Old Hickory Sheds: The Honest Review for Ontario Buyers, From the Lofted Barn to the Rent-to-Own Program

Reading Time: 13 minutes

Read This First: Who Is Writing and Why

Van Blanc Ent. Inc. is a shipping container yard in Brantford, Ontario, a few minutes from Old Hickory’s Brantford dealer lot on King George Road. We are not affiliated with Old Hickory Buildings or any of its dealers, nobody pays us, and the steel boxes we sell compete with every building in this review. That is the bias, stated once. The facts below were checked against the company’s location pages and its dealers’ pages and listings on the day of writing, the product is described first, and the trade-offs are documented from the dealers’ own pages rather than opinions. One more disclosure matters here: Old Hickory’s rent-to-own program is the brand’s signature, and it is described below as what it is. Van Blanc sells outright and has no rent-to-own program; if a container buyer needs to spread the cost, that is a conversation with their own bank, which the cash-or-financing walkthrough covers.

Who Old Hickory Is in Ontario

Old Hickory Buildings is a Tennessee-based company, Old Hickory Buildings LLC of Murfreesboro, that sells through a dealer network the company puts at 38 US states and five Canadian provinces, and in Ontario it operates as Old Hickory Buildings of Canada. The buildings sold on the Canadian lots are built in Canada, and the Brantford dealer’s listing describes them as made in Canada and built locally by Mennonites, which lines up with the province’s shed-building geography: the Mennonite and Amish shops around Aylmer, Milverton and the country north of Waterloo build for their own names and for brands. The Ontario dealer lots we found are in Brantford on King George Road, Kitchener, Peterborough and MacTier under the Sheds N More name, Westbrook outside Kingston, Arnprior under ELM Enterprises, Oro-Medonte on Highway 11, Windsor on Division Road, Renton, Kingsville and Sarnia. The lot is where the buying happens: finished buildings on display, a dealer who quotes, delivers and sets up, and the rent-to-own paperwork done at the counter. The Amish sheds guide’s map of the shops describes the same builders selling direct; Old Hickory is the branded, dealer-lot version of that trade, and the difference in the product is smaller than the difference in how it is sold.

The Lines: Lofted Barns, Utility Sheds, Garages, Cabins

The Ontario dealers sell a consistent set of lines in sizes from 8 by 12 up to 12 by 28 at the lots we checked, with wider buildings available by order. The lofted barn is the flagship: a gambrel roof with a loft that turns a 10 by 16 footprint into two floors of storage, sold with a double door on the end or the side. The utility shed is the same box with a gable roof and no loft, the cheaper and lower building for the mower and the tools. The side lofted barn moves the doors to the long wall. The lofted garage is the barn stretched to 12 or 14 feet wide with an overhead door, which is the delivered prefab garage in the brand’s clothes. The playhouse is a small lofted barn with a porch. The cabins and bunkies are the barn with windows, a porch and a finished interior on order, and they are where the brand meets the bunkie guide’s prefab section. The dealers also list animal shelters, cabanas and tiny-home shells, which are the same frame with different openings.

The Construction, Line by Line

The construction is stick-built wood. The floor sits on 4 by 6 pressure-treated skids, notched so the joists recess into them, with pressure-treated 2 by 4 joists on 12- or 16-inch centres toenailed into the notches and 2 by 6 joists optional, standard on the 14- and 16-foot-wide buildings. Wall studs and roof trusses run on 16-inch centres, and the walls are double-studded at every siding seam so the panel joints land on solid wood rather than on air. The standard siding is 5/8-inch pressure-treated T1-11 plywood or 3/8-inch LP Smart Panel, painted and fastened with ring-shanked galvanized nails; LP SmartSide, the engineered wood panel with the grooved T1-11 look, is an upgrade option rather than the default, and any siding warranty follows the panel actually ordered, so ask the dealer which panel is on the quote. The roof is 29-gauge metal panels with a 30-year warranty, fastened with colour-matched screws and self-sealing neoprene washers, or architectural shingles on order. The door threshold is diamond plate, which is the detail that tells you someone has watched a mower go over a wooden sill. The dealer badges show a five-year warranty on the building and a limited lifetime warranty alongside it; ask the dealer which covers what, because the badges do not say. The wood shed guide’s chapter on what fails first is the frame for reading that spec sheet: the base and the bottom six inches decide the building’s life, and this floor is built to that rule.

The Rent-to-Own Program, Explained

The rent-to-own program is what most people know the brand for, and the Arnprior dealer’s page states the terms plainly. There is no credit check and every applicant is approved. The buyer pays the first month’s rent and a small security deposit, the dealer delivers and sets up the building, and after 35 consecutive monthly payments the buyer owns it; a 60-month option is also offered. After an initial period of one to four months the agreement runs on a monthly basis, and the building can be turned in at any time for any reason after that period with no penalty. The balance can be paid off at any time with no prepayment penalty and a discount, and a buyer who pays off within 90 days has the lease-services charge waived. Payments can go on a credit card. Read that as what it is: a lease with an option, priced so that the monthly line is comparable to a storage locker’s, with the building as the collateral and the return right as the safety valve. The total paid over 35 months is more than the cash price, which is how the program works and why the 90-day payoff exists. Van Blanc sells outright and does not offer it; the pre-payment checklist for a container is the equivalent document on our side of the driveway.

Delivery, Set-Up and the 50-Kilometre Circle

The dealers deliver and set up free within 50 kilometres of the lot, with a charge past that, which makes the dealer map the first thing to check. The building arrives finished on a trailer, is set on the buyer’s base, and is levelled and blocked by the crew; the dealer can supply engineer certification for ground snow load and wind load on request, which matters for a cottage lot in the snow belt and for anyone whose insurer asks. The path from the road to the pad has to take a building up to 12 feet wide and a gambrel roof high, and the crew has to be able to get the trailer out again, which is the constraint every delivered shed shares. The base the dealers ask for is level and drained; a bed of compacted crushed stone larger than the skids is the base that keeps the doors meeting for twenty years, and the stone pad under a container is the same pad. The tilt-deck’s reach down a driveway is the container version of the same delivery question.

