Industrial real estate investors should have truck maneuvering area as one of their top requirements. Talking with tenants, clients, and brokers, we constantly hear that truck maneuvering is a must. If a property has been sitting on the market for a long time, it is more than likely it is because the truck maneuvering and access is not adequate. With E-Commerce on the rise, truck maneuvering will become increasingly more important in the coming years. This blog post will cover container sizes, adequate truck maneuvering dimensions, and why this should matter to investors.
Truck Container Sizes
Truck containers come in all different sizes. There are 20’, 40’, 45’, 48’, and 53’ long containers. However, we are seeing a large majority of companies utilize 53’ containers for their operation now. What does this mean? As an investor, this means you want to invest in a property that offers adequate truck maneuvering for 53’ containers and tractors because you do not want your building to be functionally obsolescent to future business operations. Due to the rise of E-Commerce, we will begin seeing adequate truck maneuvering a requirement and necessity rather than a perk.
Many of the industrial real estate buildings that were built in the Vernon and Commerce areas were developed during the time when only Bobtails or 40’ max containers were used for trucking. This allowed developers to take advantage of the building coverage and develop bigger buildings with less land. Nowadays, these buildings are sitting on the market longer and leasing at lower rates because a large amount of business operations can’t operate out of the building due to the tight loading.
Adequate Truck Maneuvering Dimensions
From talking with logistic companies, 120’ to 150’ of truck maneuvering is ideal for their operation because this allows the company to access all of the dock high positions while other trucks are at the other positions. If loading is tight, Tenants sometimes cannot access all dock positions in buildings. For example, if a building has 5 dock high positions and only has 70’ of truck maneuvering, then a truck driver will have a tough time accessing the other 4 dock position if a container is loaded up in front of another door. Since the tenant can access all of the dock positions in a building with adequate loading, the tenant experiences increases in efficiency and productivity because they are able to load and unload multiple containers at one time.
Final Thoughts
If you are an industrial real estate investor in today’s world, it is crucial that you take truck maneuvering into consideration before investing in a property. You do not want to invest in a property that might become functionally obsolescent in the future. Great truck maneuvering will be key in the coming years.