By John Stevens November 16, 2010 11:36 AM
Finding and choosing a local storage facility just became easier for those in the market to find a safe and secure home for their excess belongings. A new, all-inclusive, online, ready at your fingertips web portal has been compiled and is ready to use for customers wanting to compare pricing, unit sizes, location, photos, customer reviews and more about self storage facilities in their area.
Through a partnership with uShip, an online marketplace for self storage, and SpareFoot, an online storage directory, customers can compare and book self storage units all online. The new portal is called uShip Self Storage and is a free service run by SpareFoot, which is now firmly molded into uShip’s framework.
uShip has compiled the largest selection of storage facilities on the Web, which has made it easier for customers to quickly compare the offerings of local storage units. As the demand for storage units grow the new search and compare system will bring much ease to newcomers to the marketplace. Currently, 30 million homes or one in 10 households use some form of self storage. According to the Self Storage Association, as of April 2010 data showed that at the end of 2009, there were 50,000 storage facilities covering 2.22 billion square feet of self storage space nationwide.
“Moving and storage are so closely tied together across many of our categories – household goods, antiques, boats, cars, and even business moves – so offering an easy way to access self-storage is a natural addition to uShips’s existing services,” said Matt Chasen, founder and CEO of uShip in a press release. “By partnering with SpareFoot to create uShip Self Storage, we combine two online and complementary marketplaces that help simplify people’s lives when it comes to the challenges of moving, storage and dealing with all their stuff.”
uShip offers thousands of online, nationwide storage facilities that customers can browse through. SpareFoot then assists customers with comparing locations in their area, takes into account their individual needs and produces a listing of storage facilities the customer can then compare and choose from.
“We’re excited to be working with uShip on this effort,” said Chuck Gordon, founder and CEO of SpareFoot in a release. “Integrating our platform into uShip’s marketplace will make it much easier for shipping customers to find the storage they need – and it will give our network of storage facilities access to more new tenants.”
uShip specializes in shipping hard-to-ship items, such as cars, furniture, pianos, boats, heavy equipment and more. It is the first and largest online transport marketplace and operates to connect people and businesses. Transporters bid to win business from a consumer, which often involves making extra space in their trucks thereby saving customers about 50 percent on their bill. Since its inception in 2004, the uShip marketplace has won $150 million in business transactions, one million in listings and has offered 170,000 service providers. uShip is a global company, but it can operate locally throughout the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, European Union and Australia.
SpareFoot is the largest and most successful online marketplace for self storage. With up-to-the-moment pricing and inventory information for more than 5,000 self storage facilities nationwide, they are a powerhouse on the Web. Spare Foot assists customers on the Internet compare storage locations and find a unit that matches their specifications. Established in 2008 and based in Austin, Texas, SpareFoot generates storage offerings across a network of sites including SpareFoot.com, SelfStorage.com, uShip Self Storage, Apartments.com, and others. SpareFoot is an excellent resource for storage operators when it comes to finding new tenants.
