Used Container Prices in October 2026 Are Lowest Near the Ports Where Empty Boxes Pile Up

A used 20-foot container in Savannah, Georgia was listed for a median of $1,200 at the depot in early October 2026. The same kind of box in Las Vegas was listed for $2,887. Nothing about the steel explains a gap that size. Both are old cargo containers, both are 20 feet long, and the one in Nevada isn’t better built. The difference is where the box is sitting when you buy it, and that’s worth understanding before you pick a shell for a conversion, because geography can move the price more than size, grade or almost anything else you’re deciding about.

The figures come from a US price index published by shipping-containers.com, which collected asking prices from sellers on October 10, 2026 and plans its next update in early November. The national medians are a useful baseline. A used 20-foot container was listed at $1,672, a used 40-foot at $2,100 and a used 40-foot high cube at $2,192. New, single-trip boxes cost more: $2,700 for a 20-foot and $3,800 for a 40-foot high cube. These are asking prices at the depot, before delivery and sales tax, and the publisher is open about the limits. They aren’t final sale prices, and four large online sellers supplied 94 percent of the prices behind the city figures. Read them as a map of the market, not a quote.

The map has a clear shape. The cheapest places to buy are the big import gateways and the rail hubs that feed them. Savannah’s $1,200, Houston at $1,274, Los Angeles and Long Beach at $1,298, Chicago at $1,280, Miami and Norfolk at $1,300 for a used 20-footer. The most expensive are places a long way from a port: Las Vegas, Denver at $2,700, Portland at $2,522, Salt Lake City at $2,400. The reason is trade. The United States imports far more containerized goods than it exports, so full boxes arrive at the coast, get unloaded at warehouses near the port or the rail yard, and the empties collect there. When a container leaves the fleet, it’s usually sold where it already is. Getting it to Denver means somebody pays to truck or rail it there first, and that cost sits in the depot price before you’ve added your own delivery.

The same imbalance shows up at ports elsewhere, sometimes in a less convenient form. In Manila this autumn thousands of empty containers piled up with nowhere to go, and the government is drafting rules to make shipping lines deal with them, as maritimeshipping.org reported. For a container buyer, a surplus of empties near a port is the reason the boxes there are cheap.

So start with distance. How far does the container have to travel to reach your site, and from where? The index notes that delivery often adds $350 to $750 within 50 miles of a depot. If you live inland, a nearby depot’s higher price may still beat a cheap coastal box once long-distance transport is added, and it may not. The only way to know is to price the delivered container from two or three depots at different distances and compare the totals. The shell price on its own tells you very little. Our earlier piece on reading a container conversion quote beyond the shell price goes through what else belongs in that comparison, and what the delivery truck needs before the container arrives covers the site side.

Size matters less than people expect. In this index a used 40-foot high cube costs about 31 percent more than a used 20-foot, for twice the floor area and about 30 centimeters (a foot) more height. Per square meter of shell, the bigger box is the cheaper one. That doesn’t make it the right choice. A 40-foot container needs a longer approach for the truck, more ground preparation and more insulation, lining and finishing, and those costs scale with the area while the shell saving doesn’t. The finished price of a room is mostly the conversion, not the box. If the plan genuinely needs the length, the shell price makes it easier to justify. If it doesn’t, a 20-foot box with less to fit out usually costs less overall. Choosing between a 20 foot and 40 foot container works through that decision in more detail.

Grade is where buyers most often pay for the wrong thing. The index lists three. Wind and watertight is the basic used grade, sold as a box that keeps out weather. Cargo worthy means it has been inspected as fit to carry goods, which matters for shipping, and it cost about 6 to 13 percent more in October. New, or one-trip, means it has made a single voyage from the factory, and it added 61 percent to a 20-foot and 73 percent to a 40-foot high cube compared with the used medians. For a conversion, cargo worthiness isn’t the point. You’re not going to put the box back on a ship, and the certification that makes it cargo worthy is about transport, not about walls you will later cut, line and insulate. What you need is a shell that is sound where it matters for your design: a floor in reasonable condition, doors that close, a roof without dents that pond water, and rust that is on the surface rather than through the steel. A good wind and watertight box you have inspected can be a better buy than a cargo worthy one you haven’t seen. Inspect the container before you design the interior sets out what to look at.

New containers are a different calculation. You pay a lot more, and in return you get a clean shell, predictable condition and often a choice of color, with less work on rust and old paint. If the conversion is a visible room in a garden, used as an office or studio for years, that predictability has real value, and the extra money is small compared with the fit-out. If the box is a workshop or storage that you’re happy to see weathered, the used grades make more sense. One oddity in the index is worth knowing. A new standard-height 40-foot container was listed higher than a new 40-foot high cube, because few standard 40-footers are built new now and the high cube has become the normal size. For a room, the extra height of the high cube is welcome anyway.

There’s also the option of not buying. The index shows rental medians of $132 a month for a 20-foot and $199 for a 40-foot high cube. That isn’t a route to a converted room, since you can’t cut a rented container, but it can make sense while a project is still uncertain, for temporary storage during building work on the house, or to test whether a box in that corner of the garden is really where you want it before committing.

None of this replaces a quote. Asking prices change, sellers price individual units differently, and a cheap listing may be cheap for a reason you only see in person. The index doesn’t track the condition of each box, and its figures can’t tell you whether the container on offer is the one you’ll get. What it does give is a sense of proportion. In the middle half of the metro areas in the index, a basic used 20-foot shell was listed at about $1,490 to $1,950 at the depot, the location of that depot moves the price more than the grade, and the box is the smallest single line in a conversion budget. Spend the effort where the money is. Choose a shell you’ve seen, close enough to deliver without drama, at a grade that matches what you’ll actually do with it.