Open Top Containers for Sale

Take the fixed steel roof off a standard box, replace it with removable bows and a tarpaulin, and make the header bar above the doors swing clear or lift out. That is an open top container. Everything else — corner castings, floor frame, door gear, corrugated walls — stays as it was, so the unit still stacks, still locks down for road and sea, and still keeps weather off a sheeted load. What changes is how you fill it: from above, with a crane, grab or excavator bucket, rather than pushing cargo the length of the box.

Full height or half height

Full-height 20ft (6.06 m) and 40ft (12.19 m) open tops take anything that will not clear a 2.28 m (7ft 6in) door aperture: plant lowered in vertically, and bundles of pipe, timber or steel section craned in as one lift. Half-height units answer a different constraint entirely. Spoil, scrap, drill cuttings and graded aggregate hit the payload limit long before they fill the cube, so a shorter box reaches its weight at a lift a site crane can manage, and fills from ground level. Our half height open top range covers that work.

Offshore lifting

Where a unit will be lifted on and off a vessel, certification is the whole question, and the 10ft DNV 2.7-1 half height is built to the offshore container standard. For general onshore top-loading duty the used 20ft open top is the usual starting point, with 40ft units listed in new and used condition.

On a used open top, inspect the soft parts as carefully as the steel: tarpaulin, roof bows, bow seats and the door header locking gear. Our condition guide explains each grade, and where a used unit is graded wind and watertight it carries 3 months. To load along the flank instead of from above, see open side containers. Delivery is free UK-wide including Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, on a 7–10 day estimate; any crane or HIAB offload is agreed in writing before delivery, and the price shown is the total payable with no VAT added.