Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan
Detroit and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, plus the rest of southeast Michigan.
Everything here is laid out on the mile road grid, which makes an address easy to find and says almost nothing about the approach, which has to be checked separately. A tilt bed truck needs 130 feet of straight, level run to slide a 40ft container off, and 110 feet for a 20ft. In older Detroit neighborhoods and in Hamtramck, Ferndale and the Downriver cities, that run may have to come off an alley or a narrow drive between two houses, and a mature street canopy or a low service line can decide the placement. Out in Canton, Novi, Macomb Township and northern Oakland County the constraint changes to lot grade and heavy clay, which greases up after a rain and sets hard by August. Winter adds one more: a plow bank across the driveway apron has to be opened before the truck gets there, not while it is idling in the street. Events can also affect delivery dates, including the Woodward Dream Cruise in August and university move-in weeks in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.
Lansing, Jackson and Mid-Michigan
The capital area and the farm country around it. Flat, open ground, about eighty miles from the depot.
Mid-Michigan is flat and open ground, roughly eighty miles from the depot on I-96, where a placement can be a straight pull off a road with room to swing. Lansing and its ring of townships include state government, auto and battery manufacturing on both the west and north sides of the city, and the contractors who serve both. East Lansing has Michigan State move-in and move-out weeks, so a container for those weeks should be planned ahead. Jackson sits at the I-94 and US-127 crossing. North of the capital, St. Johns, Ithaca, Alma and Mount Pleasant are corn, soybean and dairy country, and a container can serve for grain and equipment storage. There is one seasonal constraint to plan around. During the spring thaw, county road commissions post reduced weight limits on gravel and secondary roads, which are called frost laws, and while they are up a loaded container truck is not going down a soft township road. They go up when the ground starts moving in the spring and come off when it firms, which varies by county and by year. A March or April delivery depends on the weight limits posted on the roads to the site.
Flint, the Tri-Cities and the Thumb
Saginaw, Bay City and Midland, the Flint area, and the farm counties out on the Thumb.
This region has three kinds of site. The Tri-Cities, meaning Saginaw, Bay City and Midland, have manufacturing, chemical plants and the river, and placements there are industrial or residential lots reached off I-75 or M-13. The Flint area and Lapeer County have job sites and homeowner lots. Then there is the Thumb, Huron, Sanilac and Tuscola counties, which is farm ground where delivery depends on the field entrance and the weather. The soil is a heavy clay that greases up fast after a rain, so a field entrance that carried a pickup an hour ago will not carry a loaded truck. What the last quarter mile is made of decides whether a loaded truck can reach the drop spot. The sugar beet and dry bean harvest runs from late September into November, and the roads can carry more trucks then, so a container for harvest should be in place before then. Winter belongs to the wind. There is very little to break it out there, and snow drifting across an open field will close a section road while the snowfall total still sounds modest, which is why snow fence lines run along some of them. Along the Lake Huron shore from Port Austin down to Port Huron the shore has marinas, cottages and boatyards, and the Blue Water Bridge carries freight traffic through Port Huron.
West Michigan and the Lakeshore
Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo out to the Lake Michigan shore towns. Sand near the water, clay once you get inland.
Inland, around Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, the ground is firm clay loam and placement comes down to the approach. Out on the shoreline from St. Joseph up through South Haven, Holland, Grand Haven, Muskegon and Ludington, the soil turns to dune sand. A container set straight onto sand can settle unevenly and the doors can stop swinging true, so pressure treated blocks or a compacted pad under the corners are a better base. Winter is the other west side fact. The lake effect belt can put a foot of snow on Muskegon or Kalamazoo while Detroit stays clear, which can affect delivery dates from December through February. The area includes contract furniture plants and their suppliers around Grand Rapids, Zeeland and Holland, orchard and blueberry growers on the fruit belt and through Van Buren and Allegan counties, breweries and food processors, medical device and pharmaceutical operations at Kalamazoo and Portage, marinas and charter operations on the shore, and construction crews on home and commercial job sites. Tulip Time in Holland in May and the summer festivals on the shoreline can affect delivery dates.
Up North
The northern Lower Peninsula, from Cadillac and Traverse City across to Alpena. Runs from the depot are longer here.
Up north means the northern Lower Peninsula, not the U.P. The run from the depot is long, so timing is planned after payment, address and access are reviewed. Around Grayling, Roscommon and the jack pine country the soil is a fine dry sand that a pickup crosses without noticing and a loaded truck sinks into, so what the last quarter mile is made of is the first question. A container for a hunting camp should be in place well before the November fifteenth firearm opener.
The Upper Peninsula
Everything above the bridge, from the Soo across to Ironwood.
The U.P. is about a third of Michigan's land area with a small fraction of its people, and there is exactly one road link to the Lower Peninsula, the Mackinac Bridge. Once across, US-2 and M-28 carry the east to west traffic and US-41 runs up through Marquette to the Keweenaw. Marquette, Ironwood and Copper Harbor are very long hauls from the depot, and a Container One sales representative prepares the delivered price for the address. When the wind comes up on the straits, high profile traffic on the bridge slows down or waits, which can delay a delivery. Winter here is a different scale of the same problem. The Keweenaw snowbelt measures a season in feet, not inches, and where the plow puts the snow determines where a container can physically go, so a December placement should be reviewed in advance. Ground is rock, sand and cedar swamp in roughly equal measure, and a set of blocks or a compacted pad matters more with a deep frost line than it does downstate. Drummond Island is a ferry run out of DeTour Village and needs its own review before a date is set.