Storage unit cleanout in Raleigh

Two quote routes, both legitimate

Worth laying out at the start, because they behave differently and the difference is not advertised.

The first prices the unit as a unit. A size is quoted, a figure comes back, and the assumption behind it is that the unit is packed. The second prices what comes out — the volume it occupies on a truck, the same way a room would be priced.

Neither is a trick. But if you ask for one and your unit suits the other, you pay more than you needed to.

Priced as a unit

Our figures by unit size in Raleigh, with the capacity each assumes:

Read the middle column carefully. Those capacities are what the unit holds when it is packed out to the ceiling, and the price is built on that assumption.

Priced by volume instead

The other route is our ordinary load pricing, which charges for the space the contents take rather than the footprint they came out of:

Nothing prices under $75 on either route.

A packed unit is cheaper by unit size

Compare the two tables as rates and the pattern is clear.

From the 10×10 upward, the unit prices work out at roughly $30 a cubic yard and stay there — $531 for 17.8, $799 for 26.7, $1,066 for 35.6. The load pricing does not go that low; its best rate, at a full truck, is a little under $46 a cubic yard. So for a unit that is genuinely full, asking to be priced by unit size is worth doing.

That comparison is between those two tables and nothing else — it is not a claim about our catalogue generally.

A half-empty unit is cheaper by volume

And this is where people overpay, because the unit route quietly charges for space that has nothing in it.

A 10×10 priced as a unit is $531 whether it is packed to the door or holds a bed and fourteen boxes. Priced by volume, the same half-full unit is whatever the contents actually measure. The unit route bills you for the ceiling; the volume route bills you for the contents.

Where the two routes cross

For a 10×10, precisely enough to act on.

The unit figure is $531. On the load ladder, 10 cubic yards is $513 and 12 is $587. So the crossover sits between them: below roughly ten or eleven cubic yards — call it a bit over half a full 10×10 — the volume route is cheaper, and above it the unit route is. The same logic scales to the other sizes.

You do not need to compute anything. You need to say which side of "about two-thirds full" you are on, and ask for the cheaper of the two.

So describe the fill, not the footprint

The single sentence this whole page reduces to.

"It's a 10×10" tells us the size of the room and nothing about the job. "It's a 10×10, about half full, mostly boxes with a bed frame" tells us which pricing route suits you and gets you the lower of the two figures. The second sentence takes no longer to say.

You can actually answer that question here

Which distinguishes this job from the other kinds of clearance we write about.

Someone put this unit together on purpose, in one operation, and has been paying to keep it. It was loaded from a vehicle, in boxes, by people who were already deciding what went in. A unit is therefore describable in a way that an inherited house or a long-accumulated garage is not — the fill level is a question with an answer, even from memory.

A worked unit

An illustrative composite — a 10×10 holding a one-bedroom's worth of furniture and thirty boxes, priced all three ways:

Three figures for one job. Item by item it is $2,093. On the load ladder, 11.7 cubic yards lands on the 3/4 truck at $587. As a 10×10 unit it is $531 — the cheapest of the three, because at 11.7 of a possible 17.8 cubic yards this unit is just past the crossover.

What the three-way gap tells you

Mainly that the question you ask decides the answer you get.

The spread between the itemised column and the unit price is $1,562 for an identical load and an identical truck. Nothing about the work changes across those three numbers — only the basis on which it was quoted. Asking for all three and taking the lowest costs you one sentence.

Thirty boxes is the reason

Look at the row that dominates the itemised column.

Boxes are $31 apiece and a tenth of a cubic yard each, so thirty of them is $930 itemised and three cubic yards in reality. Storage units are full of boxes by their nature, which is exactly why itemising one goes badly and why the other two routes exist.

What the facility decides, not us

A boundary that matters here more than on a domestic job.

Access hours, gate procedure, whether a lift is available, what notice the office wants, what your agreement says about ending it, and anything to do with arrears or the operator's remedies — all of that lives in your contract and with the facility office. We do not interpret storage agreements, and we state no rule about what any operator will or must do, because those terms vary between companies and get revised.

Ask the office directly. Whatever they tell you, we can work with.

What we need to know about access

The practical half of the same question.

Tell us when the site can be entered and whether the unit is at ground level or upstairs. That is scheduling information rather than pricing information — it decides which slot works, not what the job costs.

