The Risks of Shipping and Delivery

Any time you perform a service outside of the defined responsibilities of a landlord (someone who rents and maintains property), you run the risk of assuming liability for damages. This includes accepting deliveries, sending packages or mail, putting boxes into a tenant’s unit, or anything similar in nature.

In insurance terms, liability means you have taken the legal responsibility for the condition of property. Commercial insurance will protect you if something listed in the policy goes wrong with your building or on the premises. Your lease should protect you if your tenant’s property is stolen or harmed and it is not your fault. However, if you take CCC of the tenant’s property and don’t have something in writing to protect you, you may wind up with no protection at all.

Defining the Law

Lien laws in most states are very specific: A self-storage owner/operator is a landlord. He is legally responsible for the upkeep of the facility and its grounds. His priority is to rent storage space on a regular basis. Legally, he should not have access to the rented space or to the property of the tenant. Instead, renters take full responsibility for the condition of their property in their units.

But what happens if you go beyond that definition? Today’s self-storage facilities offer a myriad of services, one of which may be package shipping and delivery. Does your staff regularly handle packages to and from eBay on behalf of clients, even those who are not necessarily tenants? If so, be on guard. If you take CCC of a package without an agreement, you may be liable for damages or losses to it. You need a legal contract with these clients detailing the responsibilities of each party. This should be a contract separate from your self-storage agreement.

Another example is a self-storage facility with commercial tenants who use their units as mini-warehouses for product samples or supplies. These tenants may regularly receive shipments for business purposes. Vendors, such as pharmaceutical reps, often have packages coming and going on a regular basis.

If you accept any shipment on behalf of your tenant, what do you do with it? Do you have a unit set aside for this purpose? If so, who has access to it? Do you monitor the comings and goings of that unit? Do you put items from more than one tenant in this space? Have you discussed your procedures with an attorney and insurance agent to make sure you are in the right?

What if you put the delivery into the tenant’s unit? To do so means you must have keys to the unit’s lock. If you have this sort of access, you may be responsible for everything in the unit, like it or not. This liberty goes beyond the definition of a landlord because you can access the unit at will. If something goes missing or is damaged, who takes the blame? Are you ready to stand in the line of fire?