A brief guide to buying shipping containers

First - While the corrugated salesman cares about your yearly volume, his manufacturing plant usually doesn't. The plant looks at the orders month to month. So without a contract, the plant won't set pricing for a yearly volume. Your buying a commodity and the price fluctuates.

Second - Two different manufacturing plants, same company, two different quotes. How can that be?
A. Corrugator Plant = This plant glues the three pieces of paper together, called converting. It looks to sell high quantities of boxes to say Coca Cola and sheets to sell to sheet plants. Usually want to sell by the ton. Which in quantity means by the truckload to a minimum of about 25k pieces. Some, especially when orders are down, will manufacture to a minimum of 15k.
B. Sheet Plant = Buys sheets from a Corrugator Plant. Wants to do low volume from 1k up to 15k to 25k. Anything around or over these numbers it wont be competitive with a corrugator plant. Sheet Plants usually want to manufacture low quantity with multiple colors.

Printing Plates and Die Cuts - Most buyers want the Corrugated Manufacturer to buy this equipment. If you plan on purchasing the same box with the same artwork for at least two years or more, I recommend buying these items for this reason - the buyer is now free to move production to more competitive corrugated manufactures without having to negotiate the purchase of the equipment all over again. Besides you can write off the cost.

Hope this helps.....