Most people in agriculture grumble about high freight costs, but for Joe Hamilton they resulted in an exciting new business opportunity.
For the past three years, Hamilton had distributed modified ocean freight containers from his Saskatoon-based business, Bond Industrial Direct Inc.
He would place an order with his used container suppliers in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, asking that the metal boxes be modified by inserting extra doors, vents, windows or ramps or custom painting them according to customer specifications.
However, the railways stopped shipping modified containers last December because of incidents in which consumer goods shipped in the boxes were damaged. Hamilton’s suppliers were forced to ship the containers by truck, which quadrupled the freight bill and squeezed the profit out of the venture.
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“At that point in time, we decided there is enough of a market here for (modified containers) that we should supply them,” Hamilton said.
About six months ago, his company started doing its own modifications, and business has been brisk. Sales of the units have been twice what he had envisioned.
“We’re floored,” he said.
His old suppliers provide him with used containers that are no longer certified for ocean freight. They can move by rail but not by boat. Hamilton said there are 700,000 to one million such containers in North America.
Companies that ship furniture, clothing and other items in the metal boxes cover the freight to Saskatoon.
Hamilton buys the empty containers, modifies them and sells them to customers who use them to store golf carts, boats, tools and other valuable items.
“I was just at a meeting this morning with a huge HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) company here in town that’s looking for containers to store fittings and all kinds of things like that in it,” he said.
Hamilton has sold units in Saskatchewan from La Loche to Shaunavon and to all types of businesses.
“Anything from fishing camps to chartered accountants offices that are storing files in them.”
The agriculture sector accounts for an estimated 60 to 70 percent of his business. Farmers use the containers to store valuable or dangerous items such as fuel, engines and tools.
“(The containers) lock up air tight and they make a real secure storage facility.”
Bond Industrial charges $600 to $1,200 to install a man door or roll-up door. A custom paint job costs around $800. Customers like the containers to be painted because they’ve been banged around on the freight circuit and exposed to corrosive salt water on their overseas voyages.
A typical six-metre long container with modifications would cost $4,000.
“There is nobody out there that doesn’t have a need or a use for one of them,” Hamilton said.
