVs go through with room over them
• Pallets on a hand truck or a walk-behind lift are no trouble
• A tractor with the rollbar up usually will not clear unless the bar folds
• Anything you are unsure about: put a tape on it, then call us

If headroom is the point of the build, ask about a high-cube before you settle on a standard box. A high-cube measures 9 feet 6 inches outside, and that foot goes almost entirely into height you can use.

The wall you pick changes the job more than the door does

There are two sensible places for a roll-up, and on most jobs the ground picks for you rather than taste.

Where the cargo doors are now

That end is already an opening, already carried by the corner posts, and the simplest place to work. You trade the cargo doors away, gasket and lock gear included, and you get a door one person opens in seconds with one hand.

Partway along a side wall

Cutting the side keeps the cargo doors for the day you load something the full width of the box, and it puts the everyday door where your feet already go. It is the answer when the container backs onto a bank or a treeline, and it is the heavier cut, because that side wall was carrying load the corner posts were not.

Tell us how the box will sit before we quote either version. A door facing a slope is an unpleasant thing to work out after the truck has left.

What a roll-up gives up compared to a sealed box

We would rather you hear this in August than find it out in February.

• Sealing. Cargo doors clamp on a heavy gasket under pressure from four locking bars. A roll-up seals on brushes and a bottom strip. In blowing rain or fine snow it is the part of the box most likely to let a little past.
• Security. Every container we sell and every one we rent already carries a welded lockbox on the cargo end. A rolling steel curtain with a latch is the softer opening, which matters where nobody can see the box.
• Wall space. The curtain rolls onto a barrel that lives inside above the opening, and the wall the door sits in is wall you cannot shelve.

None of that argues against the mod. It argues for picking the wall and the size deliberately.

What we ask before we put a number on it

A door built into a box in our yard is not the same work as one cut into a container already sitting on your farm, so every roll-up gets looked at on its own. Tell us the size of the box and whether it is one of ours or one you own, which wall you want opened and which direction you walk up from, and the tallest and widest thing that has to pass through the opening. Say too if the container will be picked up and moved again later, and what else is going in the build, because vents, lighting and shelving all lay out around the door.