I though about an alum. box but I seen my neibor hit a tree branch with his camp trailor and tear a hole in the side. I decided the steel walls would hold up much better. I checked the weight specs with a dealer. The 40 have a empty weight of 8000 The 20 are 4400. The reason for the heavy weights are due to the four corners. I plan on cutting the two corners off the piece that is going on the deuce. Graphs list is. Good idea. Didn't think of looking there. I'm estimating the fab. Weight of the box to be around 1400lbs. Thanks for the ideas.
I don't mean to rain on your parade but....
Whoever told you a 40' steel shipping container weighs 8,000 lbs was just a little bit off. There are dozens of websites that list the specifications of ISO shipping containers. Here is just one of them:
Steel Storage Containers for Sale Direct from the Container Depot at Port Newark
You will see that the 40' container is listed at 8,223 lbs.
When you cut it in half that still leaves 4,111.50 lbs and then you need to ADD weight to create a new end. I'm not sure how you figured that you would end up with less than 1/2 the weight but 1/2 a box (20') with a new end is by simple physics going to weight more than 1/2 the weight of the box when it was a 40 ' with closed ends.
Just for comparison, it has been determined by several members here on SS that the empty M109 box weighs about 4,000 to 4,500 pounds, (2 to 2.25 tons).
That same website I linked above also sells containers nationwide. You can contact them and see if they have any units in your area. You can also look in the "Equipment trader online". Her is a link, I searched for "Container"
http://www.equipmenttraderonline.co...facturer:ASC/RentalsOnly-false/Auctions-true/
You can figure about $2.00 to $5.00 per mile from the point of origin to your location plus usually $150 to $500 (depending on the company) for a delivery charge of a 40' container.
There is a container rental/sale place just a few miles down the street from me. They have containers in condition from beat to almost scrap to what is called a "One trip unit". It seems that steel and labor are both so much less expensive overseas that what they do is make the containers "over there", rent them to a shipping company to use one time in exchange for free shipping to get the containers here. Once the load is taken out of the box they are then sold as "One trip units".
From the guys just down the street, a 40' one trip is $4,800. The price goes down to about $1,500 for one that is just this side of junk.
Also, keep in mind your overall height on the truck. ISO containers come in 3 basic heights. 8' (Rare, hard to find), 8'6" (The most common) and 9'6" (Almost as common as the standard 8'6". In some places it is in fact more common).
In order to stay legal (In most states/jurisdictions) your going to have to stay under 13'6" total from the ground to the tallest part of the vehicle. Even at 13'6" you will still have to CAREFULLY watch bridges, overhangs, wires and so forth, especially once you get off the interstate and are on surface roads.
To save weight you might consider using an aluminum shipping container as your donor for this project. The problem is that (As I have been told by several distributors of these containers) that aluminum containers have not been built for 10-15 years and the vast majority of them were sold long ago for scrap since the scrap value was higher than the value as a container. This means that aluminum containers are few and far between and if your lucky enough to find one in good shape it is likely to cost you an arm and a leg. And don't forget the delivery charge to get it to you from wherever it happens to be sitting...
Hope this helps some....
