Bill,

The risk you run with a normal courier company is that they are not often up
to speed with the best way to handle media. Usually they do not have
vehicles that can cope with high/low heat and humidity.

Even though this is not as critical as some would have you believe,
depending on your part of the world a tape cooking or freezing in the
vehicle can cause your problems.

So say you have 50 tapes, and you send some offsite Monday to Friday, you
would be looking at a cost of (52*5*$15)=$3900 for transport, and around
(50*12*25c)=$150 per year storage for a proper vault.

Compared to the ($5*5*52)=$1300 you pay for a standard courier.

I suppose it boils down to a risk thing, personally
($3900+150-$1300)/52=$52.88 per week extra for the peace of mind is well
worth the money. Especially if you do/don't have a reciprocal agreement
where you and the other guy gets out of bed at 2am on Christmas morning to
deliver a tape back.

But it is still better than doing nothing if that is your criteria.

Gerard

-----Original Message-----
From: Roach, Bill J. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 2004 11:40 PM
Subject: Re: Question about Off site storage

>>For instance, a 2 way trip to a site 30 miles away would cost you far
more than the $15-25 that a commercial provider would charge (once you take
into account labor and vehicle costs), and if you chose your vendor wisely
that would be in a climate controlled, security monitored vehicle.<<

We typically used a local commercial carrier for this activity.  Most often
we combined this activity with an existing contract.  Additional cost was
minimal as we already had service between the two facilities.
Incremental cost for roundtrip was about $5 daily.

Bill Roach, CRM
Enterprise EDMS Coordinator
State of North Dakota
ITD/Records Management
701-328-3589

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