None of the building affects the number

Since storage sites vary so much, this is worth being explicit about.

An upstairs unit at the end of a long corridor is priced the same as a drive-up one beside the gate. The distance from the door to the truck does not enter the figure, a lift makes no difference to it either way, and no part of our calculation asks where in the Triangle the site is. Those inputs are all set to zero, so the contents are the only variable.

Short notice is not charged for

Relevant when the month is running out.

Booking us for tomorrow costs what booking us for a fortnight's time costs. There is no rush rate, so a date that has been forced on you by a billing cycle does not also cost you a premium.

Nothing is added at the end

Two things that would otherwise appear on the invoice and do not.

Our billing checks whether a tax jurisdiction applies at the collection address; Raleigh sites match none, so that line never appears and the total equals the quote. Weight is not measured either — a unit of books and a unit of bedding price the same at the same volume. On the tax point specifically, we are describing our own software rather than North Carolina revenue rules, which belong with an accountant.

A unit empties in one visit

Unlike a house, and it changes the planning.

There is nothing to sort around, nobody living among it, and one door. Provided the site is accessible and the volume was described honestly, the unit is cleared and closed in a single appointment. That is worth knowing if you are trying to stop a billing cycle.

More than one unit

People sometimes have two, and it is worth mentioning both when booking.

Two units at the same site clear together, and the combined contents may reach a cheaper rate per cubic yard than either would separately. Two units at different sites are two jobs. Say which you have.

Take out what is worth taking out

Before any of the above applies, and it costs us the work to say so.

Something kept under rent for years has occasionally been kept because it was worth keeping, and a resale listing costs nothing to try. Serviceable furniture has charitable takers too. Either exit shrinks the cubic yards, and since both quote routes are computed from cubic yards, the price falls with them. We keep a separate page on who collects what for nothing across the Triangle. Whatever goes out through those doors is invisible to our pricing.

Furniture that has been stored a long time

A practical note rather than a warning.

Upholstery and mattresses that have sat in a non-climate-controlled unit through several Carolina summers may not be in the condition you remember, which affects whether donation is realistic. Worth a look before you promise anything to anybody. It makes no difference to what we charge to take it.

What we clear out of a unit

Effectively the contents, whatever they are.

Furniture, mattresses, boxes, appliances, electronics, rugs, tools and loose material all price normally. Anything that would need specialist handling is worth naming when you book, where it is a two-minute conversation. The unit itself we leave swept and empty.

If you are ending the rental to save the fee

The comparison worth doing, using your own numbers rather than ours.

Take what you pay for the unit each month and set it against the one-off figure from the tables above. That division gives you the number of months the clearance pays for itself in — and it is the only calculation that tells you whether keeping the unit still makes sense. We have deliberately not put a monthly storage figure on this page, because rates differ by operator, size and site, and yours is on your own statement.

If the unit is not in your name

Briefly, and it is a real situation.

Where the agreement belongs to somebody else — a relative, an estate, a former partner — the authority to empty it is a question for the facility and for whoever holds the contract, not for us. Sort that out with the office first. We will need whoever is authorised to have arranged access before we arrive.

If it turns out fuller than you said

Which happens, and the mechanism is worth knowing rather than fearing.

Where the contents exceed what was described, the additional scope is priced from the same published figures on this page and sent to you as a link to approve on your own phone. No crew member sets that number and none of them can. If you would rather not go above the quote, the alternative is to take what was booked and leave the remainder for a second visit — which on a storage unit is a straightforward thing to do, because what stays behind is simply still in the unit.

If you have already taken some of it out

Common, and it changes which route you should ask for.

A unit that started full and has been picked over for a month is no longer a unit-size job — whatever is left is a volume job, and quoting it by the size on the agreement would charge you for space you already emptied yourself. Say what remains rather than what the unit is. The same applies in reverse if you have been adding to it.

By unit size

Find yours, then say how full it is:

The golden rule

A unit size is a price, not a description — so tell us how full it is, not how big it is. The size on your agreement is what you rent. What you are having removed is whatever ended up inside, and those two numbers stop matching the moment a unit is less than packed. Say the fill level out loud when you ask, get both figures, and take the smaller one.

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