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When Janelle Williams moved back in with her parents to save money for a down payment on a place of her own, she promised herself one thing: She would not repeat the ordeal she'd been through once before - renting a truck and driving her worldly goods to a self-storage facility. "The truck was too bumpy and too big. And it's too annoying to have to load and then unload again," said Williams, 22, a waitress in Washington.
Instead, late last month, she had a company called Store to Door drop off three containers in the parking lot of her Silver Spring apartment building. Over two days, she filled two of them with furniture and personal items, locked them up and kept the keys. A company driver then fork-lifted the trio of giant boxes onto a truck and whisked them away to a warehouse in Jessup ( 888.867.2800; www.storetodoor.com).
Once Williams gets a place of her own, the containers - five feet wide, seven feet tall, eight feet deep and sheathed in purple and silver protective covering - will be delivered for unpacking to her new address.
Like groceries, dry cleaning and firewood, mobile self-storage containers represent yet another wrinkle in home delivery for time-starved customers. To avoid borrowing or renting a truck, loading it up and driving it to a warehouse, often on the outskirts of town, some customers turn to firms that will park a storage cubicle outside their front door and pick it up when it's packed, said Michael Kidd, executive director of the Self Storage Association in Springfield. The group represents 2,500 companies nationwide, only three dozen of which offer this option.
Mobile self-storage appeals to a range of people, say those in the industry: homebuyers between residences; businesses seeking a place for documents and inventory; students who want to stow dorm or apartment gear over the summer; military personnel, diplomats and others transferring to points distant; home sellers whose real estate agents order them to de-clutter; and people whose lives are in flux due to death, divorce or unemployment.
"The majority of our customers are professionals between 28 and 40 who make enough money not to have to rent a truck" but not enough to have their goods packed up and kept secure by a major moving company, said Bernard Mustafa, sales manager of Seattle -based Door to Door. The company has facilities in 17 major markets including the Washington area (866-872-2114; www.doortodoor.com).
Self-storage has been around for decades, often in sprawling buildings housing hundreds of individual locked units. These can be found near industrial parks, farmland or dicey urban areas where land is less expensive. Customers drive through security gates, unload their possessions, lock the unit and drive out.
Mobile container storage became a new feature in the mid-'90s, made increasingly visible by the hulking containers appearing curbside in residential neighborhoods. "The pickup and delivery aspect was basically invented as an additional service, and what was a novelty grew into a stand-alone product," Kidd said.
The service fills a niche for people like Mireille Chaahya, who last week was packing up her Arlington apartment and preparing to leave town for six months. Pressed for time, she was happy to be able to fill up four Door to Door storage cubicles at her own pace. She figures the delivery fee equaled the cost of renting a truck to drive her things to self-storage.
"It's so convenient. I have five days to load them, and then they'll be picked up", said Chaaya. She and friends will move an entertainment center, mattresses, bookcases, a desk, chests of drawers, tables, chairs and boxes of smaller items and personal papers into the containers. "When I finish, I'll lock them up and they'll come take it away."
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Amenities at self-storage facilities vary widely, said Kidd. Some provide only basic storage and security and a degree of climate control. But women make most residential storage decisions, he said, and many customers have indicated they want such additional features as well-lit, carpeted corridors and access areas, motion detectors and fresh paint jobs. They also want alarms in each unit. Convenient location is important to some.
But location and amenities add to overhead, and facility owners charge accordingly. The Washington area is among the nation's top 10 markets for self-storage so companies here tend to price competitively; still, self storage here will cost more than in, for example Iowa, said Kidd.
In this area, Door to Door charges between $52 and $92 a month for one 5-by-7-by-8 foot container depending on length of storage, plus $99 for one-way delivery. By comparison, Public Storage, one of the nation's largest self-storage firms, charges $44 and up for a load-it-yourself 10-by-10-by-8 foot space.
"Customers have to do a little more of the work, which is why they get a better deal. It's worth it to them", said Gary Knappp, a Public Storage call center floor manager at headquarters in Glendale, Calif. (866-446-6846; www.publicstorage.com).
Access to belongings is another consideration. With traditional self-storage, customers typically can get to their units during business hours without having to give much advance notice.
Most facilities are open for up to 12 hours a day, depending on location. With container storage, a customer's cubicle is not guaranteed ground-level space, which means a forklift, an elevator and large carts may be required for accessibility. The theory is that goods can be reached on two hours' notice. But company officials strongly urge giving a lot more warning than that.
Door to Door and Store to Door provide only container storage. Public Storage, founded in 1972 as a load-your-own-unit operation, tried the new service, then cut way back when it proved unprofitable, said president Harvey Lenkin. Six years ago, the company was aggressively marketing container service not just in large urban centers but in smaller cities such as Charlotte and Indianapolis, Lenkin said. Those "secondary markets couldn't support the rental rates that allowed us to make some money."
Today Public Storage, with 1,400 traditional self-storage facilities nationwide, has dropped from 62 to 33 mobile container facilities, including two in this area. "It's a premium storage service for people who don't want to load, unload and then reverse the process, which is a pain in the neck," said Lenkin. "It's for busy people, lazy people." But it may not be for the neighbors. Urbanites aren't always happy to see "no parking" signs - obtained in advance by the customer from police - reserving precious street space for containers.
Moreover, said Kidd, those big boxes emblazoned with company logos and sheathed in bright blue, orange or purple protective covers - are not always welcome in the suburbs either. "A lot of upper-scale homeowners associations are banning them because they are eyesores and they are a liability. You don't know what's going in and out of those things." Maybe, maybe not. The storage contracts specify forbidden items: firearms, propane gas, alcohol, explosives, perishables. Moshe Sibony, the Door to Door customer service rep who delivered Chaaya's containers, was clear about what ought not to go into the big boxes: "Sometimes people forget and put in a basket with potatoes or something," he said. "You can't imagine how that smells."
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