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Storage Scenarios / Military Orders
Storage for Military Moves: Where Your Entitlement Ends
Most storage companies write about military moves as though a PCS were a civilian relocation with more paperwork. It isn't, and the difference matters: you already have a storage entitlement. Between Storage-in-Transit and Non-Temporary Storage, the government will pack, crate, transport, and store your household goods at its own expense, in circumstances that cover a large share of what moves you around.
So the first piece of advice on this page is to go to your transportation office before you go anywhere else. Use SIT and NTS where they apply. Private self-storage is generally not reimbursed unless it's pre-approved through your transportation office, which means paying for a unit you didn't need is a straightforward loss.
That said, there are specific and fairly common situations where the entitlement doesn't reach, and where a commercial unit is either the cheaper option or the only one. Those are what the rest of this page is about.
A service member with a family gets orders after four years at one installation. In that time the household has grown into the space — a garage with tools and a workbench, a second vehicle, bikes, camping equipment, and the accumulated furniture of a family that stopped moving for a while.
The pre-move survey estimates the shipment comfortably over the authorized weight allowance. Everything over that line gets charged back, prorated, for the entire time it's in the government's hands. Meanwhile the second car isn't going, the workbench and most of the garage aren't worth their weight in the shipment, and on-post housing at the new duty station is smaller than what they're leaving.
The shipment gets built to fit the allowance. What's left — the garage, the second vehicle, the bulky low-value furniture that would eat weight better spent on things they actually need — goes into a unit near the old installation until they know what the new place can hold.
This scenario is an illustrative composite reflecting common patterns. It does not describe a specific customer, and no details are drawn from any real account.
What Your Entitlement Covers
Briefly, so the gaps make sense. Both of these are arranged through your transportation office and the assigned transportation service provider, not by you directly.
| Storage-in-Transit (SIT) | Non-Temporary Storage (NTS) | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Short gap at destination when housing isn't ready | Long-term, for the duration of an assignment |
| Typical duration | Up to 90 days, extensions commonly approved | Length of the tour or authorized period |
| Common triggers | Housing delays on arrival | OCONUS tours, unaccompanied tours, deployments |
| Your access | None — goods are crated in a warehouse | None |
| Counts against weight allowance | Yes | Yes |
Two things about that table do most of the work on this page. Neither option gives you access to your own belongings. And both count against the same weight allowance.
The Five Places the Entitlement Runs Out
1. Excess Weight
This is the sharpest financial argument for a commercial unit and almost nobody makes it.
The Joint Travel Regulations set your maximum weight allowance by rank and dependency status, and the combined weight of everything you ship and store counts against it — including anything in NTS. Go over, and you repay the cost of transporting and storing the excess, prorated by net weight, for as long as the goods are in the government's care. The minimum excess charge runs in the region of $100 per hundred pounds over allowance.
So if your household is over your allowance, you're paying for the overage either way. The question is only whether you pay the government's excess-weight charge, month after month, or store that portion yourself. For heavy, bulky, low-value items — garage contents, workbenches, exercise equipment, particleboard furniture, bulk storage bins — self-storage frequently comes out ahead, and you keep the weight in your shipment for things that actually need to travel.
Two related points worth knowing. Professional gear and required medical equipment are excluded from the allowance calculation, so don't waste allowance planning on them — declare them properly instead. And OCONUS assignments often impose administratively reduced allowances well below your full entitlement, which turns a comfortable shipment into an over-weight one without your household changing at all.
Get your estimated weight against your actual allowance early, and ask your transportation office to walk you through the excess-cost calculation for your specific situation. Once the shipment is packed and weighed, your options narrow considerably. Allowances vary by branch, rank, and dependency status and they change — get your number from your TMO or PPSO rather than from any website, including this one.
2. You Can't Get to Anything in SIT or NTS
Government storage means crated goods in a warehouse. There is no dropping by. For a 60-day housing gap that's usually fine. For a year-long unaccompanied tour, or a deployment, or a SIT period that keeps getting extended, "inaccessible" starts to cost you something.
The things people most often wish they'd kept reachable: seasonal clothing for a climate they didn't expect, tools, sports and hobby equipment, kids' gear that gets outgrown on a schedule of its own, and paperwork. A commercial unit near where you or your family actually are means you drive over and open the door.
