Q. What is it supposed to be on the show? A. An industrial area with stacks of shipping containers (also known as cargo containers).   Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show? A.  In or near Miami, Florida. Q. When did we see it on the show? A. We see this location in Episode 3, of Season 1.  Laura Mosel, Harry's confidential informant, has been forced into a limo by Estrada cartel members, and Harry is desperately following them in his car, worried that they will harm Laura. As they reach their destination in a desolate foreboding area, the car turns into a facility where there are tall stacks of multi-colored shipping containers. (Any Dexter fan knows the significance of shipping containers, which is where Dexter's mother is murdered.) Harry follows them into the yard, but suddenly his road is blocked by a passing forklift moving containers, and he loses sight of the limo. The tall stacks of shipping containers show up again in episode 9, when the police search through them trying to find the kidnapped Laura and her kids, only to discover her dead and dismembered, with her two young children sitting in her blood. Q. What is it actually in real life? A. A company that sells and rents cargo containers.     Q. Where can I find it in real life? A. This scene was filmed at ConGlobal Industries, with the address of 1711 Alameda St, in Wilmington, CA.

That's only about a mile west of the border between Wilmington and Long Beach.
 
Wilmington is a neighborhood of Los Angeles, although it is located 22 miles away from downtown L.A.

Why? Back around the turn of the century, the city of Los Angeles wanted to own the Port, so in 1909 they annexed Wilmington, which had previously been an independent town, founded by Phineas Banning.

They also annexed adjacent San Pedro,  and together, Wilmington and San Pedro make up the Port of Los Angeles (AKA the Los Angeles harbor). the largest port in the United States. and the busiest container port in North America.

But they didn't get most of the land in between. 
 
As a result, Los Angeles is connected to Wilmington by only a very narrow access corridor that runs about 14 miles between South Central L.A. and Wilmington, roughly paralleling the Harbor (110)    freeway.

These are the same kind of shipping containers that you see down at the Los Angeles harbor, where the port's giant freight elevators unload containers from ships and load them directly onto trucks & trains for transport out of the harbor and across the country.
 
As you can see from the footage, its   located in a particularly remote, industrial (and let's say it, ugly) part of Wilmington, surrounded on two sides by oil refineries. 

Despite the fact that the address for ConGlobal is given as 1711 Alameda Street, it is not on Alameda Street (although it is less than a mile west of that busy corridor).

In the screencap below, they are actually driving east on Lomita Blvd (at around 1600 Lomita Blvd) when they turn south into the facility.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A.  This would've been very tricky, because it's in a rather isolated location, and there are lots of places around the harbor with stacks of shipping containers.

But fortunately, I caught a break when I spotted a sign that the limo driveson the right hand side of the screen  past just before they make a right turn into the container yard, and all I had to do, once I spotted it, was to capture the image, then blow it up in size in using Photoshop.

And that sign reads: “ConGlobal: 1711”.  A quick Google search of that phrase immediately turned up the right place. 

You can see  that sign in the image below, and you can see a matching StreetView here :

Here is a StreetView from Google:

Here is an aerial photo of the location.  And here is a map link.

 
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