No, not through the steel itself. A genuine container is solid 14-gauge steel with a welded floor frame, nothing a mouse can gnaw through. What varies is where the box sits and which unit you have, since door seals wear differently and a tree line or hayfield sees more pressure than an open lot. Check the seals on your container and you'll know the real risk.
There's no single answer to whether mice get into a container, because two boxes a mile apart can face very different odds. A container backed against a wood line, parked next to a hayfield, or sitting near a barn full of feed lives somewhere mice already are in numbers. The same container in the middle of an open gravel lot with nothing around it draws a lot less pressure simply because there's less reason for anything to be nearby.
The individual container matters just as much as the terrain. A newer one-trip box with gaskets that have never been worked hard is a different risk than an older cargo-worthy unit that's sat outside for years and taken some wear at the door. Grade and age aren't just a price question, they're a seal-integrity question too.
A genuine ISO container is solid fourteen-gauge Cor-Ten steel with a fully welded floor frame, not plywood siding or sheet metal over a wood skeleton. There's no seam, joint, or soft spot in that shell for anything to chew through, which is a big part of why farmers use containers for feed and seed in the first place. Compare that to a wood shed, where a gap the size of a pencil is all it takes.
So the question people are really asking, whether mice can get through the walls or the floor, has a flat no for an answer. Where the real question lives is the parts of the container that aren't solid steel: the doors.
The cargo doors seal against rubber gaskets, and those gaskets are the one part of the shell that can wear, crack, or get pinched out of place over years outside. A door that doesn't latch flush anymore, often the same symptom as a container settling unevenly, is leaving a gap along that seal that wasn't there when it was new.
Ground contact matters too. A container sitting flat on bare dirt instead of blocks gives anything at ground level an easier approach than one lifted a few inches with airflow underneath. It's the same setup that helps with moisture and drainage doing double duty against pests.
Walk your specific box and check that the doors latch flush and the gasket runs unbroken all the way around, especially on an older used unit. If you're buying, ask about grade and take a look at the doors before you commit, since that tells you more than the container's age alone.
Beyond the container itself, keeping brush cut back and firewood or hay stacks a few feet clear of the walls removes the cover that draws rodents close in the first place. Setting the box on blocks instead of bare ground helps for the same reason it helps with moisture underneath.
Tell us the site and what's going inside, and we'll tell you honestly what grade and setup actually fits it.
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