Post #2: American Stuff that Nobody Needs

Does all of the 50 million cubic feet of American stuff annually find a buyer? Absolutely not. Storage auction buying is a business, and a side hustle for most buyers. Most are not looking to buy items for their personal use, but are looking to turn a profit by reselling them, and occasionally even finding a real treasure that could make headlines! It is business like any other. A storage auction buyer has to incur expenses to move merchandise, such as transportation (truck rental), labor (moving heavy stuff), warehouse costs (to store stuff until it gets sold), dump fees (to get rid of stuff), not to mention time to sort and list stuff, looking for appraisals, and buyers for weird one-of-a-kind stuff. If a storage locker does not look 'promising', it does not get sold.

What does 'promising' mean? Usually, these are lockers with too much unsellable stuff (high dump fees); 'untidy' lockers that have stuff thrown on top of each other; lockers that look like 'too much work' for most buyers in that location (bulky furniture, heavy items), lockers that are far away from where most buyers find themselves on that particular day, or sometimes lockers that simply have the misfortune to get auctioned off at inopportune times, or days (maybe before a long weekend).

So what happens to unsold stuff, and how much of it is there? Storage Angels estimates that about 5% of all lockers every year do not get sold, or about 2.5 million cubic feet of it. What do storage companies do with it? Usually they immediately reoffer these lockers for free to 'bidders in good standing', and some of them get snapped up. But some of them just never find any takers at all! At that point self-storage company moves to call junk removal services, and thus most of the stuff ends up in the landfill.

Is it all bad, unsellable / unusable stuff? Absolutely not. Storage Angels has cleared lockers that nobody wanted, and found thousands of dollars of useful items, that were perfectly fine, and useful. Storage Angels found tools for money generating professions (painting, tile setting, woodworking, etc), perfectly fine, if a bit outdated (but sometimes not!) furniture, vintage toys that people through in with the trash that generated hundreds for charity, and even perfectly recyclable copper wire and other metals, that bring cash. All of these items can be donated, sold for charitable purposes, and distributed in soup kitchens, and other community organizations for the poor.