Where the Wilsons meets the Richmond. A small town on very flat country that has had a hard few years, and one where the conversation about a container is nearly always about where it goes rather than which one it is.
Nearly everything going to Coraki is for farm and grazing equipment storage, cane and machinery gear on the river blocks, storage during repairs and rebuilds through the town, fodder and fencing storage, workshop and tool storage on the small holdings, and household storage for people between houses. The job dictates the grade. A workshop conversion and a fodder store are not the same purchase, and we would rather say so before you buy than after.
Grades, briefly: as-is is not sold watertight and we say what is wrong with it; cargo-worthy is checked wind and watertight; new single-trip is unmarked. Photographs of the actual unit are available on request and sent before delivery.
| Size | Used from | New from | Hire from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10ft Containers | $4,350 | $6,400 | POA |
| 20ft Containers | $2,200 | $3,300 | $27/wk |
| 40ft Containers | $2,600 | $5,500 | POA |
Starting prices, ex GST. The grade the job actually needs is the bigger variable. We work out the Coraki cartage at quoting time so there is only ever one number.
Coraki sits at the junction of the Wilsons and the Richmond, on ground that is barely above either of them, and that shapes every honest conversation about a container here.
The straight version is this. A cargo-worthy container is checked wind and watertight, which means it is sealed against rain arriving from above. It is not sealed against water rising from below — that reaches the bottom of the door seals, which is the least sealed part of the whole box, and once water is inside, a container holds it very effectively. An empty container is also buoyant, and in enough moving water it will float and become debris rather than stay where it was put.
So the useful lever is height, and it is entirely in your hands. The highest useable ground on the block, a built-up pad if the site allows it, well clear of the drains and the low corner, and set with a fall away from the doors. That is a real improvement and it costs almost nothing beyond a bit of thought before the truck comes.
We are not going to dress this up further. If you want the full explanation of how steel behaves in water, it is in our guide on containers and flood risk, written for exactly this part of the river.
A lot of ground around here has been worked on in recent years — filled, regraded, rebuilt. That is a good thing for the properties concerned and it is worth mentioning before a delivery, because fill and original ground do not behave the same way under a container.
Fill that has not fully settled will keep settling, usually unevenly, and a container is unusually sensitive to that. A corner that drops fifty millimetres over a wet season twists the box, and a twisted box has doors that will not close square and a seal that no longer does its job.
The fix is straightforward: proper pads or hardwood sleepers under the four corner castings, sitting on compacted ground, and if the fill is very new, let it settle or have it compacted properly first. Tell us it is fill when you ring — it is one of the more useful sentences you can say.
Getting to Coraki is easy and getting onto a specific block is entirely a question of what the ground has been doing. The country here is as flat as anywhere on our run — wide farm entries, long straight tracks, level paddocks and no canopy or tight streets to worry about. The whole difficulty is water in the ground. This is the confluence of two rivers and the flats hold moisture long after the rain has stopped, and a loaded truck will find soft ground that a tractor drove over without a mark. In town the streets are wide and quiet and the blocks are generous, which makes residential deliveries about as simple as they get, subject to the same ground question. The other thing worth raising is that a good deal of ground here has been rebuilt or regraded in the last few years. Fill behaves differently under load than original ground does, so tell us if the spot is on new fill and we will talk about pads and about whether it has had time to settle.
The constants apply here as everywhere: weight-bearing footing, a lined-up run, and clear space above the placement point. Any doubt is best resolved with photographs rather than a description over the phone. The access guide has the lot.
Tell us what is going in it and where it is going — you get one number, not a range.