Guides
How to read twenty-five self-storage facilities without naming names
Self-storage facilities compared by structured visit: twenty-five observations to record on site, offered instead of a ranking of places nobody has inspected.
What to take away
- No facilities are named here. A worldwide ranking of sites nobody has visited would be invented.
- What is genuinely useful is a structured visit. Twenty-five observations, recorded the same way each time.
- Visit as a customer would, at the hour customers come, and buy nothing.
- Record what you saw rather than what you concluded. Conclusions can be drawn later; observations cannot be recovered.
- Photograph nothing that shows a unit number beside somebody's belongings.
Why nobody is named
A list of the world's facilities worth watching would need current information about buildings, occupancy, and operations that no published source assembles consistently. Writing one from marketing material produces confident sentences about identifiable businesses, and those sentences would not be supportable.
What is supportable, and considerably more useful, is a method. Below is a visit protocol. Run it at four or five facilities near you, and you will learn more in a week than any list would teach you.
Before you go
Decide what you are trying to learn and write it at the top of the sheet. Comparing unit mix is a different visit from comparing the customer experience, and a visit with no question produces impressions rather than notes.
Visit preparation and observation groups
- Write your learning question at the top
- Visit at weekday evening or weekend midday
- Behave as a customer, do not identify as operator
- Do not photograph unit numbers with property
- Approach and first impressionobservations 1 to 5
- Gate and accessobservations 6 to 10
- The buildingobservations 11 to 20
- Office and offerobservations 21 to 25
Go at the hour customers actually come, which is usually a weekday evening or a weekend midday. Behave as a customer would. Do not identify yourself as an operator, do not take up a manager's time under false pretenses, and do not photograph anything showing a unit number alongside somebody's property.
| Group | Observations | What it informs |
|---|---|---|
| Approach and first impression | 1 to 5 | Visibility, access, and what signage has to say |
| Gate and access | 6 to 10 | Hardware choice and gate throughput at peak |
| The building | 11 to 20 | Unit mix, specification, and maintenance standards |
| Office and offer | 21 to 25 | Counter script, quoting discipline, and training |
The twenty-five observations
Approach and first impression
Twenty-five on-site observations
- Entrance visibility; turn-in crossing and median
- Signage hoursgate vs office; truck standing space
- Map pin accuracy; gate opening time and queue
- Keypad reachable from truck cab; readable in light
- Gate closes behind each vehicle; instructions if it fails
- Unit sizes and door counts; drive-up vs interior
- Climate control as product or upgrade; corridor width
- Corridor lighting; door and latch type; floor condition
Approach and first impression
- How far ahead the entrance is visible from the direction most traffic arrives.
- Whether the turn in requires crossing traffic, and whether a median prevents it.
- What the signage states about hours, and whether gate hours and office hours are distinguished.
- Where a rental truck can stand, and whether that blocks the entrance.
- Whether the pin on the map would have brought you to the actual entrance.
Gate and access
Gate and access
- How long the gate takes to open, and whether a queue forms behind it.
- Whether the keypad is reachable from a truck cab as well as a car window.
- Whether the keypad is readable in the light conditions at that hour.
- Whether the gate closes behind each vehicle or is held open by traffic.
- Whether anything indicates what to do if the gate does not open.
The building
- Unit sizes offered, and roughly how many doors of each, counted rather than estimated from the sign.
- Proportion of drive-up to interior units.
- Whether climate control is offered, and whether it is presented as a different product or as an upgrade.
- Corridor width and whether a cart passes another person comfortably.
- Lighting along the corridors, with any dark stretch noted by location.
- Door and latch type, and whether the latch accepts a lock without a fight.
- Floor condition, and whether there is any sign of water at drive-up thresholds.
- Whether anything is stored outside units.
- Cart availability and condition.
- Whether accessible parking and the approach to the office are clear, which is what the Department of Justice guide to the Americans with Disabilities Act for small businesses describes as the ordinary expectation for a small operation.
The office and the offer
Office and offer
- How long before somebody or something responded.
- Whether the size question was asked before a price was quoted.
- Whether the terms of any introductory rate were stated with the rate.
- What was said about the security of stored property, and whether it was a promise or a description.
- Whether the quote was offered in writing.
Turning observations into decisions
Number the sheet and use the same numbers every time. Then compare across facilities rather than judging each in isolation, because the useful information is in the differences.
From observations to decisions
- Number sheet and use same numbers
- Compare across facilities, not in isolation
- Observations 1-10 feed site and access decisions
- Observations 11-20 feed specification decisions
- Observations 21-25 feed counter script and training
- Item 24: security promises need careful wording
Observations one to ten feed site and access decisions in when to add more units. Gate throughput and truck standing space are what a phase can make worse.
Observations eleven to twenty feed specification. They belong beside the inventory in what the building needs installed. Observations twenty-one to twenty-five feed the counter script and its training, described in how the manager role is built and in hiring with a work sample.
Item twenty-four deserves particular attention. Statements about security are the most common place where a facility promises something it cannot deliver, and hearing someone else do it is the clearest way to see why your own wording matters. That wording sits inside the compliance picture mapped in what the lease and the statute govern.
What a visit cannot tell you
You will not learn their occupancy, their rates for sitting tenants, their delinquency, or their costs. Anything you infer about those from a visit is a guess.
For questions a visit cannot answer, use published sources, not inference.
Wage levels for roles you compare come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment and wage estimates by area. The Small Business Administration guidance on market research sets the framework for a competitive study. Neither replaces counting doors yourself.
Common questions
How many facilities should I visit?
Four or five near you, and one or two well outside your area for contrast. Beyond that the observations start repeating and the time is better spent on your own site.
Should I tell them I am an operator?
If you want a conversation with the manager, yes, and arrange it in advance rather than arriving unannounced. For the customer experience observations, visit as a customer and take up no staff time you would not otherwise take.
Is visiting large operators useful?
For process and layout, yes. For pricing and staffing, less so, because their cost base and their systems differ from a single site enough that copying either can mislead.
What is the most useful single observation?
Item fifteen. Lighting is cheap, it is noticed by every customer at dusk, and it is the item most often neglected at facilities that are otherwise well run.
