Given that it was going to be awhile before the house arrived we decided a camping upgrade from the tent was needed. Since the ultimate plan was to have two 20 foot shipping containers for use as a garage and stained glass workshop for Princess, why not get one out while we had the excavator out there to move it around? I started the search for a container to buy and was confident it wouldn’t take long. After all, there’s thousands of them at the port just two miles away. Three days later I gave up looking in the USVI and Puerto Rico. Turns out that they are a very desirable commodity in the islands, and if one comes up for sale it goes quick. Curious, I called the guy that rents containers for temporary use in St Thomas and asked if he had any for sale. No, but he’d be glad to rent me one for a high price. I then asked where he got the ones he rented from. He makes a bulk buy once a year directly from China! Rolando came to the rescue and told me about an outfit called Omega Container in Miami. I got in contact with them. Prices varied from $1500 for a usable one to $2500 for a newly overhauled and painted model. Figuring we would keep it awhile I sprung for the spiffed out one.
Newly Painted Outside
And Inside!
The next problem was how to get it down to St Thomas from Miami. Quick quotes from the two major freight lines were $4k for the empty container, a little rich for my blood. Then I called St Thomas Cargo, a freight forwarding company with a warehouse in Miami. Essentially you order something in the States and have it delivered to their warehouse. Doesn’t matter what, the only restriction is no hazardous cargo (I.e. paint, fuel, used generators, etc.). Then every Wednesday they load everybody’s stuff into containers and ship it to their warehouse in St Thomas, where it’s ready to pick up the next Monday. A great thing about them is that they charge by volume, not weight. It makes it a very economical way to ship building supplies. Another service they offer is if you have an empty container that needs to go down they will ship it for you for a large discount. They put their overflow stuff in it and use it for the one trip down. In this case they charged us $900 which was a lot better than what the other companies were offering. Luckily for us they ran into an overflow situation within a couple of weeks and our interim house was in St Thomas!