Shipping products within your national borders or around the world requires careful planning to ensure a safe and prompt delivery. Whether shipping items for your company or for personal reasons, it's important to choose the right shipping container. The right shipping container can save you time and money as well as protect your goods. If appropriate make sure that your containers have the appropriate HAZMAT labels on them.

Shipping containers come in many shapes and sizes, and should be chosen according to the size, weight, and type of items being shipped. Also consider the sensitivity of your products; liquid, frozen, dry, and solid products all require certain types of shipping containers.

Numerous containers have been designed for specific types of goods. As an illustration, a platform containers has open sides and is make to ship heavy machinery. Containers with an open-top design are made to carry heavy, oversized cargo or bulk cargo items such as grain, coal, steel pellets, or sand. Then, there are dry van containers that are weatherproof and enclosed. Many different sized containers are also available. A side-door container has a rear door and a minimum of one door on the side.

For this purpose of shipping automobiles, there is an auto rack container. Tank containers are large, metal containers used to ship liquid goods. In order to ship natural gas, there are cylinder shaped gas bottles. There are also containers with adjustable legs called, swap body containers. For frozen goods, there are containers with refrigeration.

Determine how your items should be packaged and delivered for safe keeping and affordability. Also consider how easily and quickly the items can be loaded and unloaded. Some shipping containers will be easier to use than others depending on your loading dock setup.

You may be able to obtain cargo containers from your shipping company. Some companies will rent or lease containers, or even allow you to share the expense and space in one large container with another customer. Additionally, there are companies that specialize in the renting and leasing of various types of containers.

For fragile or odd-shaped items, choose smaller plastic cargo containers to package items separately before placing them in one big metal container. If you need an unique container design, you can locate a company that specialized in custom design of plastic containers. A custom container will be an additional expense, however, this may be needed to ensure safe delivery of your items. Cisco-Eagle, Flexcon, and Orbis are all custom plastic shipping container designers.

Certainly, flammable or caustic materials must be shipped in specialized containers. There are a variety of intermediate bulk containers that are steel drums, tanks, gas bottles and steel drums designed to transport these types of materials. Some containers may require dangerous goods labels.

There are a large variety of sizes and lengths of shipping containers from which to choose. The most common lengths are ten, twenty, thirty, forty five and fifty three feet. The majority of ocean freight is shipped in containers that are approximately 20 or 40 feet in length. The standard height is 8.5 feet while the standard width is 8 feet. An additional commonly used container is called the half cube or half height container. For each container, there is a specific weight limitation.

Each shipping container needs to be adequately labeled in conformance to shipping regulations. You can research online to find out what regulations apply to your type of cargo. In order to economize, you may consider purchasing some used containers. Many times you can find usable containers at a low price that have only minor damage. Shipping containers that are used will still function adequately, and save you quite a bit of money.