Open Side Container

Open Side Containers for Sale: What We Supply

An open side container for sale from Van Blanc is a factory-built unit, never a torch-cut conversion. The difference lives in the top rail: a factory open side is engineered with a heavier upper rail and tighter weld spacing so the box keeps its torsional stiffness with the sidewall gone, and it keeps its CSC plate, which means it can still be lifted, stacked and shipped. A cut side door on a standard box is a different product with a different life, and the side-opening container guide spends two thousand words on telling the two apart in a yard. This page is shorter, because it is about the units we sell and how to get one.

Three configurations cover almost every order. The 20ft open side has four door panels making two openings along a 19 foot side; the 40ft has eight panels and four openings along 39 feet; the 40ft High Cube adds a foot of height to the same side geometry for racking or a taller pop-up frontage. Every one arrives one-trip: a single ocean voyage, factory paint, hinges and seals that have never been cycled through a Canadian winter. Used open sides exist, but supply is thin and the premium is worse, so buyers who ask for a used one almost always end up with a one-trip unit from the same order stream as our other new containers. Paint colours, a roll-up door on the end wall, shelving, lighting and a lockbox package are added at our Brantford yard before delivery, priced with the unit in one written quote.

Open Side Container Specifications

The outside dimensions of an open side unit match a standard container of the same length, which is why it ships, stacks and travels identically. The inside gives up a few centimetres to the door panel thickness. The number that matters for planning is the side opening itself: nineteen feet of clear access on a 20ft, thirty-nine on a 40ft, at seven and a half feet of clear height (eight and a half on the High Cube).

Each panel swings through 270 degrees and folds back flat against its neighbour, so an open 40ft presents a clean 39 foot face with nothing in the forklift lane. Closed, the panels lock on the same rod-and-cam hardware as the end doors, with a gasket run around every panel edge, and the unit is wind and watertight to the same standard as a general purpose box. The plate on the end door is a full CSC plate, which is the quickest way to confirm a factory unit on a video call; reading the plate line by line takes about a minute once you know where the approval number sits.

What Ontario Buyers Order an Open Side Container For

The pallet cycle is the first reason. A 40ft end-loader takes a forklift down a single aisle, one pallet at a time, reversing out between each; an open side takes the same twenty pallets straight off the side in a fraction of the truck time, which is why third-party logistics yards running seasonal overflow are the steadiest open side buyers we have. Second is the retail frontage. A 20ft open side with two openings is a market stall, a beer garden bar or a festival merch counter with a lockable shutter in a minute, and the pop-up retail conversions we build start from this unit more often than from any other. Third is the workshop. Mechanics, fabricators and film crews open the whole side on a July afternoon and work in daylight, then close it to a steel box at night. Fourth is the tight-site tool crib: a crew that cannot get a forklift past the end doors on a downtown lot can still stage a whole day’s materials along an open side from the sidewalk.

The buyers it does not suit are worth naming too. A container that will sit closed on a farm pad for a decade has no use for eight door seals to maintain, and a standard box does the job for far less. A conversion that will be insulated and finished on the inside loses the open side’s point the moment the panels are foamed shut. If the container will hold hay, salt or anything that pushes against the walls, a standard sidewall carries that load better than a row of doors. Ask us which you are; we sell both, and the whole product line, by size and grade, sits in the same rows.

Grades: Why Nearly Every Open Side Is One-Trip

Open side units are built to order by the container factories, in far smaller runs than general purpose boxes, and they rarely cycle back into the used market at any volume. That is why the grade conversation is short. A one-trip open side has a full CSC plate, factory hinges and seals, an unmarked floor, and the reinforced top rail as the factory welded it. A used cargo worthy open side turns up occasionally with a valid plate and worn seals, and because supply is so thin it carries a bigger premium over a used standard box than the new one does over a new standard box. Wind and watertight and as-is open sides are almost never worth the trouble: a tired seal on one panel out of eight is a leak, and a corner casting that has been knocked out of true twists every door on that side out of alignment. The grade guide for every container we sell explains the four grades in full; on this product, one-trip is the working answer.

What Sets the Price of an Open Side Container

An open side container costs more than a standard container of the same size and grade, and we quote the premium rather than hide it. Heavier rail steel, engineered hinge and seal hardware, and small production runs put a factory 20ft or 40ft open side roughly thirty to forty percent above a one-trip general purpose box of the same length; a 40ft High Cube open side sits a little closer to its standard equivalent because the High Cube already carries a premium. From that baseline the same four inputs move every container quote: the configuration (20ft, 40ft, High Cube), the paint and any modifications added at the yard, the delivery distance from Brantford quoted per kilometre, and the steel and freight markets in the month you order. We do not post a list price because a list price on a sourced-to-order unit would be wrong by the time you read it. How each grade and size climbs the price ladder is the long version; the short version is that you send the configuration and your postal code and a written, all-in figure, unit plus truck plus drop, comes back the same day.

