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.
I thought you could buy a used shipping container for like a grand, so that is a ridiculous rental rate.
These 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!
Damn, first I misread your comment as saying your father charges other people 500 a month.
He could probably find someone to move the stuff for him for a small fee.
If 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.
One 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
Just sorting it out for him
Shipping 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
Ah, 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.
20ft 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.
Must 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
My 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.
The 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.
I 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.
His storage unit may have HVAC and electricity, plus is paying for some warranty of security.
If the units are on his property, it's very unlikely he's getting the benefit of HVAC/electricity/security.
Counterpoint: hoarding resources is an evolved, beneficial trait, at least in the past. Frugality is a very modern virtue
Hoarding 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
You never know that odd piece of metal that fell off the toy you bought 15 years ago will be useful in a few years.
At 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
When 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?
you 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).
Shipping containers just never made sense to me. They cost way too much and are not a convient shape for anything but packed shipping.
Surely not $500/month per container? Do you mean for all of them together?
Yes, all together. He has 4, 20-footers with extra insulation.
It's his money. Or, are you worried about your inheritance? /jk
"This person makes different life choices than I would in that situation. Therefore, they have a disease."
Amazing you know more about my father than me. Please tell me more!