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My personal experience with this is my father, who lives in a rural area with 10+ acres, has placed several shipping containers on the property as storage for h
by mike_bob 14d ago
My personal experience with this is my father, who lives in a rural area with 10+ acres, has placed several shipping containers on the property as storage for his junk. He's charged just over $500/mo for them. He's had them for 18 years. The value of property in those containers is maybe $5000.
Consumerism is a disease, and the USA is super good at it.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 14d agoI thought you could buy a used shipping container for like a grand, so that is a ridiculous rental rate.
- mike_bob 14d agoThese are slightly higher end, and from what I've seen they go for $2-3000. But still yes, it is ridiculous, and the company wont offer them for sale per the current contract! For convenience sake he'd rather pay the monthly fee than haul all his junk out, get them to pick the container up, buy new ones, and put all his cheap useless junk back in. It's maddening!
- nsvd2 14d agoHe could probably find someone to move the stuff for him for a small fee.
- mike_bob 14d agoIf only you knew my father and his distrust of most things. He's been watching 5+ hours of Fox News daily for 30+ years. There isn't much left in that mind.
- adammarples 14d agoJust sorting it out for him
- Henchman21 14d agoOne day you may be thankful that the junk is already in containers. You should be able to winch those up on a container truck for disposal
- pavel_lishin 14d agoDamn, first I misread your comment as saying your father charges other people 500 a month.
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- niwtsol 14d agoShipping container costs went up after covid, but still, at their peak you could buy one for ~$5k, $500/month is insane rental price especially if he never moves it. I looked up prices for 40ft container: pre-covid: Under $2,000, Peak Pandemic (2020-2021): >$8,000; 2022-2024: prices falling, Current: $2,300
- 0cf8612b2e1e 14d agoAh, I was thinking of the 20ft, which can still be had for $1-$2k. If you are storing junk, might as well go for the big guy.
- stickfigure 14d ago20ft containers cost almost the same as 40ft containers due to supply/demand. A couple months ago I paid $3500 delivered for a 1-trip 20ft container just outside the Bay Area. It was the best of four bids.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 13d agoMust be somewhat regional. My quick search showed some options as low as $700. Could be scams or nothing but rust, but still seems possible to get options well under $2k
- deleted 14d ago[deleted]
- aksss 14d agoHis storage unit may have HVAC and electricity, plus is paying for some warranty of security.
- apparent 14d agoIf the units are on his property, it's very unlikely he's getting the benefit of HVAC/electricity/security.
- SoftTalker 14d agoThe cheap ones are damaged or may be leaky, so they aren't necessarily good options for anything that you want to stay clean, dry, and rodent-free.
- xp84 14d agoI can corroborate that. I once rented a “storage unit” on Treasure Island — the cheapest facility “in” San Francisco by far. It was just containers with plywood walls built inside them to create units. My stuff all got wet from condensation and I threw away 90% of what we had in it. Lesson learned.
- antisthenes 14d agoMy friend got one for free, along with some miscellaneous office furniture inside of it (mostly useless, but some very solid pieces from the mid 1980s or so). We use it as emergency shelter and camping supplies storage on his rural land. The major pain of shipping containers is transporting it to its place of destination and not having the local municipality throw a fit about it (they really don't like unpermitted stuff). Renting one for such long term seems like 10x worse than renting an internet router.
- dyauspitr 14d agoSurely not $500/month per container? Do you mean for all of them together?
- mike_bob 14d agoYes, all together. He has 4, 20-footers with extra insulation.
- varispeed 14d agoYou never know that odd piece of metal that fell off the toy you bought 15 years ago will be useful in a few years.
- asdfman123 14d agoWhen cleaning out your possessions you have to keep in mind everything has an implicit storage cost. E.g. if you have a bunch of junk, how much would you pay for an extra closet to hide it from view? At what point does the storage costs outweigh the value of the items?
- yalok 14d agoyou also need to factor in other things, like sentimental value (may be very high), rarity of some things, and catastrophic events "insurance" (e.g. Covid or similar events where obtaining some things is not guaranteed).
- pcoyne 14d agoAt that point he could have financed out a pole barn or any other useful structure and owned. I can understand urban people needing space but that is expensive
- psunavy03 14d ago"This person makes different life choices than I would in that situation. Therefore, they have a disease."
- mike_bob 13d agoAmazing you know more about my father than me. Please tell me more!
- Ferret7446 14d agoCounterpoint: hoarding resources is an evolved, beneficial trait, at least in the past. Frugality is a very modern virtue
- hellon3wheels 14d agoHoarding can be at least somewhat motivated by frugality: you never know what you'll end up needing someday, and you don't need to spend money on new stuff if you kept an old one around... somewhere... I've heard stories of people who developed the habit of keeping virtually everything out of living through the Great Depression. If by frugality you mean something more along the lines of minimalism then I agree
- stasomatic 13d agoIt's his money. Or, are you worried about your inheritance? /jk
- AngryData 13d agoShipping containers just never made sense to me. They cost way too much and are not a convient shape for anything but packed shipping.