Lead Time: Sourced to Order, Two to Six Weeks

Open side containers are not held at the same depth as the 20ft and 40ft standard units in our rows, and we say so before you order. The working pattern is a conversation to confirm the configuration, a unit sourced through the supplier network Paul has run since 1995 in the first two weeks, either from stock already in Canada or from incoming ocean freight, arrival at our Brantford yard for inspection and any contracted modifications, and a tilt-deck delivery to your site or a walk-through at the yard between weeks four and six. Occasionally a unit is on the ground in the country and can ship inside a week; ask when you call and we will tell you what exists that day rather than what might. Most buyers come to Brantford to see the unit before paying, because the configuration is high-value and the top rail and panel seals are worth putting your hand on. Payment is on delivery, never a deposit, on this product as on every other. Delivery lead times by region apply once the unit is in the yard.

Delivery and Site Prep for an Open Side

The truck is the same tilt-deck that delivers every other container, and the drop is the same: the deck angles, the unit slides onto its bottom rails on a level pad, and the driver sets it where you point. What changes is the pad. An open side needs clearance along the loading side, not just at the end: about three metres for the panels to swing to 270 degrees, plus the forklift lane and its turning room, which puts the working footprint on the open side closer to six to eight metres. The pad should run the full length of the box with a margin on the door side so the panels clear the ground when they swing down; a pad flush to the panel bottoms will bind them on closing. Corner support matters more than full-length floor support, because the unit carries its load through the castings and a settled corner will twist the panels out of seal. A compacted gravel pad with blocks under the corners is the standard answer, and the straight run the tilt-deck needs to pull out is the same as for a standard 40ft. Permits are managed by your municipality, so check with your local building or planning department before you order.

Open Side, Roll-Up Door or Double Door: Which Opening Fits the Job

Three container types answer the same complaint, that the end doors are in the wrong place, and they answer it differently. The open side gives you the whole long wall: nineteen or thirty-nine feet of access at once, the fastest pallet cycle there is, and a frontage for anything that sells to the public. The roll-up door container keeps the sidewall and cuts a single overhead door into it or the end, which is the right answer for a self-storage bay, a tool crib that opens and closes fifty times a day, or a workshop that wants one big opening without eight seals to look after; roll-up against cargo doors sets out the trade-offs on that unit. The double door, or tunnel, container has cargo doors at both ends, so a forklift drives through or two crews load from opposite sides; the double door container in Canada is the piece for that buyer. The honest order of cost runs the same way: an open side is the most expensive of the three, a double door sits in the middle, and a roll-up cut into a standard box is the cheapest, which is why a buyer who only needs one wide opening is usually better served by a roll-up than by the open side they searched for.

Locking and Security on an Open Side

Eight door panels sound like eight ways in, and on a badly built unit they are. On a factory open side each panel pair closes on the same rod-and-cam locking bars as the end doors, the outer panels overlap the inner ones so the seam is covered, and the bars take padlocks or a welded lockbox exactly as the cargo doors do. What we add at the yard for jobsite and retail units is a welded lockbox on the end doors and a puck-lock plate on the primary side opening, so the panel a crew uses every day locks in a second and the rest stay barred. Interior lighting on a switch, a shelf run along the closed wall, and a small cage for the tools that walk are the three modifications that pay for themselves on an open side used as a crib. The lock and lockbox guide covers the hardware for every container we sell; on this unit the rule is simply that every panel locks, not only the one you open.

Frequently Asked Questions

Reach Van Blanc in Brantford

Van Blanc Ent. Inc., 90 Morton Ave. East, Unit 1-B, Brantford, ON N3R 7J7. Cell 519-754-6844, toll-free 1-888-509-6658, office 519-751-1651. Open Monday to Thursday 9:30 to 5 and Friday 9:30 to 4. Send the configuration and your postal code for a written quote on an open side unit, or come and walk the standard rows first; the size decision is easier standing beside a 20 and a 40.

Related Reading

• Side-Opening Shipping Container Canada: the full guide
• Roll-Up Door vs Cargo Door: which opening fits the job
• 40ft High Cube Dry Container
• 20ft Standard Dry Container
• Custom features and modifications built at the yard