Are you interested in buying an affordable and secure shipping container? If so, did you know that you should consider multiple factors when determining the best shipping container door to fulfill your needs?
In addition to offering mobility, your shipping container’s door needs to be easily accessible to be of any value to you. After all, the best shipping container doors are those that offer you convenience.
Types of Shipping Container Doors
Shipping Container Personnel Doors
What exactly are personnel doors? As their name suggests, they are doors for people rather than vehicles. The different types of personnel doors may be for commercial or industrial use and may also include a security swing arm for increased safety.
Industrial Personnel Doors
Industrial doors used primarily for security and storage are typically made of metal and may be solid or hollow. The majority of metal doors last more than 10 years longer than wood doors. They’re also better insulated, more secure, and more resistant to vandalism. They often include an overhead drip edge, a deadbolt, and a handle lock.
The standard industrial shipping personnel door is 1 ¾” thick. Hollow metal doors may be made of channel-reinforced steel sheets and different insulation materials, e.g., polyurethane and polystyrene. Compared with aluminum or wood doors, metal doors are more durable and stronger, easier to maintain, and more sanitary. Due to their durability, metal doors have the lowest overall cost in the long run.
Residential Personnel Doors
Doors for residential use may be made of wood with an overlying metal skin. People primarily use these lighter-duty doors for residential storage needs, and they tend to be less expensive than heavy-duty commercial personnel doors. They are often equipped with an overhead drip edge, a deadbolt, and a handle lock.
Personnel Doors with Security Swing Arms
A security swing arm consists of steel tubing with a lockbox that’s welded on the arm’s end going over the door. This enables you to put a padlock on the inside of the lockbox, such that the container lock isn’t visible, and intruders aren’t able to use bolt cutters to obtain access. You can install a security swing arm on any personnel door.
What are the Benefits of Using Personnel Doors?
- Metal personnel doors are welded directly into a container’s walls, helping to keep the container water- and wind-resistant.
- The personnel door’s insulation keeps the container and the items inside warm during winter months and cool during hot days.
- As noted above, when you use a personnel door, you won’t compromise your container’s security due to its deadbolt and steel handle lock.
- Personnel doors are a good choice if you need additional storage space, require a portable living or office space, and frequently require access to the container’s contents.
Roll-Up Doors
Roll-up doors are also called overhead doors. You can reach up to lift these doors from the bottom, where they roll up inside a container. You can weld these doors into a container wall and install them at the ends of the container or alongside walls.
These overhead doors are a good choice if you’ll be storing large equipment, and you’ll need to access and shift around the equipment regularly.
You can select standard or heavy-duty roll-up doors categorized by the depth and gauge of the door’s guides.
Standard Roll-Up Door
Standard roll-up doors are meant for lighter duty. Yet because these commercial, industrial doors are typically made of steel, you can be confident that they’re durable. If you are opening and closing your roll-up doors relatively infrequently and using them for purposes that aren’t that demanding, you’ll want to select either a light- or medium-duty standard roll-up door.
Buildings that store boats or RVs frequently use lighter-duty roll-up doors. Commercial buildings and warehouses in commercial settings often use medium-duty roll-up doors designed for medium-duty applications.
Heavy-Duty Roll-Up Door
Heavy-duty roll-up doors use deeper, high gauge door guides, providing superior durability and strength. They’re able to fulfill demanding high-traffic applications repeatedly. Commercial industrial buildings and freight terminals with large openings often have heavy-duty roll-up doors.
Cargo Doors
Cargo doors are secure, weather-tight, heavy-duty shipping doors located on the container’s ends. They protect the contents inside against theft and environmental elements using steel bars and a robust cam and locking mechanism to fasten the doors tightly shut.
When are Cargo Doors a Good Choice?
Cargo doors are a beneficial option when you need to easily store large, heavy items that may require you to use a forklift. You should also consider using a cargo door for your shipping container when safe, secure, heavy-duty storage is a higher priority to you than immediate convenience.
Door Combinations
With that said, if you’re using large shipping containers, it’s important to consider convenience as an essential factor to help you save time and money. Therefore, those who use their containers to provide a combination of working, residential, and storage space should consider adding multiple doors to their shipping containers.
What are the Benefits of Using Door Combinations?
- They offer more convenient access to and from the shipping container.
- Using door combinations makes it easier to move around and reorganize objects in the container.
- They ease the ability to move multiple items into and out of the container
Double Doors
A double-door shipping container has double doors on each end. This provides easy access to contents on both ends of the container for convenient unloading and loading. These containers transport cargo and provide onsite storage with simple sorting of cargo without the need to unload the entire shipping container.
Bespoke Doors
Often referred to as a “made-to-measure” door, a bespoke door is any door that differs in size from standard door sizes. (The term “bespoke” means “made for a particular customer.”) A bespoke door is bigger, smaller, narrower, or broader than a standard door. Bespoke doors may comprise a variety of shipping container door types, including sliding glass, bi-folding, or patio doors.
Sliding Glass Doors
Sliding glass doors have the same features as personnel doors, except they’re made with durable, heavy-duty glass framed with vinyl. Sliding glass doors come with locks to secure the interior of the container. However, you shouldn’t consider them as durable or secure as the other doors discussed here due to their transparency.
When are Sliding Doors a Good Choice?
Sliding doors may be a good choice if you’ll be using your container as a living space, office or working space, or storefront. You may also prefer sliding doors as an option if you’re concerned about aesthetics and prefer to use a fashionably designed container that allows in natural light.
Bi-folding or Patio Doors
For those who are interested in aesthetics, you may also consider using bi-folding doors or patio doors, e.g., French doors.
Bi-folding doors can fold in or out to maximize door entry space. They are also convenient for those who regularly need to enter and leave the container. For increased safety, you or a contractor can fit the bi-folding doors behind the original doors provided with the container.
Patio doors can be sliding glass doors (as discussed above) or French-style doors. These doors allow in sunlight and are fitted to open either outward or inward. These may serve as shipping container replacement doors fitted to the container’s end wall or used as an addition to the original container walls.
Conclusion and FAQ
Now that we’ve discussed the many features to consider when looking for an affordable, secure shipping container door to fulfill your needs, we wanted to conclude by providing you with helpful links for obtaining further information: