All Forum Posts by: Henry Clark

@Ryan York

items above:

1.  A dump truck usually hauls 10 to 12 Cubic yards.  Depends on your soil type and moisture.  Usually you would put down 3 inch clean rock for a base.  Roll it in.  Them come back with 3 inches of "1 inch and fines" for a smooth surface.  If you use the fabric just do the 1 inch fines.  Take cubic yards and convert to 3 inch coverage.  Take this against the sq ft in an acre.  This will get you to your number.  About $10,000 for the rock over one acre for here.  Call there and get cost per ton.  Stay away from Asphalt in Arizona as a surface.  To soft in the summer.

2.  50k population is probably not millionaires.  For Enclosed RV storage, you have to charge around $225 to $350 per month to make it work.  Only people with $250,000 to $1,000,000 RV Class A homes will pay that.  Unless your within 30 miles of this type of market.  Self storage market is usually 1 to 3 miles.  RV storage market is up to 30 miles.  So you will probably go with surface or canopy parking.  Probably Canopy in Arizona due to the sun.

3.  Lay your parking out on the ground with strings and push in stakes.  Then get a large vehicle and drive around and park.  Get the "feel" of the layout before you commit to the set up.  Mix- we went with an even mix of 20/30/40 foot spaces.  We did not make any spaces for 50 foot since this is a limited market.

4.  Lay your poles out in the middle of the rows.  They have to be tall enough to see over the closest RVs.  Put two cameras and two lights on them.  Trench underground electric and cables as you lay out facility.  Two lights on the pole is to get better coverage.

5.  The license plate reading cameras are specially built just for that.  Don't let your security guy sell you "Great" cameras, they won't work.  Has to be able to see through headlights and taillights.  Best mounted about 8 to 10 feet off the ground, at a slight angle to the vehicle lights.  If you want to, you can have the cameras send you a message when someone passes through.

6.  Wouldn't do dump or wash station unless your going primo.  Enclosed, concierge service- plug in before trips, tire checks, dump/wash station, vehicle washing, Parking service, etc.

RV/Boat storage is a low return project.  Make sure you don't have a great business analysis for this.  Should have a 12 to 15 year payback or longer.  "Unless" the market is a lot better down there due to "snow birds".

Good luck.

Out in the country most places don't have fences, gates, cameras or lights.

How you set up your operation depends on how much time you want to invest.  For example: We don't do late fees or deposits.  They make good financial sense.  We don't want the extra calls or communications about why was my charge higher or why do I still owe more?  Or how do I get my deposit back.  Also competitively most locations don't charge deposits.  We don't do these to avoid extra communications.  Have 7 locations with a total of 800 units.  No employees.  So we want to run as smooth (less communication) as possible.  Otherwise we need to hire a $50,000 with benefits person.  We don't mind losing some money, so we don't have to pay out a salary.

24 units is the right size to start. Once you have a system down, then the numbers don't matter.  

Leaving trash and skipping out.  I would recommend locking people out after 1 week. They still have valuables left.  If you wait a month, they will have cleaned out and left trash.  $25 deposit needs to be zero for competition or higher as a deterrent.  It would cost me over $100 to clean out a unit.  I wouldn't mind leaving trash for a $25 deposit.  Key is to lock out quick.

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25 September 2020, 05:44 PMThe excavator completed putting in the 24 inch drain pipe for the parking lot drainage from the apartment above us. Next he capped the 24 inch pipe and then inserted a 6 inch field drainage pipe. I didn't catch this operation. He did change the shovel heads to a smaller shovel. That way we have less dirt that needs to compact and less chance for our roads to develop cracks in them.

The guy in the ditch is measuring the depth versus the tripod gps locator. They are putting in a 2 % grade to have the water drain out.

The drainage pipe is on a large reel behind the pickup truck. As they hold it at the end, then someone drives forward and unreels it.

The close up of the pipe shows the slatted holes for the water to seep into the pipe then run down the pipe. There are three ways to "Rest" the pipe in the ground: a. Put the pipe in first and then put loose rock in above it. So water will seep down to the pipe. This is the revers of a sewer field where you want to loose the grey water. There you would put the rock down first, with the pipe above it, so the water seep down., b. Your pipe has a "Sock" over it to keep dirt getting into the pipe and clogging it up., c. This contractor for this type of pipe is just laying it into the ground and covering it up. Since it is not very heavy duty, he can't tamp the soil above it down. This leaves greater risk for the concrete road above it to develop cracks since the soil may not have compacted over the winter.

