Self Storage vs a Container Yard: What $200 a Month Buys a Small Business

A 10 by 20 self storage unit in the Denver metro runs $230 to $300 a month. A 20 foot container at Box Yard is $200, and the lease does not have a clause telling you not to run a business out of it.

That second part is the one that costs people money, and nobody reads it until there is a problem.

Read the use clause before you sign

Most self storage agreements say the space is for storage of personal property only. No business operations. No customers on site. No employees meeting you there. Often no accepting deliveries either. Plenty of people quietly run a side business out of a 10 by 10 and never hear a word about it. Some get a letter and 30 days.

If anybody besides you is going to show up, or a pallet is going to arrive on a truck, ask the manager directly and get the answer in writing.

Can your van sit there overnight

Usually no. Most facilities will not allow a commercial vehicle to park on site overnight whether it is lettered or not, and the ones that do sell you a separate parking space for it. If the business owns a van, an enclosed trailer, a mower deck or a box truck, that single question settles the whole comparison.

We rent ground, so the vehicle and the material sit in the same space behind the same gate. The vehicle side of it is covered in secure vehicle storage in Denver.

Taking a delivery

Self storage offices generally will not sign for freight, and that is something you find out the week your first pallet ships. Our yards have a real street address, and a mailbox is $45 a month, so the LLC has an address that is not your house, packages have somewhere to land, and your Google listing has a commercial address behind it.

Access hours

Most self storage gates lock between 6 and 10pm and some charge extra for 24 hour access. A side business runs at 6am Saturday and 9pm Wednesday, which is exactly when those gates are shut. Our codes work whenever you pull up, Sunday included.

Floor space and cubic feet are not the same number

A 10 by 20 unit gives you 200 square feet of floor. A 20 foot container gives you about 150, so the unit wins on paper.

Then you look up. A container is 7 feet 10 inches tall inside with steel walls you can strap a load against, which gets you 1,170 cubic feet of usable space. A storage unit is nominally 8 feet, but you are not loading to the ceiling in an open room with nothing to brace against, so the top two feet go to waste. In practice a 20 foot container holds about what a 10 by 20 does, and a 40 foot container at 2,390 cubic feet holds more than any unit a facility will rent you.

Loading time, which is a real line item

Drive up units are good. Interior units mean a cart, a hallway, maybe an elevator, and two doors that only stay open if you prop them.

With a container you back the van to the door and the bumper is at the sill. If you load twice a week and the hallway costs you 30 minutes each time, that is four hours a month. Put your own hourly rate on it and the cheaper unit usually stops being cheaper.

Security, the honest version

Both are fine, for different reasons.

Self storage has cameras, often a manager living on site, and interior units behind a second locked door.

A container is a steel box with a lockbox welded over the latch so cutters cannot reach the shackle. No windows, one door, sitting on fenced ground behind a gate code. Nobody walks past it on the way to their own unit, and nobody standing in a shared corridor at 8pm can see your inventory. You hold the only key. That is the part people underrate.

Condensation, which nobody mentions until it is a problem

A steel box in Colorado can swing 40 degrees in a spring day and the moisture ends up on the ceiling. Manageable, and worth planning for. Pallets under anything on the floor, sealed totes instead of cardboard, a couple of tubs of desiccant.

If your inventory is printed material, cosmetics, electronics or anything with adhesive on it, pay for a climate controlled unit and stop reading. If it is tools, equipment, fixtures, hard goods, tile, lumber or a vehicle, a container is the better buy by a wide margin.

What each size holds for a business

A 20 foot container takes a one truck operation. Shelving down both walls with a picking aisle in the middle, or four to six pallets on the floor with room to work. A 40 foot at $330 takes pallet racking two levels down one side, around 16 pallet positions, with a 4 foot aisle a manual jack fits through. Every size is broken out by business type in what size storage your business needs.

Price

20 foot container, $200 a month at all three Colorado yards. 40 foot, $330. Fenced yard space with no container starts at $530 for 800 square feet. Month to month, first month plus a one month deposit, and no rate that steps up in month seven. Where the money goes at other places is laid out in what storage actually costs a small business.

When a self storage unit is the right call

If the whole operation fits on two shelves and you move it in the back of a car, go rent a 5 by 10 for $70. Nobody should pay $200 to store twelve totes. A container starts making sense when you own something with wheels, buy by the pallet, or need an address that is not your kitchen.

We are in Arvada at 5430 W 56th Ave and at two Wheat Ridge yards, with more in Houston and Arizona. What is open this week is on the availability page, or call 720-266-0400.