What an Old Hickory Building Offers: Loft, Frame and a Lot to Walk

An Old Hickory building is a real wood shed a family can have on a lot this month. The frame holds shelves and hooks anywhere a screw goes. The lofted barn’s second floor puts two levels of storage on one footprint. The T1-11 siding takes paint and holds it, the metal roof sheds snow, and the whole thing looks like it belongs beside a house on a rural lane or a suburban lot. The dealer model means a buyer can walk the lot, pick a finished building, and have it set up within days, without a contractor, a kit or a weekend. And the rent-to-own program puts the building within reach of a household without the cash or the credit for a shed. The list it is built around is a mower, the garden tools, the bikes, the patio cushions and a loft of Christmas boxes, on a level pad, and the she-shed conversion route is where the same frame goes when the household wants a room instead. That same list fits a ten-foot container behind steel cargo doors on the same stone pad, and the box keeps a resale value if the household moves.

The Documented Trade-Offs

The trade-offs are the product’s and the program’s, and they are all on the dealers’ own pages. The rent-to-own total is higher than the cash price, and a buyer who runs the full 35 or 60 months pays for the convenience; the early-payoff discount and the 90-day waiver are the program’s own answer to that. The five-year building warranty is short next to the 30-year roof warranty it sits beside, and the badges do not say what the limited lifetime warranty covers. The dealers’ size range at the lot tops out around 12 by 28, so a bigger building is an order. The 50-kilometre free delivery circle is generous but real, and a cottage lot in Haliburton is outside every Ontario dealer’s circle. Twenty-nine-gauge roofing dents. And the format shares the limits of every wood shed: a built door with a hasp is a door a cordless grinder opens in a minute, the building does not move without the same crew that set it, and the loft that holds the Christmas boxes will not hold a snowmobile. None of these is a fault; they are the shape of the product, and the cost drivers on a built shed against a box price the same shape from our side.

Old Hickory Against the Amish Shops, the Kit Makers and Resin

Old Hickory sits between three neighbours. The Amish and Mennonite shops selling direct build the same class of building, without the brand, the dealer lot or the rent-to-own paperwork, ordered for cash at the shop. The kit makers, Bunkie Life and the retailer lines, sell a building in a box for a weekend of labour, carried through the gate in pieces. Resin, Keter and Suncast and Lifetime, is the lighter, no-maintenance building for garden scale, with the anchoring and base rules the Suncast review lays out. All of them are wood or plastic on a pad. The last row of the table is the one steel building on the list, and the one that locks behind steel and resells when you move. The resin category guide covers the third neighbour in full. The full map of those neighbours, every storage building sold in the province and who sells it, is the storage buildings for sale write-up.

Before You Sign: The Old Hickory Checklist

Before signing at an Old Hickory lot, ask the dealer what the five-year and lifetime warranties each cover, check that your lot sits inside the 50-kilometre circle, read the 35-month program total against the cash price, and build the compacted-stone base before the truck comes. The lofted barn carries the loft, the gable utility shed drops it, and the lofted garage takes a vehicle only if it fits the door. A list with wheels and a serial number on it is a different job, and the next section covers the building for it.

When It Is the Wrong Building

An Old Hickory building is the wrong building the day the list changes character. A quad, a snowmobile, a trailer of tools, a small business’s stock, or anything a stranger would load into a truck wants a building that locks behind steel, does not twist, and does not care about the base. That is a shipping container, and the comparison is short because the two buildings are good at different things. A twenty-foot box that replaces a 10 by 16 barn is 8 feet wide and 20 long, arrives finished on a tilt-deck in one to three days from our four Brantford yards, sits on four corner blocks and the same crushed-stone pad, locks behind a welded lockbox around the padlock and locks that a cutting disc does not open, and leaves on the same truck if you move. It has no loft and it is 8 feet wide, and where the lot calls for a barn look, batten cladding on a steel box gives it one. A ten-foot box for a small yard covers the 8 by 12 case.

Grade is the decision a shed buyer never faces. The four grades from a shed buyer’s side run from one-trip, the new steel for a box people will see, through cargo-worthy and wind-and-watertight, the sealed used grades most storage buyers pick, to as-is, which is never a room. What moves the number is size, grade, any cut-ins and the distance from Brantford, and the pricing hub’s drivers are the same on every quote we write. We sell outright, never rent and never rent-to-own; a buyer who wants to spread the cost does it through their own bank with the invoice and the serial number we supply. The boxes in the rows this week can be walked with Christian, and the walk-around before you pay is the whole due diligence a box needs.

Reach Van Blanc in Brantford

We have been supplying shipping containers across Ontario since 1995. Our yard is at 90 Morton Avenue East in Brantford, and we deliver right across the province with payment on the day of delivery. No deposit, no upfront wires, no chase-the-paperwork.

Van Blanc Ent. Inc., 90 Morton Ave E Unit 1B, Brantford, ON N3R 7J7, 519-754-6844 (cell) or 1-888-509-6658 (toll-free).

If the list has wheels and a serial number on it, call with what goes inside and your postal code, and we will tell you on the spot which boxes are on the ground and when one can land. Worth the drive for unbeatable quality, family customer service with 30 years of experience.

Related Reading

• Amish Sheds in Ontario
• Wood Sheds in Ontario: The Honest Guide
• Bunkie Life Review
• Suncast Sheds: The Honest Review
• Sea Can vs Storage Shed