Industrial and Commercial Shelters
At this time of year when the weather turns wet and cold and construction and roadwork winds down, Slip Tube gets calls from companies that need to store large, heavy trucks and equipment.
Also, trucking companies with a fleet of concrete trucks or semi-trailers look for convenient ways to park them in inclement weather in order to protect the vehicles from the wear of wet and colder weather as well as do repairs and maintenance.
Flexibility
Such massive vehicles need a special kind of storage. To build a traditional wood building that can hold six semi-trailers is very expensive. That is why many businesses turn to Slip Tube. We can create many different configurations that can provide convenient and adaptable storage that by comparison with wood structures, are very reasonably priced.
If a customer with several semi-trailer trucks wants to move the trucks around as they do maintenance or switch from one vehicle to the next, they want an entry that opens all the way along one side of the building. That way they can park a number of vehicles and equipment without having to shuffle things around to get to one that may be parked at the back.
Other customers want a shelter that is open at both ends, so that they can back in either from the back or the front, and pull the vehicles through.
If they have two or three semi-trailers, they may need to park them in a way that they can just pull in and then pull out the other side.
That is the flexibility that draws so many customers back to Slip Tube.
Foundations
The other benefit for large vehicle customers is being able to choose shipping containers or concrete blocks for foundations—two anchoring methods that don’t require ground penetration. This means they don’t have to hire a geo-tech engineer to assess whether they need to worry about hitting any kind of underground lines, plumbing or groundwater required for permanent setups.
However, if engineering and local permits are something the customer needs or wants, containers and concrete blocks are simple for an engineer to get a building-certified as safe and meeting engineering regulations.
Clearance
Height clearance is another thing that we can offer.
In a Slip Tube building constructed to the customers specifications, heavy equipment such as a crane or a backhoe can be removed from the back of a truck. Dump truck beds can be elevated to allow for maintenance or to keep pressure off of the hydraulic cylinders when not in use.
Some larger trucks may need to make sure that the shelter configuration is going to accommodate removing equipment or lifting the back of a dump truck.
Of course, the higher the building, the more bracing it requires in order to be strong. In many cases, the customer wants as much as 20 feet of clearance inside the building to park a truck up inside the building and unload their equipment.
With Slip Tube’s foundation options, that is easily accomplished.
Expansion
In some cases, customers may have added to the size of their fleet and realize they can no longer manage with their current storage. In this case. we can also provide shelters that we attach next to an existing storage building, whether they have a wooded or concrete building that isn’t quite enough room.
An example is one of our steel suppliers which has a large warehouse full of all types of steel that required more cupboard space beyond what the company had. In that case, Slip Tube installed one of our shelters to fit right up against their building. This allowed us to create as much space as they needed, connected right over the doors of their building without interfering with the existing doorways.
Slip Tube also builds a lot of shelters for welders because you cannot weld in the rain. A Slip Tube shelter is a cost-effective way to provide covered working space for welding or other metal fabrication.
Marine shelters
With fall season moving in, boat owners whether fishing craft or leisure, may be pulling their crafts out of the water and be looking for somewhere to do maintenance. Slip Tube also gets requests from marinas who have us build a row of shelters over the berths that they use to rent out to boaters during the off season.
With shelters on the water, you do have to consider the wind factors.
There are exceptions, but our rule of thumb is that a building should not be higher than it is wide. For example, if your building is 30 feet wide, you don’t want to go higher than 30 feet high. That’s a standard building practice. As soon as your building gets taller than it is wide, it’s, it’s going to want to wobble.
Slip Tube has nearly endless capacity to customize shelters to whatever circumstances demand, which is highly appealing for people that are looking for a cost-effective way to expand their storage, whether it’s for boats, big trucks or heavy equipment.