At a time when so many small businesses in the country are struggling to stay afloat, it should come as no surprise that there are many consumers who are searching for reliable sources of the products they need. From the earlier rush on toilet paper, disinfecting wipes, and other essentials to today’s challenge of finding bicycles, sewing machines, and kitchen appliances, consumers across the nation are in search of what they need.
While transportation countries wait to deliver these much needed goods, everyone is at the mercy of companies who are trying to reset their manufacturing plants and get back to prepandemic production levels. In the mean time, consumers wait for notifications about when a bicycle is again in stock, take numerous trips to several locations of their favorite grocery stores, and find ways to make due without the things that they want and need the most.
Finding the Right Transportation Resources Attempts to Repair the Broken Consumer Chain
It is not new information that the way we are living is very different from six months ago. In addition to the health concerns that so many Americans are facing, it is important to realize that even the way we shop for the items we need has changed. There are limitations for how many items people can buy when they finally find the most difficult to locate products. There are some items that have been impossible to find for the average consumer since mid March. When these items are finally back in circulation, of course, it will be the transportation industry that will connect these products to the waiting consumers.
On so many of the trucks, trains, and ships that cross the country and the globe, of course, are various kinds of custom shipping containers. in fact, the latest research indicates that if every shipping container in the world were lined up end to end, they would circle the earth not once, but twice. And while there are only 6 million of which are in use, there are approximately 17 million shipping containers in the world. For this reason, there are a wide range of options that many individuals, companies, and even entire cities are using these custom shipping containers for. From shipping container cafes to shipping container studios to entire homes and shipping crate restaurants that are created from these shipping vessels, more and more people are deciding to recycle a large product that the world is full of rather than build from scratch.
Although many entities would love to claim the idea, the custom shipping containers store trend is thought to have been pioneered by Starbucks in 2011 when they opened a 450 square foot shipping container store in Washington. This option for creating the building for a business is so popular now that there is an entire industry waiting and willing to create custom shipping containers for the exact purpose a customer requests. Dubbed Design 4.0, for instance, shipping container stores promote themselves as an option that takes as much as five and 12 weeks off a store’s potential opening timeline.
Durable, steel shipping containers are touted as having an average of a 25-year lifespan and have the added benefit that they only require minimal maintenance. In size, most shipping containers are 8 feet wide, 9.5 feet tall, and either 20 or 40 feet long, but they can be combined into a number of configurations to make them seem even more spacious. As one of the largest examples, Downtown Container Park in Las Vegas spans approximately 19,000 square feet with a mix of 30 shipping containers and 41 multifunctional modular cubes forming its perimeter. Great ideas breed followers, so it should come as no surprise that other cities have copied this model and have also created spaces from what otherwise was a container filling up a yard or future landfill. And given that for every shipping container that is recycled nearly 3,500 kilograms of steel is being reused, this is an idea that is gaining momentum.
This nation depends on the transportation industry for the both the basic and complicated delivery of many products. Today, however, even those mundane shipping containers are being transformed to have a longer life.