Do containers come with a lockbox?

When it goes on, and who puts it there

The lockbox is not a part you order and it is not a kit that shows up in a carton. It comes with the container, and it goes on at your place on delivery day. The driver backs the tilt-bed in, slides the box down onto foundation blocks, checks that it sits level so the doors swing true, then welds the lockbox over the padlock position on the cargo doors. He is not done until that weld is done.

That housing wraps around wherever your padlock sits, so there is no shackle hanging in the open and no flat hasp for a pry bar or a set of bolt cutters to get purchase on. The padlock is yours to bring. The steel that shields it comes with the box.

The rule behind it: no surprise add ons

This is not an upgrade you request or a line item that shows up on a quote. It is part of how every container leaves our lot, sold or rented, because a security feature that costs extra to add is a feature most people skip, and skipped security features are how containers get broken into.

You will not see a lockbox charge on your invoice because there is not one to see. It is baked into the price the same way setting the container level on blocks is.

What the lockbox does and does not do

• Shields your padlock shackle from bolt cutters and grinders
• Removes the flat hasp a pry bar would normally lever against
• Goes on welded, not bolted, so it cannot be backed off with a wrench
• Goes on at your site the day the container lands, after it is set level
• Does not include the padlock itself, bring your own hardened lock

For most storage use, a good padlock inside a welded lockbox is enough on its own. The cargo doors are the only opening on the box, the walls are 14-gauge Cor-Ten steel, and the lockbox takes away the one easy attack on the doors. That is a different proposition from a hasp screwed to a wooden shed.

Layers worth adding on top of it

If the container holds something high value, or it sits down a lane where nobody drives past it for a week at a stretch, the lockbox is the floor to build on rather than the whole answer. What people add, in rough order of how much good it does for the trouble:

• Where the doors face. Point them at the house, the shop window, or the road you use every day, and tell us that before delivery, because it costs nothing to set the box that way and it cannot be changed afterward without a truck
• A hardened puck lock or shrouded shackle padlock rather than a long shackle lock from the hardware aisle
• A motion light on a pole or a soffit aimed at the door end
• Gravel and a clear sightline, so nobody gets to work on the doors out of view
• A camera, which documents an attempt rather than stopping one, and is worth having for that reason alone

Anything that has to be cut or welded onto the container itself, a second lock point or a hasp in a different position, is a modification. Our shop does that work in Woodlawn, and it gets quoted in writing for your box and your job rather than picked off a price list.

Seeing the actual container first

Come out to the Woodlawn yard, or to the Wytheville lot, and put your hands on the exact container that would be yours: the door gaskets, the floor, the locking rods the lockbox gets welded over. The box you pick is the box that goes on the truck, and the lockbox goes on once that box is sitting level on your ground. That is the part an online listing cannot offer you.