Courier companies generally offer a wide gamut of value added services and extra options that their customers can purchase for a small fee
. Your average Chicago courier may have up to a dozen of these options and extra services that they offer in order to try and get more business from a single customer. Of all of these extra kinds of services, the one that is probably the most common is when a courier company offers storage to their customers.
This is so often because courier companies have realized just how often their clients require this service. The clients of courier companies far too often have to pay for storage somewhere else, and being able to purchase it directly from the courier company instead makes things easier for the client and more profitable for the courier, making both parties win in the long run.
The types of storage that are available are going to differ between various courier companies. Most couriers of any size are going to offer at least a short term storage solution for their customers. This can range anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. The amount and length of storage that they make available to you will depend entirely on the size of their storage facility.
There are larger courier companies which go beyond even short term storage and instead can offer a full scale storage solution to their largest clients. These companies have expanded into complete warehousing operations on top of their shipping. This can be a very useful way to combine services for some companies because they can often obtain savings from the company by bundling their shipping services and their storage options together.
If you want to know if your courier company offers short term storage just pay a visit to their website. There are a couple of different ways companies can structure arrangements for short term storage. Some companies will include a small amount of storage with any deliveries over a certain value. Others will offer a discount on short term storage if coupled with a delivery, whereas it might be full price if you're just storing something for your own use, with you picking it up and delivering it. Special requests on your storage such as requesting a photo inventory for a client or a temperature controlled storage unit will typically run you extra. Sometimes you can book storage right from your courier's website.