3. SIT Expiry
SIT runs to about 90 days, with extensions commonly approved but not automatic. If it lapses without an approved extension or a conversion to NTS, the storage becomes your personal expense — and you may lose the ability to file a loss or damage claim with your service's claims office, which is the more expensive half of that problem.
The same trap catches people whose tours get extended: if orders change, notify your transportation office immediately with the updated orders, or costs quietly shift to you. Where a housing timeline is genuinely uncertain, a commercial unit you control on month-to-month terms removes the deadline risk entirely.
4. Vehicles and Recreational Equipment
Vehicle shipping entitlements are limited — typically one vehicle for an OCONUS move — and NTS is for household goods. A second car, a motorcycle, a boat, an RV, or a camper generally has nowhere to go under the entitlement, and leaving a vehicle with family or on a street for a year is its own set of problems.
Many of our facilities offer vehicle, RV, and boat storage, which for a deployment or an unaccompanied tour is often the specific thing that's needed.
5. Guard, Reserve, and Everything That Isn't a PCS
Entitlements attach to particular kinds of orders. Guard and Reserve members handling drill obligations, annual training, or a state activation frequently have no storage entitlement in play at all. Neither do a lot of the situations that still require somewhere to put things: a house sale timed badly against a report date, house-hunting from temporary lodging, a geographic-bachelor arrangement where one household becomes two, or separation and retirement once the origin NTS window closes — 180 days for separating members, a year for retirees, and then it's yours.
Deployment and Long Absences
A unit you can't visit for a year needs to run itself. Practically, that means a few things worth setting up before you go, and one honest limitation.
- Put it on autopay. We encourage this for every tenant and it matters most here. A lapsed payment on a unit nobody is watching is how belongings end up in a lien process.
- Add an emergency contact to your lease. Worth doing, and worth knowing what it is and isn't — it's a contact, not an access right and not authority over the account.
- Decide who has the access code before you leave. You control who you share it with. There's no separate authorized-user status on a rental, so a shared code is the mechanism — choose deliberately rather than in a rush at the end.
- Set up portal access for whoever may need to manage it. The account is managed online, so a spouse or family member with the credentials can handle billing and paperwork from anywhere, including from a different time zone than yours.
The honest limitation: a unit is rented by one party. There's no joint account and no formal authorized-user or power-of-attorney process, so everything above rests on you deciding in advance who holds the code and the portal credentials. That works, but it's a decision to make deliberately rather than a feature to rely on.
The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act
We follow the SCRA. During the rental process we ask every tenant whether they're currently an active duty service member, and members who are get directed to provide the information needed to verify active duty status.
Worth flagging because it's easy to skip past a question during an online signup. Answer it, and complete the verification — the protections attached to active duty status only apply if we know it applies to you. If you enlist or go on active duty after you've already rented, tell us then rather than assuming your account reflects it.
Facilities Near Installations
A handful of our locations sit near military installations:
| Location | Installation |
|---|---|
| Converse, TX (two facilities) | JBSA-Randolph |
| El Paso, TX | Fort Bliss |
| Fort Worth, TX | NAS Fort Worth JRB |
| Nolanville, TX | Fort Hood |
| Jacksonville, AR | Little Rock AFB |
| North Little Rock, AR (two facilities) | Camp Robinson and Little Rock AFB |
| Goldsboro, NC | Seymour Johnson AFB |
| West Columbia, SC (two facilities) | Fort Jackson |
Three of those markets have two facilities, which is worth knowing during PCS season — availability near an installation tightens considerably in summer, when everyone's orders land at once. If you're moving in June or July, look earlier than feels necessary.
Sizing and Duration
| Situation | Typical size | Typical duration |
|---|---|---|
| Excess-weight overflow during a PCS | 5×10 to 10×15 | Length of the tour |
| Deployment, keeping a residence | 5×10 to 10×10 | 6–18 months |
| Unaccompanied or OCONUS tour | 10×10 to 10×20 | 12–36 months |
| Housing gap on arrival | 10×10 | 1–4 months |
| Geographic bachelor | 5×5 to 5×10 | Ongoing |
| Separation or retirement | 10×10 to 10×15 | 6–24 months |
Our storage size calculator works from an inventory of what you actually own. Our smallest unit is a 5×5, roughly the footprint of a small closet.
