The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 1998–2018
PODS brought the storage unit to the door and created portable storage
Faced with scarce land for new storage sites, Pete Warhurst built a container on wheels and delivered storage to customers instead.
PODS Enterprises
the move
After selling his first company, Pete Warhurst built a self-storage facility in Florida and it did well. Looking to expand, he kept failing to find new sites where population density, demographics and land prices lined up — the fixed requirement for a traditional storage yard.
His answer, launched in 1998, was to take the storage to the people: a portable container delivered to the door, packed by the customer, then picked up and stored or moved. PODZILLA, a hydraulic lifting machine, let operators handle the containers without cranes.
The model became the 'portable storage' category. By its 20th anniversary PODS served 47 US states and four countries, had completed nearly four million deliveries and had 200,000 containers in service.
why it works
- One container could serve any address, so no land hunt capped growth.
- Customers packed at their own pace, shifting labour to the user.
- The same box moved and stored, merging two markets.
- The lift machine made delivery a one-person operation.
what transfers
When expansion is capped by real estate, invert the model: instead of bringing customers to fixed locations, make the product mobile and the network becomes the location.
what came after
PODS grew into an industry leader with hundreds of thousands of containers and spawned imitators in moving and storage. It remains a privately held company and still uses the PODZILLA system to deliver containers.
references
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