The Storage Fiasco

I'm very thankful for U-haul, as they make it fairly easy for us in the military to move ourselves and generally have reasonable rates (I'm not plugging them, just saying). As you know if you have been following lately we wanted to put the last of our stuff in a 5x5ish storage unit here in Colorado Springs, as most of my family is here so this is kinda a default home base for us. When I set up the trailer rental I did it through the corporate offices instead of the local stores cause I didn't have a typical move as I was going to have their trailer for an extended period. While on the phone with the company they talked me into a storage unit here in Colorado Springs that was 5x6, and they were giving me a good deal by reserving it with the trailer rental, and it was close to my parents place and right where we wanted to deliver the trailer now that we would be done using it. We showed up to the U-haul storage lot and were informed that our unit was actually a locker that was 5x6 and 8 feet tall but sitting on another locker that was 5 feet tall. To get into it required rolling a set of stairs in front of it. Two of the items I have required to be rolled into the unit and there wasn't even a ramp available, so this wasn't going to work, and none of the other available units were near the size we wanted.

I called the next U-haul storage place but they didn't have anything small available, so I called the next U-haul storage place to see if they could help, but they must have been busy and the phone call ended up being transferred to the corporate offices. They said that there were 5x6 units available there but they were on the second level, but there was an elevator available, so off we went.

We showed up at the place that was now fairly far away from my parents place, and as they were busy and after waiting for a while, got the paperwork done, just to find out there wasn’t an elevator. 😠

Like I said, I like U-haul, but I've come to the realization that their company offices don't seem to know much about, or talk to their dealer sites. Remember I set up the trailer rental through corporate and told them I would be keeping the trailer for an extended time, but the lot we were returning it to never got that message either and were not happy with me. I think they already had another renter who was supposed to pick it up the day after what would have been the regular time period.

After lots of time on the phone we finally found a unit with another company that was 5x5 and had a really high ceiling. I'm good at playing storage unit jenga and got it all to fit, but now we had just enough time to get the trailer returned before U-haul closed.

The day was very stressful, especially as all of the driving around we were doing was using the RV to pull that trailer all over town and sometimes into places we weren’t sure we could get out of without having to backup. A hard thing to do with a 38 foot motorhome and a very short trailer that jack-knifes if you look at it wrong.