Here's the counterintuitive thing about flat-pack buildings: pre-assembly labor is cheaper than wasted container space.
Raw lumber kits? 16–17 units per 20ft container.
Semi-finished kits with pre-cut panels and nested bundles? 20–24 units per container.
That's a 20–35% drop in freight cost per unit. The labor often pays for itself twice over.
Here's the math.
The Container Constraint
A standard 20ft container gives you ~1,165 cubic feet of usable volume. Max payload is ~48,000 lbs, but you'll cube out long before you weigh out. This is a nesting problem, not a weight problem.
What's In One Kit
- Lumber: 200 pieces of 2×4×8' = ~58 cu ft
- Sheet goods: 2 sheets of plywood = ~2.7 cu ft
- Hardware: 4 five-gallon buckets = ~2.7 cu ft
- Total: ~63–65 cu ft per kit (with banding and pallets)
The Honest Numbers
1,165 ÷ 65 = 17.9 units in a perfect world.
Real world — air gaps, lumber bow, forklift handling — you get 16–17 unfinished units.
If someone claims 20+, they're assuming no buckets, no handling, and possibly teleportation.
Why Pre-Assembly Wins
Raw lumber doesn't nest. Finished panels do.
When you pre-cut and consolidate components, you eliminate the air gaps. Nested bundles stack tight. Hardware gets consolidated instead of rattling around in buckets.
The result: 20–24 units per container with semi-finished kits.
The math is simple. Density beats almost everything else in logistics economics. And the labor to achieve that density? It's cheaper than the freight you save.
Building something that needs to ship? Check out the configurator to see how your design breaks down into flat-pack components.