CONFIDENTIAL Shipping Container Wildfire Management Warehouse - Three Months of Engineering Exposed
I probably shouldn’t be sharing this modification with you guys, but I did promise to give away all of my secrets, so here we go!
Let’s hope this doesn’t bite me in the butt!
For the first part of this video, we will take you along as we visit the Provincial Forest Fire Centre to check how the shipping container we modified back in 2019 handled fighting wildfires in Northern Saskatchewan, and what we may need to improve.
We will then show you how we go about building two more containers exactly like this one that will help firefighters suppress wildfires!
To fit all the firefighting equipment that the customer used to store in their 53’ semi van trailer, we had to play Tetris and figure out how we would fit more equipment into an even smaller sea container.
This took over three months of engineering, but we now have the design finalized and can customize this type of modular interior for anyone interested in a similar build.
For this mod, we will be refurbishing an oilfield skid to be the container’s foundation and a way to move the container from area to area in the forest. We will also be cutting out and installing a man door, installing CSM brackets and strut channel, and then spring nutting and bolting in customized shelving to the struts.
We will then weld the container to the skid, and then take you on a tour of the finished container.
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YouTube Video Transcript
Hi, I'm Channing McCorriston, The Container Guy.
Today, we're coming to visit our past customer, the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, to
tour a modification I performed a couple years ago.
This paved the way to our modular strut systems and entirely changed the way we think and
modify containers to this day.
This is a modification that I likely should not be sharing with you guys, but I did promise
to give away all my secrets, so here we go.
I hope this doesn't bite me in the butt.
Forest fire activity dramatically increased
over the last few years as a result of climate change.
In 2019, we developed a portable wildfire management warehousing system out of a 40-foot
shipping container to assist with fighting forest fires in Northern Saskatchewan.
After months of playing Tetris in our 3D model, utilizing our modular interior systems, we
were able to fit more equipment inside a 40-foot shipping container than they had in their
existing system of using 53-foot van trailers, which are also six inches wider.
Although each state and province may fight fires differently and require different quantities
of each component, the equipment is relatively standardized, and the modular nature of the
shelving and racking systems allow full customization
of it to fit each location's needs.
After proving the concept in the field for two years, the province requires two more units.
As a part of the public tender, we were required to inspect the existing container in person
and hear what Geoff Robinson has to say about it.
Heads up, we were successful in winning the tender, so make sure you stick around to the
end of the video to follow along as we build two more of these units, but for now, let's
take a look at the original warehouse with the shelves filled, and see what changes,
[Channing] See what's— Holy, she's full.
[Geoff] If I need to adjust something, I can!
[Channing] Yeah, you can go up and down.
[Geoff] So, I— I need to adapt to something else...
[Geoff] ...because I can adjust these shelves, it allows me some play.
[Channing] And I was concerned that they weren't strong enough.
These were a bit flimsy, so we bent some special brackets to... to gusset them and support
them, and now they're way stronger.
There's a little bit of extra room above the door, I don't know if that's— Just leave
it so it doesn't drop anything on anyone's head.
There ain't much extra room in this thing,
[Geoff] For us to load that container is relatively quick.
And we do it here, it's loaded now ready to go.
We can probably have that from empty to ready to go in half a day.
We deployed it this year to Buffalo Narrows, and uh.
It was the first year of deployment for us.
[Geoff] And we found it was just so easy to
move it, even within that area itself through different...
[Geoff] ...different faces of the fire.
[Geoff] There's a couple of advantages to the way that we're doing this now, and some
significant ones are that, A. I don't have to get this container safetied.
I don't have to put tires on it.
I don't have to plate it or register it.
The guys are working from ground level, they're not working from this high...
...off— off the ground anymore.
So many... so many positive advantages to the way that we're doing this now.
[Channing] They transported well? Nothing, none of the—
Everything. Everything transported perfectly.
[Channing] Yeah, we didn't— [Geoff] There was nothing.
[Channing] We didn't bend any bars? We didn't— [Geoff] No.
[Geoff] And you'll see, you'll see.
[Channing] 'Kay, I'm curious, yeah.
[Geoff] There was nothing on the floor when we turned up at Buffalo Narrows.
And that's a pretty rough road up there. [Channing] Yeah.
Well, I got ideas to improve it, but maybe I don't have to, who knows?
There you go, as I said earlier, we won the
tender, so let's show you how we build these things
So the first step in modifying these containers is the foundation.
And these cans are going to be set on an oil-field style container skid.
In order to save the customer money, we have a couple of used skids kicking around our yard.
Uh, one of them is 47 feet long, this one here, and then the other one is 44.
