The guide
Self-Storage Runs in London: What a Van Job Looks Like in full
How a storage run is priced
It is an ordinary hourly van job with a slightly different shape: one collection, one drive, and a carry that ends inside a unit rather than a home. Two to three hours covers most flat-sized loads with two movers.
The distance between your address and the site matters less than people expect. Loading and carrying is where the hours go, which is why an organised, boxed load is cheaper than a loose one regardless of postcode.
Access hours and goods lifts
Most London sites offer access from early morning to early evening, with 24-hour access on some accounts only. Book the lift where the site has one: shared goods lifts on a Saturday are a queue, and queuing is charged as time on an hourly job.
Tell us the unit number, the floor and the lift booking when you book the van. It sounds administrative; it is the difference between a two-hour job and a four-hour one.
- Site name, address and your access code or account details
- Unit number and floor
- Goods lift booking, where the site requires one
- Latest access time — some sites close the loading bay before reception
Packing for storage rather than for a journey
Storage rewards uniform boxes: they stack, they hold weight, and they let you use the height of the unit rather than just the floor. Bin bags do none of those things and tear when moved twice.
Leave a corridor down the middle of the unit so you can reach the back without unloading the front, and put anything you might need in the next three months nearest the door. Nothing perishable, nothing damp, and mattresses upright in a cover.
Combining collection and delivery in one booking
If you are emptying a flat into storage and taking a few items to a new address, do it as one booking with two stops rather than two jobs. You pay one set of travel time instead of two.
The same applies coming out of storage. Give us the unit and the destination together and the crew plans the load order so the first thing off the van is the first thing you need in the new place.