JayOH
11-17-2025, 10:40 PM
Posting my recent experience to raise awareness for others.
Received a call last week from the self storage company where I have a unit that houses my collection of pre-build parts and tools. The facility informed me they had an incident the night before and that I should make an effort to swing by that day and inspect my unit. Turns out by incident they meant thieves had broken into the facility, picked my hallway out of the dozen or so doors to enter and cut the locks and/or door latches to all the units in my hall (10-15 units).
My units lock was intact, however they just took an angle grinder to the latch mechanism itself to then pull the lock free. There was definitely evidence that the thieves had gone through some of my boxes near the door but thankfully none of my car parts interested them (perhaps weight/size/difficulty to sell?) as they appeared to be mostly interested in consumer electronics which I overheard another tenant say had been taken from their unit. I thanked my lucky stars that nothing was gone and then quickly found a vacant unit at a nearby storage facility that had better security (ie a building with only a single keypad activated walk-in entrance rather than gated keypad access to a drive in facility with hundreds of feet of unmonitored fencing to breach).
Pro tip for others utilizing or thinking of a storage facility for similar purposes:
1) Make sure your homeowners policy will cover the value of items stored off your main property or open a new policy to cover
2) Find a secure site with controlled access, not just a drive in keypad gate, think about perimeter security too
3) Even within a secure building, make sure units are not open to adjacent units. Divider walls don’t always go floor to ceiling in an effort to maximize unit lighting. Make sure there is something discouraging over wall access from adjacent units
4) If your unit is ever compromised, don’t be afraid to move your stuff ASAP. I didn’t want to wait to see if they would come back now that they knew exactly where to find a unit full of parts/tools and so I moved out in less than 48 hrs.
Needless to say, I didn’t consider any of these items when I originally picked out a storage facility. Keep your stuff safe!
Received a call last week from the self storage company where I have a unit that houses my collection of pre-build parts and tools. The facility informed me they had an incident the night before and that I should make an effort to swing by that day and inspect my unit. Turns out by incident they meant thieves had broken into the facility, picked my hallway out of the dozen or so doors to enter and cut the locks and/or door latches to all the units in my hall (10-15 units).
My units lock was intact, however they just took an angle grinder to the latch mechanism itself to then pull the lock free. There was definitely evidence that the thieves had gone through some of my boxes near the door but thankfully none of my car parts interested them (perhaps weight/size/difficulty to sell?) as they appeared to be mostly interested in consumer electronics which I overheard another tenant say had been taken from their unit. I thanked my lucky stars that nothing was gone and then quickly found a vacant unit at a nearby storage facility that had better security (ie a building with only a single keypad activated walk-in entrance rather than gated keypad access to a drive in facility with hundreds of feet of unmonitored fencing to breach).
Pro tip for others utilizing or thinking of a storage facility for similar purposes:
1) Make sure your homeowners policy will cover the value of items stored off your main property or open a new policy to cover
2) Find a secure site with controlled access, not just a drive in keypad gate, think about perimeter security too
3) Even within a secure building, make sure units are not open to adjacent units. Divider walls don’t always go floor to ceiling in an effort to maximize unit lighting. Make sure there is something discouraging over wall access from adjacent units
4) If your unit is ever compromised, don’t be afraid to move your stuff ASAP. I didn’t want to wait to see if they would come back now that they knew exactly where to find a unit full of parts/tools and so I moved out in less than 48 hrs.
Needless to say, I didn’t consider any of these items when I originally picked out a storage facility. Keep your stuff safe!