Good comments from many quarters. No one will (or generally should) directly share their contract with you do to confidentiality clauses.


The most important thing is not to get hung up on storage cost per cubic foot. Too many organizations base their buying decision on that number. Here are some otehr thoughts:

1) Be aware of the "hostage fee". Many small operations don't have this, but there may be a line item for "termination fee", "delocation fee", or something along those lines. It's one thing if you break the contract; once the contract is over, different story.
2) Are services charged per cubic foot? In other words, will retrieving a big box cost more than a little box? What is the box size profile of your account? This can add up.
3) What is the cubic foot equivalent of a standard records box? 1.0? 1.25? 1.33? 1.2? 1.5? Then what are the cubic foot measures of other box types? This is often very important because the charges are all incremented by cubic foot. So a contract where a standard box is 1.2 cubic feet means that your base cost is actually 20% higher than it looks.

Storage costs in the $.15 to $.25  per cubic foot per month are within the "normal" range in my book. Activity (retrieval / refile) tends to be around $2.00 per cubic foot, with a range of $1.00 to $3.00 or so. "Trip" charges with a base around $20 and a per cubic foot charge of around $1.00 are fairly typical for delivery and pick up. YMMV


You may see many other numbers, but these are benchmarks that I have seen over the years. I'm seeing storage charges relatively flat over time, with activity increasing and transportation also increasing. Most of that is increased labor and fuel expense.

 
Patrick Cunningham, CRM, CIP, FAI
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