Drive-Up Storage Units
Drive-up storage is the most convenient type of self storage because the distance between your vehicle and your unit door is as short as it gets. Most self storage options mean carrying heavy items through a hallway, up a flight of stairs, or into an elevator shared with other tenants. With drive-up storage, you pull your vehicle right up to your unit and load or unload directly. No elevators, no stairs, no long walks across a parking lot with a heavy box.
Lakestone Storage offers drive-up units at all four of our Wisconsin locations: Cambridge, De Forest, Sun Prairie, and Stoughton. Whichever facility is closest to you, drive-up access comes standard on most of our unit sizes.
Why Choose a Drive-Up Unit
Drive-up units are the right call if you move frequently, store heavy furniture or equipment, keep business inventory or contractor supplies you access often, or simply want to get in and out quickly without extra steps. Wide aisles and ground level access mean you can load and unload as much or as little as you need, without lifting anything further than the back of your vehicle to your unit door.
This matters more than it sounds like on paper. A single trip moving a couch or a refrigerator through an indoor hallway with turns and doorways takes real effort and real risk of scraping a wall or dropping something heavy. A drive-up unit turns that into backing your truck or trailer up to the door and walking a few feet. For anyone who visits their unit regularly, contractors pulling tools for a job, a small business rotating seasonal inventory, a family storing and retrieving furniture during a renovation, that difference adds up over dozens of visits.
Personal and Business Storage Use Cases
Drive-up storage works well for a wide range of situations, and the common thread is usually either heavy items or frequent access.
Household furniture and appliances move easily during a move or renovation, since couches, dressers, and washers and dryers are exactly the kind of bulky items drive-up access was built for. Families transitioning between homes, closing on a new place before the old one sells or vice versa, use drive-up units as a practical bridge without needing to carry everything through a building.
Contractors and small businesses rely on drive-up units for tools, equipment, and job site supplies they need to load and unload regularly, sometimes daily. A landscaping crew pulling mowers and trimmers, an HVAC company storing parts and equipment, or a caterer moving tables and chairs all benefit from being able to pull a truck up and load directly rather than working through a narrow indoor corridor.
Seasonal equipment is another common use: lawn gear in the winter, holiday decorations the other eleven months of the year, sports and recreational equipment between seasons. None of it needs daily access, but when you do need it, drive-up convenience means a quick in and out instead of a production.
Boxes and general household overflow round out the list. If you're storing for the long term rather than actively rotating items in and out, drive-up access is still worth having even if you only visit occasionally, since the one or two times a year you do need something, you'll be glad it's a quick trip instead of a hassle.
Sizing a Drive-Up Unit
Getting the size right matters more with drive-up units than some other storage types, since you're often storing items that don't stack or pack efficiently, furniture, equipment, boxes of irregular shapes. A small five by five or five by ten unit typically fits a studio apartment's worth of boxes and small furniture. A ten by ten handles a one bedroom apartment's furnishings, or a moderate amount of contractor equipment and supplies. Larger ten by twenty and ten by thirty units accommodate full household moves, multiple rooms of furniture, or business inventory that needs real floor space.
If you're not sure what size fits your situation, describe what you're storing when you call, dimensions, quantity, and how often you'll need access, and we can recommend the right unit rather than you guessing and either cramming items in or paying for space you don't need.
What Doesn't Belong in a Standard Drive-Up Unit
Drive-up units at Lakestone Storage are standard, unheated space. That's the right fit for most of what people store, but a few categories genuinely need something different, and it's worth knowing which ones before you commit to a standard unit for the wrong item.
Paint, adhesives, and anything that can freeze or separate in cold temperatures shouldn't sit in an unheated unit through a Wisconsin winter. The same goes for electronics you can't afford to lose to condensation, since temperature swings between a cold night and a sunny afternoon create moisture inside a sealed unit the same way it fogs a car windshield. Solid wood or antique furniture is similarly at risk, since repeated freeze thaw cycles crack seams and loosen joints over a full season. Important documents and photographs are sensitive to humidity rather than cold specifically, and mildew sets in faster without climate stability.
For those items, temperature controlled storage at our De Forest location is worth the extra monthly cost. Everything else, tools, patio furniture, plastic totes, seasonal gear, holiday decorations, does fine in a standard drive-up unit and doesn't justify paying a temperature control premium.
Making the Most of a Drive-Up Unit
A few habits make drive-up storage work better, especially if you're accessing the unit regularly. Park items you need often near the front of the unit and items you rarely touch toward the back, so you're not unloading half the unit to reach something in the corner. Leave a walking path down the middle if the unit is deep enough, rather than packing wall to wall, so you can actually get to things without climbing over boxes.
Use plastic totes rather than cardboard for anything you're storing more than a few months, since they hold up better against moisture and pests and stack more securely. Label totes and boxes on more than one side, since you won't always approach them from the same angle when you're digging through a full unit.
If you're storing seasonal items you'll swap out, lawn equipment in winter, holiday decorations the rest of the year, keep a rough mental map or a written list of what's where, since drive-up units tend to accumulate items faster than people expect, and finding one specific box in a unit that's grown over a year or two is a lot easier with a system than without one.
Related Storage Options
If your business needs go beyond a standard unit, our contractor warehouse spaces at Sun Prairie offer a dedicated shop style space with more room and amenities than a drive-up unit provides. For vehicles, boats, and RVs specifically, our RV and boat storage page covers what to look for when storing something larger than a standard unit fits. And if you're storing household items during a move, our residential storage page covers what typically fits and how to pack it for the move.
Security and Accessibility
All Lakestone Storage locations offer gated, well lit properties with secure access, so drive-up convenience doesn't come at the cost of security. Electronic gate access, regular property walk-throughs, and security cameras mean you get quick access to your belongings along with the peace of mind of a monitored facility, not a tradeoff between the two.
Reserve a Drive-Up Unit
Browse available drive-up units at Cambridge, De Forest, Sun Prairie, or Stoughton, or call (608) 838-1800 and we'll help you find the right size and location for what you're storing.