Temperature Control
Worth considering for the longer durations, which on this page means most of them. Wood furniture, instruments, electronics, photographs, and uniforms sitting through several full seasons are exposed to repeated expansion and contraction. Climate-controlled units hold a steadier temperature, which addresses warping, cracking, and brittleness from that cycling. It's temperature stability specifically rather than humidity control, so anything moisture-sensitive still needs to be cleaned and packed properly before it goes in.
How the Contactless Model Fits
All 10 Federal Storage facilities are fully contactless — no on-site staff and no office. You rent online, manage the account online, and get in with your own access code.
For military moves this lines up with the actual constraints better than most situations on this site.
- You can rent from wherever you are. Orders in hand, three states away, before you've set foot in the town. No site visit, no appointment, no waiting for an office to open in a time zone you're not in.
- Nearly all our facilities have 24/7 gate access. Which is a better fit for a duty schedule than published business hours, and better for a move that ends up happening at four in the morning because that's when the truck was free. Access hours are listed per location, since a small number differ.
- Month-to-month, always. Orders change, report dates move, tours extend. No lease to renegotiate and no penalty for leaving the month you're done.
- The whole account runs remotely. Which is the point when you're deployed, or when your family is managing things while you're not there.
If you'd like help with sizing or availability, our friendly customer support team is reachable without going anywhere.
Common Questions
Do you offer a military discount?
No, we don't, and some other operators do — so it's worth knowing that before you compare. What we do offer is 24/7 gate access at nearly all facilities, month-to-month terms at every one, fully online rental you can complete from anywhere with orders in hand, and vehicle, RV, and boat storage at many locations. We also follow the SCRA and verify active duty status at signup. If the discount is the deciding factor for you, we'd rather you found that out here than after renting.
Will the military pay for my storage unit?
Generally not. Government-arranged SIT and NTS are covered under your entitlement, but private self-storage is usually not reimbursed unless it's pre-approved through your transportation office. Ask them first — if your situation qualifies for SIT or NTS, use it rather than paying for a unit.
Why would I pay for storage when I have SIT and NTS?
Three main reasons. Excess weight — if your household exceeds your allowance you'll be charged for the overage for as long as it's stored, and storing heavy low-value items yourself is often cheaper. Access — SIT and NTS keep your goods crated in a warehouse where you can't reach them. And coverage gaps — vehicles, recreational equipment, Guard and Reserve situations, separation and retirement after the entitlement window closes.
How much can I ship and store at government expense?
It depends on your rank and dependency status, and the combined weight of everything you ship and store counts against the same allowance. Professional gear and required medical equipment are excluded from the calculation. We're deliberately not publishing figures here because they vary by branch and change over time — get your actual number from your TMO or PPSO, and ask them to walk you through the excess-cost calculation before your pre-move survey rather than after.
Can someone else manage my unit while I'm deployed?
In practice, yes, with some planning. Set up autopay, decide before you leave who holds your access code, add an emergency contact to your lease, and make sure whoever may need to handle billing has your portal credentials. The limitation to know: a unit is rented by one party, so there's no joint account or separate authorized-user status. It works, but it depends on decisions you make in advance rather than on a formal process.
What do I need to rent a unit?
The rental happens entirely online in a few minutes, from anywhere. A lock is included free with every move-in, and a protection plan is required at checkout. We accept all major credit and debit cards. You'll be asked whether you're currently an active duty service member — answer that and complete the verification if it applies to you. We don't sell moving supplies or rent trucks, so boxes and transportation are arranged separately.
Rent from wherever your orders have you
130+ fully contactless facilities across 16 states, with 24/7 gate access at nearly all of them and month-to-month terms at every one. Rent online in minutes, no site visit required.
Find storage near you10 Federal Storage is a private company and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of the Department of Defense or any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. This page is general information, not official guidance on entitlements. Weight allowances, SIT and NTS rules, and reimbursement eligibility are governed by the Joint Travel Regulations and branch-specific policy, vary by rank, dependency status, and assignment, and change over time. Confirm anything that affects your move with your transportation office (TMO/PPSO) or Military OneSource before acting on it.