winter tire storage question for NYC owners
 

Last summer I bought my daughter an e90 335. She is a SoCal kid, but is completing her dermatolgy residency in NYC. I bought her another set of wheels and winter tires, but she is now challenged in where to store the 18" summer wheels/tires. She lives in an upper East side highrise and the car unfortunately is parked on the street. She has asked several BMW dealers if they can store the wheels through the winter but received unequivocal "NOs". I'm in Cali and have no experience in swapping wheels twice a year - and neither does she.

Obviously many of you have homes and garages to store off-season wheels, but do any of you have suggestions on where she might be able to stash a set of wheels for less than $100/mo? She can't be the only person with this problem

Thanks!

Dick

Several friends of mine in NYC who garage their cars or park on the street rent small storage units in or around the city. Your daughter can definitely find a 4X4 or 5X7 secure unit around the city for less than $100/month.

Check out Manhattan Mini Storage.
www.manhattanministorage.com

+1 If my storage unit weren't already filled to the brim, I would invite her to store them there. The company mentioned above, has locations in many parts of the city.

You can rent small units at storage facilities in Harrison, NJ for ~35/month. 10 minutes from the holland tunnel (she'll only have to go there twice a year).

Queens would be closer from the UES but more expensive. Long Island City is the neighborhood of Queens closest to her (directly across the Q'boro bridge). Google/yellow pages to call them

Or craigslist.

If I remember correctly Little Garage had tire storage service: http://littlegarage.com/

Several possibilities.

1. Keep them in her apartment, wrapped in large garbage bags.
2. Rent a storage space. Since she has a car, she can branch out to farther away places like Edison, NJ, Staten Island, White Plains, Port Washington (Long Island), etc.
3. Ship them UPS to you. Cost $100 so it would cost $200 per year.
4. (?) Suffer and drive on snow tires all year long.
5. Residents live in shoe boxes but medical students may have parents with basements. Find a medical student doing a dermatology rotation and pay the family, who would accept less than the market rate in exchange for friendship and advice to help their child get into a dermatology residency.

Many will not let you store tires. Plus, it would probably cost more than the wheels to store them. Another option is a storage space I used about a good hour north of NYC that is much cheaper. Storage town in Chester NY. Was about $30 a month for the smallest place.

Thank you so much for your assistance! I visiited her in NYC last weekend and don't understand how she can live in such a tiny apartment - you could cook your dinner while in resting in bed. There is certainly no room for a set of wheels and tires unless she used them as a table :D

I'll forward the information to her; thanks again.

Dick

Now that is a really cool idea. With a glass top it would make a very unusual coffee table. ;)

Hi Dick,
I know this is an old thread, but we just launched a service that can help you in the future if necessary. It's called switchandstore.com. We come to your location, lift your car, change out the tires/rims, and then store the off-season tires for the season. Repeat again for the next seasonal change period. We also provide Switch only and Storage only services.

Sean...

OK, I did take a second to see if you were a site sponsor (and, you obviously are), so this is on the up-and-up. And I really do like the concept. But, forgive me for having some fun with the business model.

Think of the possibilities. Advertise that you'll come to them, mount their tires, then accept a fee to store them. Collect a whole bunch of NYC tires in the fall. Get paid for the privilege. Then, off to Tampa for your "gently used tire and wheel" store. ;)

Hey, wait a second, why do a store? I mean, if you're in one place, someone can come looking! I know. Craigslist! Advertise with a whole bunch of throwaway Gmail addresses for replies. "Set of 4 Continental DW tires on BMW 187 wheels, mounted, balanced, with TPMS sensors and BMW center caps. $500, and I'll drop them off and put them on your car." Place Craigslist ads through the mid-Atlantic states, and roll on through!

There's a script in this somewhere ..... Maybe starring one of those 30-ish metrosexual actors.

Woah, good idea for a scam. Thanks for bringing that up as a possible gotcha. Hopefully no criminals see this and try to do it.

Anyhow, Switch and Store is legit though as you said. We paid to be sponsors and we've got tiny ads in 201 Magazine (a northern NJ mag) as well as Yelp ads under tires. This is just a small side business I thought I'd start up. Our main business is actually designing/manufacturing mobile accessories (backpacks/bags mostly) under the BBP Bags, Hellolulu, Coolmika, and Earmuffies brands. We've been around since since 2005 so we're a pretty stable. We have no problem disclosing our 3rd party warehouse location which is in Teterboro, NJ. Paying customers can have the actual address and our account contact there if they like. Besides warehouse insurance that they carry, we're also carrying a $2M business owner's insurance policy too if customers ever want to check that. We figure some customers may have some really expensive rims that could easily run $5k+ with the tires so we don't want to run any unnecessary risks.

Operationally, we tried to think of everything such as asset tags for all the tires and shrink wrapping before being put into storage. We'll also be photographing all inventory before going into our climate controlled warehouse. We've done a few dry runs to work out the kinks with my own car's tires/rims as well as a few close friend's tires/rims.

As a somewhat anal car guy myself, I setup the service in a way that I'd want the service to be so we're pretty confident our customers will be pretty satisfied. We've made a decent investment into the business so we're trying to think more longterm. With all the crazy weather the last few yrs, hopefully more people will think of being safer with snow tires this winter.

The dealer stores mine for free :)

Just remember not to store them near air purifiers, or anything that emits ozone. :/