Use a Shipping Container for Low Cost Storage
The trade deficit is often in the news, but it can seem very abstract. As we buy more goods from overseas than those foreign countries buy from us, one very real effect is a surplus of shipping containers. A shipping container is a large, rectangular structure designed to hold goods during transportation by ship or truck. The containers are large and very valuable, but unfortunately, they cost more to ship back home than the cost to produce. The outcome is that we have shipping containers piling up in huge reserves waiting to be used.
This is bad news for the shipping companies, but good news for many others as they have many uses beyond international trade. For instance, Google uses the containers to store racks of servers which can be moved to any location that they are needed. Some people even use them to build houses. Most commonly, they are used for low cost, secure storage. Often selling for less than $1000, there is no less expensive way to acquire hundreds of feet of storage space than to buy used shipping containers.