Container Spreaders

Container Spreaders & Beams Buying Guide

Spreader beam or lifting frame: two ways to keep the pull vertical. A container spreader beam and a container lifting frame both deliver the vertical pull the corner castings need, but they hang differently. A spreader beam is a single bar that hangs from the crane hook on a center bail, with four lifting lines dropping from its ends to the container's top corners. The beam absorbs the inward squeeze so the castings see a clean straight pull. The Tandemloc ISO container spreader beam is the beam answer, rated 67,200 lb to match a fully loaded box and priced from roughly $9,500 to $15,000 depending on length. A lifting frame is a full rectangle sized to the container footprint, with a twistlock at each of its four corners that drops onto the top castings. A frame costs more and weighs more, but it locks to the box positively and carries no separate lugs or slings underneath it. Pick the beam when a crane already runs the yard and you rig the corners with lugs; pick the frame when you want the connection built into the lifter.

Autoloc frames: locking on without climbing the box. An Autoloc frame lands on all four top corner castings and its twistlocks engage automatically as the frame seats, the same principle a port spreader uses to grab a container in seconds. One operator lands the frame and lifts without climbing onto the box to set lugs by hand, which is the safety case that justifies the price step. The Tandemloc Autoloc spreader container lifting frame is rated 70,000 lb and runs about $33,000 to $42,000 by length. The modular Autoloc frame carries 70,528 lb and ships in sections that bolt together, which matters when a one-piece 40 ft frame will not fit your freight or your storage bay; it lands in the mid to high five figures. The corner cap spreader frame is the lighter, lower-cost frame at 35,355 lb, for lighter containers or partial picks where the full gross weight is never on the hook.

Forklift top-pick spreaders: a container with no overhead crane. When the building has a lift truck but no overhead steel, a fork-mounted spreader lets the truck top-pick a container directly. The forks slide into the beam, the beam's lines take the four corners, and the load stays vertical the same way it would under a crane. The Tandemloc 40 ft forklift container spreader is the full-size version at 84,000 lb, priced past eighty thousand dollars for a machine that turns a large forklift into a container handler. Lighter fork-mounted options cover partial and mixed work without a full container frame: the forklift multi-pick spreader beam at 10,000 lb and the forklift spreader bar with multiple padeyes at 12,000 lb spread a load across several pick points straight off the forks. Confirm your truck's rated capacity at load center covers both the spreader and the container before you commit to a fork pick.

Adjustable and combination beams for mixed loads. Not every pick is a full container, and a shop that also lifts crates, skids, and machinery is better served by an adjustable beam than a dedicated container frame. The Tandemloc AT14 telescopic spreader beams pin-adjust their spread out to about twenty feet at the top of the range, sold with or without a matched top sling assembly, and start at 2,000 lb. The AL50 combination beam rigs as either a spreader or a lifting beam at 10,000 lb, one unit for a shop that faces both a wide load and a low ceiling on different days. The H-style adjustable lifting beam gives a movable center pick point at 6,000 lb for off-center loads. These share the container spreaders' vertical-pull logic but trade fixed container geometry for range, so confirm the rating at the spread you will actually set, not the headline number.

Build your own beam with end caps and pipe sleeves. The end cap and sleeve components are the budget path to a rated spreader you size yourself. Tandemloc aluminum spreader beam end caps fit Schedule 80 aluminum pipe, and pipe sleeves join lengths into longer spans, so a set of caps plus a few pipe lengths becomes a rated beam for a fraction of what a rack of fixed bars would cost. Capacity rides on the pipe size and the span you build to, so confirm the rating at the length you will actually use rather than the maximum the caps allow. This is the same modular logic behind the general lifting spreader bars range, applied at container scale. For flat pallet and skid work the Machining and Welding pallet lifting bars give a straightforward two-bar pick that slides under a loaded pallet without a full beam.

Rating and testing every spreader has to pass. Every beam and frame here hangs below the hook to lift a load, which puts it under ASME B30.20 for below-the-hook lifting devices. In practice that means each unit is marked with its rated load and serial number, proof tested before first use, commonly to 125 percent of its rating, and given a documented periodic inspection on top of the visual check before every lift. The container-specific rules sit alongside it: ISO 1161 fixes the corner casting dimensions so any compliant frame or twistlock fits any compliant box regardless of maker, and ISO 3874 is the standard that requires the vertical pull these spreaders exist to deliver, ruling out angled slings on the top corners. Buy the beam or frame rated for your heaviest loaded container with margin, confirm it against your container length, and keep the proof-test certificate with the unit. The lugs and load levelling slings that connect straight to the box live in container lifting slings and rigging, and rolling a landed box across the floor is container moving carts.