The customer just wants a three foot section of bar grating out front, so this one here,
this 47 footer, we're gonna cut it down three feet, and we're also going to fix it.
So, somebody in the prior life of this skid has, you know, put forks or something underneath
the uh end cross pipes, lifted up and bent the skids, so.
We've welded up some new ones with some new dog ears.
We're going to be cutting these out, reinstalling that, reinstalling some new bar grating, giving
it a fresh paint job, and then reinstalling the containers on these skids.
And so, here the final job is just— We gotta weld this thing down to the skid.
We have some repurposed oil field skids that we're using for this,
just to keep the cost down a little bit.
We've already fully refurbished them and reinstalled some bar grating out the front end.
So, we've got three feet of bar grating, it'll be a nice little landing here
for the people as they're using it.
They still have the dog ears that allow either a chain or their continuous cable sling to
winch this thing up on a winch tractor, and uh... you know, trombone trailer with a live
And so, we are going to be welding this thing down.
Typically, we like to do our recession plates with uh twist locks, because then it's removable.
One big thing when you are welding a container to a skid,
is you got this half inch gap here underneath, and a lot of times people take
little spacers and just block it up all along the edge,
just to make sure that uh it's sitting nice and level
and providing even pressure under the container.
Another option, is we can uh notch the top flange of this beam and actually drop just
the four corner castings into the beam, and
I think that's the way we're going to go on this one.
And then all the— the— the cross— sorry, the lengthwise channels and the cross members
are sitting nicely on the top flange of these I-beams, so.
We'll also cover that and let you follow along.
Let's go for a final tour of this thing.
So this here is a 40-foot fire suppression warehouse for fighting forest fires up north.
We were able to make this whole thing happen with our CSM brackets and strut lined interior
systems, so using our modular interior systems, we're able to custom fabricate all different
types of shelving and racking for this customer.
And so, I'll just walk you through and explain
what each one is, and their intended use for it, so.
Right here we have room for 28 sprinkler kits.
Those are typically a plastic gray tote box that fits in here.
Then up above, we have storage for all their jerry cans, so there's 60 jerry cans going
And those are the larger jerry cans that will be utilized to feed their pumps.
And so they have the— I think it's an MK3 pump, and there'll be 32 of them all stored
Below them will be the tool boxes, so they'll be 32 toolboxes.
Each firefighter would have a toolbox and
a pump when they go out into the bush to fight the fire.
And then, very nicely, all the suction hoses—there'll
be 36 suction hoses, four extra in case some
break out in the field—and so those all store in here nicely and drape over the edges, so.
As we continue down, we have the inch and a half hoses.
There's 600 of them being stored inside here, and that takes up four rows of shelving all
the way down this side of the can.
And here we have the toolbox, so three different toolboxes with the custom workbench.
This is where the inventory manager inside this can can…
…release and re— or bring back in all their...
their inventory that goes out, so all of the equipment and then work on it, so if anything
fails, they have spare parts and tools.
Let's keep coming along here.
This is all fired on just a single circuit.
And so, at the back end of the can, an extension cord will plug this thing in and we can turn
the lights on and off, and also have power by their workbench.
And so that, our electrician was right at home with the strut channel, he was able to
pipe in all of the electrical to the lights that run down the center of this thing.
It's super nice and bright in here, and so, yeah, it's a very nice work environment and—
and looks really cool once it's all full of all their gear.
So continue on, a couple rows of Pulaski racks, so their axes and then their shovels, and
they also drape over here their uh backpacks... pumps.
So they have a pump that— just a tiny bit of water on their back that they can squirt
just tiny little fires just to fully suppress a fire.
Up above here, there's smaller jerry cans that are used for their chainsaws.
So there's 10 smaller jerry cans of storage for them.
And then way at the back here, this is where the chainsaws would be stored.
So there's 10 chainsaws as well.
Then down low, we have seven high-flow fire extinguishers, and above this there are their
three quarter inch hoses.
They'll be 50 of those, and then 100 two and a half inch discharge hoses.
And that pretty much wraps up the tour of this thing.
We're super excited to get it delivered, probably gonna do one last final visit with the customer,
grab one of every part, slide it in, make
sure that we've left enough clearances for this thing.
But because everything's just bolted in with the spring nuts, if for some reason they needed
another millimeter here, it's so simple just to loosen this off, slide the shelving up
and down, and get it exactly where they want it.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
This is a really cool mod, one of our favorite mods.
We've done one prior in 2019, and now they've ordered two more.
We're excited, hopefully, potentially, these orders keep coming in because we have it dialed
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And as always, check us out at tcg.ca.
