Roofing kit is awkward stuff to store. Ladders are long, lead is heavy and valuable, membranes come in bulky rolls, and the hand tools — slaters’ hammers, nail guns, snips, torches — are exactly the kind of kit thieves target from vans. A garage fills up fast, a van parked overnight is a target, and a lock-up with no room to lay a ladder flat is no help at all.
A 20ft steel container in Salford solves the shape problem: long, dry, lockable, and big enough to rack the tools while the ladders and rolls have their own bay. This page sets out what roofers typically store, how it is laid out, and what it costs.
Why roofers are moving tools out of the van
Direct answer: Roofers are moving tools out of vans because van tool theft is widespread — NFU Mutual research reported by Roofing Today found one in three tradespeople had equipment stolen from their van — and a steel container with your own padlock and 24/7 CCTV monitoring at Swift Secure Self Storage Containers in Salford removes the overnight van target.
The numbers behind that move are stark. The same NFU Mutual research found just shy of two-thirds of tradespeople had suffered some form of theft in the previous 12 months, with theft from a site at 36% and equipment stolen from vehicles at 32%. A separate Tempcover survey of 500 UK tradespeople, also reported by Roofing Today, found over seven in ten respondents had tools stolen, and the average financial loss was £3,092. Police figures reported by Business Van Finance put 25,525 tool thefts on record in the twelve months to December 2024, with 12,414 of them from vans.
For a roofer, the loss is rarely just the tools. A stolen nail gun or torch set means a cancelled job, a rebooked scaffold, and a customer who has taken a day off for nothing. Storing the kit in a container and taking only the day’s tools to site breaks that chain: the van stops being a warehouse on wheels, and the valuable kit sleeps behind steel instead.
What roofers typically store in a container
Direct answer: A roofer’s container typically holds ladders and roof ladders, hand and power tools, lead rolls and flashing, membrane and felt rolls, spare tiles and slates, safety harnesses, and small consumables — nails, fixings, sealants — that otherwise clutter a van. Swift Secure Self Storage Containers in Salford recommends racking tools and keeping lead and membranes in their own bay.
Lead deserves a special mention. It is dense, valuable and easy to sell on, which makes it a theft target in its own right — and a pain to carry up and down stairs at home. In a container it sits flat on a low rack or pallet, out of sight, under your own padlock. Membrane and felt rolls stand upright in a corner bay where they cannot unroll across the floor or get crushed under a ladder.
Tiles and slates are stored flat, in small stacks, never piled high enough to chip or to make the bottom course impossible to lift. If you carry a lot of stock, talk to us about the layout before you load — a 20ft unit laid out well holds far more usable stock than the same unit filled wall to wall, because you can still reach everything without emptying it.
Safety kit — harnesses, lanyards, helmets, edge protection — gets its own hooks or a dedicated box, clean and dry, so it is inspected rather than fished out from under a pile. That separation matters: safety gear that lives with sharp tools and lead offcuts gets damaged quietly.
Ladders, long lengths and the 20ft question
Direct answer: Most roofers need a 20ft container rather than a 10ft one, because ladders, roof ladders and membrane rolls need length, and a 20ft unit at Swift Secure Self Storage Containers in Salford gives you that length plus room for racking, with 10ft units from £25/week and 20ft units from £40/week for roofers whose kit is smaller.
A 10ft container suits a roofer who carries hand tools, a nail gun and small stock and keeps ladders elsewhere. If ladders come too, step up. Laying a ladder diagonally across a 10ft unit wastes the whole floor, while a 20ft unit takes ladders along one wall with racking opposite and still leaves a working aisle. That aisle is not wasted space — it is what lets you grab the torch set without moving three other things first.
Our size guide covers the 10ft versus 20ft decision in full, and our tool storage page for tradespeople shows the generic trade layout that roofing kit adapts from. If you are unsure, come and look at both sizes at 21 Cheltenham Street, Salford M6 6WY — seeing the length in person beats guessing from a spec sheet.
Keeping roofing tools rust-free over winter
Direct answer: Roofing tools rust when they go into storage wet, dirty or in a damp box, so clean and dry every tool, wipe a light oil coat over steel, and keep tools off the floor on racking with desiccant in boxes. Swift Secure Self Storage Containers in Salford publishes the full routine in its guide to preventing tools rusting in storage.
Roofers’ tools face a harder winter than most trades’ kit: they work in rain, they come back wet, and lead dust, mortar dust and felt fibres all hold moisture against steel. The routine is the same one every trade uses, with a roofer’s emphasis: dry the nail gun and torch set properly, oil the snips and hammers lightly, and do not pack a wet harness in with steel tools — wet webbing is a moisture source sitting in contact with metal for months.
A mid-winter check is worth it. Open the container once in January, look at the tools that rust first — cutting edges, unpainted cast surfaces, any spot where coating has worn — and re-oil anything that looks dry. That five-minute check is the difference between surface dust that brushes off and pitting that writes a tool off.
Your unit, your padlock: how it works
Direct answer: You rent a steel container at Swift Secure Self Storage Containers in Salford, fit your own padlock, and hold the only key, with 24/7 CCTV monitoring across the yard and opening 7 days a week, 9am–9pm, so you can load before an early start and drop kit off after a late finish.
Call 07375 063637 to check availability and arrange a look round.
There is no complicated sign-up. Tell us the size you need, bring your padlock, and load in. If you run alongside other trades on the same site, the same setup works for them — our plumber storage page covers plumbers’ boilers and pipe, our electrician storage page covers cable and test gear, and our painter and decorator page covers paint and towers. Roofers sharing a renovation site with any of them will recognise the layout.
Security is explained in full on our container security guide: steel unit, your padlock and key, CCTV monitoring, and what CCTV does and does not do. We are straight about the limits — no storage provider can promise that theft is impossible — but a container with your own lock, on a monitored yard, with tools out of the van, is a large step up from an overnight van on a street.
What a roofer’s container costs
Direct answer: Roofer storage at Swift Secure Self Storage Containers in Salford starts from £25/week for a 10ft container and from £40/week for a 20ft container, which most roofers choose for ladders and rolls, and you can check availability and sizes by calling 07375 063637 or visiting the yard at 21 Cheltenham Street, Salford M6 6WY.
Those are the container rates, not a roofer surcharge — the same rates apply across trades, from our tool storage and mobile mechanic pages to this one. What changes with roofing is usually the size, not the price: ladders and rolls push most roofers to 20ft, and the extra length is worth it when the alternative is a van full of kit that cannot be locked away properly.
If you only need storage for a single job — a re-roof with stock held for a few weeks, or a gap between contracts — a container works the same way: load in, lock up, and take the kit out when the job starts. And if you are between jobs over winter, the container is where the tools wait out the wet months clean, dry and oiled, rather than rusting in a van.
Come and see the yard, measure a ladder against a 20ft unit, and decide with the kit in front of you. Call 07375 063637 — open 7 days, 9am–9pm.