@Stephanie Southerland

Congrats for the investment.  Your seeing the worst stage of the business, the take over of an existing location.  Even if run cleanly.

Just going to run off a few thoughts.

a.  Join your State Self Storage group.

b.  Check the legal requirements for changing rates.  Could be a letter and one month advance notice, even on Month to month contracts.

c.  This is more of a question of your other business needs, versus what is best for the storage business.  If you want to "fix" everything at once, then do it all at once.  This is a lot of work and will take you about 8 weeks to cycle through.  Or if your already busy, do it in stages.  Example:  Do all of the items below at once or in stages.

Stage 1.  New management letter.

2.  Late fee addition letter.  Lockout rules.

3.  New Rate change.

4.  Auction and eviction notices.

5.  Auction.

6.  If your really trying to automate and your location can take the hit.  Then notification you are moving to just Autopay.  No Checks or cash allowed.  This is also a credit check since most of your bad customers will not have a credit card or bank account with sufficient cash for autopay control.  Your quality of customer will automatically improve.  Make sure there is enough demand in the area to support this policy.

7.  I'm like an untrained dog.  If you have left your food on the table before, then I will keep taking it.  Send out the above notices and your people will change their habits or leave accordingly.  But you have to set the new rules.  Don't eat the food off my table.

8.  We have found it takes about 3 customers to settle into a good customer.  Just part of the business.  Cycle through the bad ones as fast as possible.

Great investment.  No painting on Saturdays.  No animal stained carpets on Sunday. etc. 

Watch our "Self service" youtube to see if this helps with your business and personal lifestyle.

@Ryan York

Forgot to mention, your orange 40 x 12 parking spots.  I would turn the orientation from left to right; to right to left.  This allows the driver to have the next unit on their left shoulder or mirror.  Thus they only have one blind spot versus two, backing up.  You did it because your trying to keep traffic flow, flowing the same way, but don't worry about it, they will figure it out.

Do you plan to have night lights or security cameras.  If so, recommend you build into the parking spots up front.  Shouldn't impact your spacing.

Just weather questions.  

Where to move snow.

Orientation- might not be an option, but a north south orientation allows the sun to help melt the snow. If east to west, then the north side of the buildings or units won't melt easily.

Did you go with closer to the population or closer to the resort area?  Or could do both.  People hate dragging their RV's back to town on crowded Sundays.

Good luck.  If you do rock surface check out using Engineering fabric underneath.

Its a Grouper down in Belize.  My buddy Noel went spear fishing with his friends.  They are unemployed since they are snorkel tour guides and no travel is allowed.  Its "scored" since they were getting reading to cook it over a fire on the beach.  The rest of the fish they will take back to town for their families.

Well try to grill some fish.

22 September 2020, 07:43 PM Next up is the drain tile contractor. He will be putting in two drains for the Apartment complex parking lots above us. He will attach them together where they meet.

Then he will put in a "Drain" tile along the Retaining wall. This is to catch underground seep water from the hill above, which was causing the field to have a wet spot.

Both contractors had a hard time getting on site. The building contractor had a blow out on a trailer coming up and had to send someone back for an impact wrench to change the tire. The drain contractor had his skid steer trailer stolen, then found, notified it was at the police impound, so it took him a while to get his skid steer on site. He uses it to place rock in the bottom of the ditch and also to put the drain pipes in the trench.

He is putting in a 24 inch pipe, starting from the Storm retention pond and working backwards. This will narrow down to a 10 inch pipe for the far parking lot drain and also the "Drain" field tile. I asked him to switch buckets when he gets to the 10 inch pipes so he both doesn't dig out as much dirt, but also so the dirt will settle and compact quicker on the 10 Inch line, versus using the bucket for the 24 inch line. These trenches are being built where concrete roads will go. The more they "settle" the less cracks I will have in the roads. He will compact as he goes, but it still won't be as good as solid dirt.

Whole hog or partial.

a.  Depends on your road and lot layouts.

b.  Depends on your financing mechanism.  Does it have a construction loan portion to it.  Can you re-open it with the same bank and do another construction loan using the same collateral.  Example:  If you do an SBA loan, then your second phase will also have to be with them, unless you have more collateral to put in and can segregate the property as different subdivision lots.  Is your partnered committed to a second phase.

c.  Partial, will end up with added costs.  Example if you could do the whole project for $2mm.  But instead split it.  You might add another $100k to $150k to the project.

d.  If your fill out rate you estimate at 3 years, then you should build out the whole project at once.  If you thought 10 years, then you might phase.

Sounds like your cooking.