A repair programme only pays if the containers being repaired are worth more repaired than replaced, and that depends on the damage rather than on the container. Some failure modes are genuinely repairable and cheap to fix; others cannot be restored to full strength by any practical method. Sorting the fleet into those two groups is the first thing a repair programme needs to do, and it needs a written rule to do it consistently.
Damage that repairs well
A crack that has not propagated far, stopped by drilling the end and then welded or patched, restores most of the strength. A torn or split section along a wall, where the split is clean and the material on both sides is sound, can be joined. A worn or broken accessory – a handle, a catch, a label holder – is replaceable outright. All three are economically repairable in most fleets.
Damage that does not
A corner that has shattered into several pieces has lost the geometry that made it stiff, and a patch restores the covering but not the stiffness. A base worn through over a large area is a material loss that cannot be replaced economically. And permanent deformation – a container that is no longer square – cannot be repaired at all, because there is nothing to join. These are replacement cases.
The economic test
Compare the repair cost, including the labour to identify, collect, repair and return the container, against the replacement cost divided by the remaining expected life. Where a repair costs a fifth of a new container and restores most of its life, it is clearly worth it. Where it costs half and restores a short remaining life, it is not. The labour of handling often decides the answer.
What repaired containers can be used for
A repaired container is usually slightly weaker than a new one, and where the fleet serves both automated and manual lanes, repaired containers belong on the manual ones. That is a routing rule rather than a technical judgement, and it needs the containers to be identifiable as repaired – which is a marking question and cheap to arrange.
Repairing the right ones
A repair programme that accepts everything spends its budget on containers that should have been scrapped. One that accepts only clearly repairable damage is efficient. Where a fleet is being assessed, a quick sort into three piles – serviceable, repairable, scrap – at the point of collection is faster and more accurate than a detailed assessment of each container. What happens after the repair is covered in checking a repair before it goes back.
How many cycles a repair buys
That is the number the business case rests on, and it is usually not known. The way to find out is to mark repaired containers and record when they next come back for repair or retirement. Where a fleet has been running a repair programme for a year without that record, the programme is being run on assumption – and the assumption is usually optimistic.
What to record
Damage type, repair method, date, and the container’s identity. Four fields, and they turn a repair programme into a data source: which damage types dominate, which repairs last, and what the fleet’s real cost per trip is. The first of those feeds back into the next container specification, which is described in the damage modes that end a container.
When to stop repairing
A container that has been repaired twice is usually at the point where the next repair costs more than it returns. A rule limiting repairs per container – two, in most fleets – keeps the programme honest and prevents a small number of containers consuming a large share of the budget. Where a container comes back a third time, it goes. The cost comparison behind that rule is in repair or replace.