Almost every delivery that goes wrong goes wrong for a reason that could have been settled in a two-minute phone call. Here is what we are actually assessing when we ask about your access, and what to look at before you ring.
Whatever the address, whatever the size, a container delivery comes down to three things: can the ground carry the vehicle, is there room to line up, and is there clear air above the spot. Everything else is detail.
This is the one that catches the most people on the Northern Rivers, because our two problem surfaces both look completely solid.
River flat. The alluvial country along the Richmond and the Wilsons — Coraki, Wardell, Woodburn, the flats around Lismore — holds water for days after the rain stops. A track that carried a tractor yesterday will not necessarily carry six tonnes on a rigid axle today. There is no clever vehicle that gets around genuinely soft ground.
Coastal sand. From Evans Head up through Ballina and Byron, sandy ground carries a car without complaint and gives way under a concentrated load. It matters most for a sidelifter, which stands on four small pads and puts enormous pressure through each one.
New fill. Ground that has been filled or regraded since 2022 behaves differently to original ground, and there is a great deal of it in this valley now. Tell us if the spot is on fill. It changes both the delivery and the pad advice.
A tilt-tray delivers by backing in and sliding the container off along the ground. For a 20ft that wants roughly twenty metres of straight run over ground that will carry the vehicle, plus the length of the container itself. A 40ft wants considerably more and a much wider entry with no tight turn at the gate.
Where the run does not exist, the answer is usually a crane truck — a HIAB — which stands in one position and lifts the container over whatever is in the way. It costs more per job and it gets containers onto terraces, behind houses and over fences where nothing else will. On the steep cut-and-fill blocks at Goonellabah and the deep narrow blocks around Byron, it is very often the only option and it is worth pricing properly rather than assuming it is out of reach.
The other thing a truck needs is somewhere to turn around. A vehicle that drives two kilometres up a hinterland track has to get out again, and no driver will reverse a switchback. On shared or unformed driveways — common around Nimbin and back behind Mullumbimby — this is worth confirming before anything is booked.
To slide a container off, a tilt-tray raises its bed to a steep angle. That needs a surprising amount of air, and this district has a lot of things in the way of it.
Mature street trees are the main one. The figs and camphors through East Lismore and Girards Hill, the canopy through the older Alstonville streets, and the overhanging growth on the hinterland roads all close over the road in places. Nobody is going to prune a mature street tree so a container can be delivered, so this is a constraint to work around rather than negotiate.
After that: low services strung on timber poles, shop awnings, verandah roofs, carport beams and shade sails. And remember that a high cube sits roughly 300mm taller on the truck than a standard unit, which is exactly the margin that decides a marginal case.
Three photographs answer nearly every question we would otherwise ask, and they take two minutes:
Add one sentence about what the ground is — grass, gravel, sand, concrete, new fill — and whether it has been wet. That is genuinely all we need to pick the vehicle and give you a price that will not change.
Whatever the delivery method, a container should land on something. Hardwood sleepers or concrete pads under the four corner castings, on compacted ground, set so the container sits level and with a slight fall away from the door end.
The reason is not fussiness. A container that loses a corner by fifty millimetres over a wet season twists, and a twisted box has doors that will not close square and a seal that no longer seals — which is the thing you paid for. An hour of preparation on the day it arrives saves that entirely.
Ring 02 6622 1322 with the address, send three photographs, and say what the ground is. We will tell you which vehicle, whether the size you have in mind will physically get there, and what it lands at delivered — before anybody books a truck.
The honest answer to the question we are asked most often on the Northern Rivers: what watertight actually means, why an empty container floats, and what a container genuinely offers on low ground.
What each grade actually means, what is checked and what is not, and how to work out which one your job genuinely needs rather than which one is cheapest.
Why a sealed container drips on the inside, what salt air does to steel between Evans Head and Byron, and the cheap things that fix both.
One call, one delivered number, cartage included.