I understand....and thats good for you...haha....I'd love to be able to keep borrowing with a few trillion owed
But, I was trying to ascertain just how hearty your expenses are
do they include truck, facility, labor and the like  or is this more of a 1 man out of the trunk of his car in a spare bedroom kind of operation

I understand completely if you are not comfortable answering

I'm just trying to determine how "balls deep" I want to go from the start, while still have a shot at 2X's average profits   

It's not that I'm uncomfortable answering, it's that it is not good business to answer those specific questions.
As to your situation, start out small...out of your bedroom ?....and then grow if it works for you, or give it up. Many will start out small and give it up.

And incidentally, I DO account for my time spent doing this. As I said if it's an expense it's accounted for.  The unaccounted for expense is the dedication, persistence and knowledge gained from experience.

Thanks for the details!

So based on your "example" above ....where you say 45 of the lockers out of 50 are "average"

You consider average to be roughly a 2X's return on your money......

Not saying you exactly "double" your investment on all 45 but you do make "some" profit on all of the 45 and on many of them you do in fact see 2X's investment

Is this "fair" to say?  

Yes, I would say that is fair. I keep a running tab on expenses and income and the bottom line figure uses a formula to show the ROI.  For 2011 I am currently at 2.18x the money.  The best I did in the last 7 years (at year's end) was I think 2.68x the money. The worst (at year's end) was 1.99x the money. This factors in everything in the way of expenses and income. I also have individual tracking on each locker to see when it has cleared and how much ahead (or behind) it is.

TreasureHawk...all your questions are valid and fall into the - variables- I mentioned.
To design a fully scientific study of this question would involve a lot of time and categorizing and of course I'd rather be buying lockers and selling goods than doing that !

In brief though let's say that if I say I get a super-deluxe locker 1 in 50 times, it DOESN'T mean the other 49 are losers; it WOULD mean that maybe the bulk of those 49 would be AVERAGE. Or maybe 1 would be a total loser, 45 would be average and 3 would be break even.

Too many variables to consider in this short conversation and thread. Just looking to debunk the EVERY LOCKER IS A SUPER-DELUXE promoted by the TV shows.  

I have always aimed at 2x the money as the general guideline for success. Sure, 5x and 10X are nice and they fall into super-deluxe territory. Five times the money on a $50 locker is good, but 5x the money on a $1000 lkr is great !

Hope this answers some of your questions.

In 7 years I've seen it happen twice...and both were experienced bidders who suddenly didn't have the money.
Truth is, each of them was running somebody UP and got stuck.

These were two separate incidents under two different auctioneers. Each of the two BAD bidders was banned from the auction that day and from that day forward by those auctioneers. Also, the auctioneers let the other auctioneer companies know about it and so did the rest of us regulars.  Unfortunately, these two people were NOT banned from the other auctioneer's future auctions, but it reduced the competition  a bit.

A third person I saw played the "aw shucks, I'm just a dumb***" and the unit was then resold.

A fourth incident involved a locker that I was bidding on. I quit at $600 and the guy got it for $650. I left as it was the last auction at that facility.  A half hour later at the next place on the route the story came out. The guy didn't have the money and the third runner up (at $550) got the locker. They didn't re-auction it as we had all left.
The final part of this story is that the 10x30 turned out to be nothing but crap.

I had lucked out, but my pal spent days cleaning it out and lost everything he had invested. The only thing he could sell he said was the totes the crap was in.

Partial quote from above:

When I was at my peak, buying 7-10 storage units per week, I hope this has been informative.

Well, I assume you are not "at your peak" now, and am wondering how many units you buy in a week now; or is your listing service what you do now?

Great Mr. A !

Wondered where you had been as you haven't been in forums for a couple of days !

The gun related stuff is a good sign. I found a bunch of holsters and other leather goods which are going well.
One word on the mint Beanie Babies though. I can't get a $1 each for them. The bears are the most popular I think and if they have angels wings might get $2.  Anymore I take them out once and if they don't go, its straight to Goodwill or Salvation Army.

Unfortunately, in my area anyway, the VHS tapes would have to be solid gold to be worth anything. I get $3 for DVDs. Guys take out 200 VHS and sell them for $.50 each and then repack the remaining 195 for next time.

The casino chips can be a money maker. Maybe you read my story about the one that sold for $14K. It was from the Landmark...the first imploded casino.

You have some great box opening coming up!

Sounds like a winner to me. We'll await the results of your planning !

When I started this thread there were about 900 members in this forum.
Now there are about 1400 members.

So far, 17 people have responded to the poll. Wow !

I've heard of "lurking" but this is the ultimate example. As I stated in another post in this thread
even if you've never bought a locker before you could tell how far you would drive to go to an auction.

Or maybe not !