Conex box, shipping container, storage container: the words get used interchangeably, but each has a backstory. Here is the field guide for Washington buyers, with specific notes for Seattle and the Puget Sound region and the surrounding communities, including Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Renton, Kent.
The word conex (sometimes spelled CONEX) is short for "container express," a term coined by the United States military in the 1950s for a standardized steel shipping container used to move equipment and supplies during the Korean War. The original CONEX boxes were 8.5 feet by 6 feet by 6.8 feet, much smaller than today's intermodal units, but the principle was identical: a stackable, lockable, weatherproof steel box that could move by truck, rail, or ship without unpacking.
By the late 1960s the commercial shipping industry had standardized on 20-foot and 40-foot intermodal containers, the units you see on every cargo ship and rail line today. The military term stuck in everyday speech. In Washington, contractors, farmers, and homeowners still call any large steel storage box a conex, even when the unit is technically an ISO shipping container or a purpose-built storage container.
For practical buying purposes the three terms describe the same thing across Washington: a corrugated steel container, 20 or 40 feet long, with cargo doors on one end, designed to keep wind and water out for decades.
The vocabulary lines up like this:
If you are shopping for storage, the difference rarely matters. The same physical unit can be sold as any of the three. What matters more is the size, the condition grade, and the delivery logistics.
Washington customers typically choose from three sizes:
Specialty sizes (10-foot, 45-foot, refrigerated, double-door, side-opening) exist but are less common. We can source them on request.
Demand in Washington is anchored by Tree fruit and the packing houses that move it. Yakima County is the leading apple producing county in the country, and the orchard belt runs from the lower Yakima Valley north through Wenatchee, Cashmere, Entiat, Chelan, Brewster and Okanogan. Apples, cherries and pears all run on seasonal storage that has to lock and stay dry, and the packing houses, bin yards, orchard crews and frost fan and irrigation contractors around them are steady container buyers every season., Hops and wine. The Yakima Valley grows roughly three quarters of the United States hop crop, and Washington's wine country runs from the Yakima Valley across Red Mountain and the Horse Heaven Hills to Walla Walla and up to Lake Chelan. Harvest equipment, barrels, bottling supplies and trellis hardware all need dry, lockable storage in places with no spare building., Aerospace and its supplier base. Widebody assembly at Everett, the narrowbody line at Renton and a deep machine shop and fabrication base through Auburn, Kent, Frederickson, Arlington and Spokane make this one of the largest concentrations of aerospace manufacturing anywhere. The tooling, fixtures and parts those shops hold are a large and steady source of 40ft high cube demand., Timber and wood products. Mills, log yards and reload operations around Longview, Aberdeen, Hoquiam, Raymond, Morton, Randle, Darrington, Colville and Kettle Falls, plus the private timberland behind them. Containers end up at landings, equipment yards and gates a long way from any paved road, which is exactly where a lockable steel box earns its keep., Ports, marine trade and the fishing fleet. The Northwest Seaport Alliance at Seattle and Tacoma, the ports of Longview, Vancouver, Grays Harbor and Everett, and a commercial fishing fleet that works out of Ballard, Bellingham, Blaine, Westport and Neah Bay. Gear, nets, crab pots, spare hardware and off-season equipment all get stored in containers on the waterfront., Columbia Basin row crop and food processing. Potatoes, onions, corn, mint and timothy hay across Grant, Adams, Franklin and Benton counties, and the processing plants around Othello, Warden, Connell, Pasco and Richland. Add the hay export trade that runs out of Ellensburg and the Basin toward the ports, which is one of the more container aware parts of Washington agriculture., Dairy and berries in the northwest counties. Whatcom County runs a large dairy industry and grows most of the country's red raspberries for processing, with blueberries alongside them, from Lynden and Everson out through Ferndale. Skagit County adds seed crops, potatoes and tulip bulbs. Wash stations, cooler yards and field crews all need seasonal storage that stands up to a wet winter., Dryland wheat on the Palouse and across the wheat counties of the Columbia Plateau. Whitman, Lincoln, Adams, Garfield, Columbia and Walla Walla counties run some of the highest yielding dryland wheat ground in the world, and equipment, parts and inputs get stored at the farm rather than in town because town can be thirty miles away., Hydropower, utilities and the Hanford cleanup. Grand Coulee Dam and the string of dams down the Columbia and the Snake, the public utility districts that grew up around them, and the long running environmental cleanup at Hanford outside Richland. Utility contractors, line crews and cleanup subcontractors all run laydown yards, and a laydown yard runs on containers., Data centers and the construction that follows them. Low cost hydro power pulled a cluster of data centers into Grant, Douglas and Chelan counties around Quincy, Wenatchee and East Wenatchee, and every phase of a build like that, from site work to fit out, is a container hungry phase., The military installations and the contractors around them. Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Pierce County, Naval Base Kitsap at Bremerton and Bangor, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island at Oak Harbor, Naval Station Everett and Fairchild Air Force Base west of Spokane. The civilian contractors who work on and around those bases keep tools and materials in secure storage as a matter of routine., Construction, remodeling and the trades. Framers, roofers, electricians, excavators, restoration crews and remodelers are the most common container buyer in every single region of this state, and a dry, lockable box on a job site through a Washington winter is the reason most of them call in the first place., alongside residential construction and the storage cycle that the long wet season and the winter storms that ride in on it drives.
The uses we see most often:
Three questions narrow the decision quickly:
Conex boxes are delivered on a tilt-bed (sometimes called a roll-off) truck. The driver tilts the bed up, and the container slides off onto your placement site. Most deliveries follow the same physical sequence:
Delivery timing is honest, not aspirational. Across Washington:
Permit rules depend on the municipality. Rural counties often have no requirement at all for a temporary storage container. Urban codes are stricter, and some HOAs prohibit container placement entirely. Before ordering, check with your local building or planning department, and verify HOA rules if they apply. Our local guide walks through the most common scenarios: container permits in Washington.
Pricing is ZIP-specific, because distance from the serving depot drives a meaningful part of the total. Washington delivered pricing: starting at $2,889 for a 20ft Wind and Water Tight container delivered in Seattle. Price always includes delivery. That figure is an anchor for the best-served part of the state, not a quote for every address, and it was captured live on 2026-08-06.
We do not publish statewide price tables on this page, because they are inaccurate the moment they are written. Tell us your ZIP and what you need, and we will send back an all-in number with delivery included. No haul fee surprises, no padded line items. If you would rather spread the cost, ask about rent-to-own when you call.
Tell us your Washington ZIP and what you need. We will send back an all-in price including delivery to your address.