Students are now just past the winter midterms, a point that marks the conclusion of the first half of the school year. Preparations, however, have already begun in order to ensure that the rest of the year, especially when everyone leaves for the summer, goes as smoothly as possible. A critical component to the end of the year rush for boarding students involves packing and getting ready to go home. Many rely on dorm storage for items that they would like to keep but cannot easily maneuver.
Mr. Jim Yanelli, Director of the Student Activities Center, has begun working on efforts to make the use of dorm storage more accessible to students in terms of cost and efficiency. Choate has changed its official storage company to Boomerang Storage and will be cooperating with the new company for arrangements in the spring. Mr. Yanelli expressed the reason for the shift: “I wanted to find a service that would allow for less expensive storage options because that has been a perennial issue for the Student Council. I talked with people in my position at other schools about what was working for them and other companies and programs in the area. [Boomerang Storage] seems to be a well-established program with incredible expertise both in UPS shipping and student storage.”
Mr. Scott George, the owner of Boomerang Storage, explained, “We present a couple different options at Choate. We’re going to have trailers on campus, and that’s where students can bring their storage to us, instead of us picking up at the room. Essentially, that pricing will be half the price of the door-to-door option. For door-to-door customers, that storage is going to come back to our Holyoke warehouse.” He clarified, “[The trailer option] is at a lower cost essentially because of the labor factor. The door-to-door is more expensive because we are going to each room to collect the storage and move it out.”
Mr. Yanelli added, “We have never had this option in the past. We have only had one price point that was fairly expensive for some kids, and this is actually a response to student inquiry about finding ways to make storage less expensive.”
Boomerang Storage, although new to Choate, is an established company that has been around for around a decade. Mr. George elaborated, “I started [Boomerang Storage] back in late 2008. I also own a UPS store and have been in the packing and shipping business, as well as storage, since 1998.”
The company has grown to serve a widespread area, as well as other boarding schools like Deerfield Academy. “We are now in Connecticut, Vermont, Eastern Massachusetts, Northeastern Mass, and the north shore,” stated Mr. George.
Most Choate students have had a positive experience with the School’s previous dorm storage service. Ryan Cho ’21 stated, “I felt that the service was excellent. What I like the most is that they give you a range of dates that they pick up and drop off your boxes, and you don’t even need to pay extra for them to store your stuff.”
Jenny Guo ’21 voiced her agreement: “Being an international student, the dorm storage was extremely beneficial, as it provided me with an alternative to bringing all of my belongings back home.”
Luckily, the services of this new company will essentially provide what students have enjoyed and are accustomed to. Mr. George explained, “We pick it all up at the room or common area, bring it back to our warehouse, store it for the summer, and then deliver it back to the new dorm room. That’s everything in a nutshell, hence why I decided to name it Boomerang Storage, because it’s a service that comes back around again.”
Mr. George emphasized an important component of the new service: “We’ll also hand out labels that are going to be pre-printed with your information. Those labels need to be placed on every piece that gets stored. [We] are going to coordinate an effort to have instructions on exactly how that works, but the reason behind the labeling is we’ve found a high success rate with having everything typed out and printed with tracking numbers, as far as getting everything back with a 100% fulfillment rate. We want to make sure every piece goes to your new dorm room in the fall.”
Mr. George added, “You do have to register for service in order to receive boxes — it’s at boomerangstorage.com. There will be a dedicated page for Choate, and you can sign up right there. The pricing’s online; it’s on our website. We usually have a deadline with just a couple days before we start picking up, so it’s pushed off pretty far.”
Insurance is also available for any items that are stored. “We do insure each piece that we pick up at a $100 for free. Most students don’t have to insure beyond that, but every once in a while someone will put on additional insurance. We set it up so you can actually decide that when you register,” Mr. George mentioned.
Boomerang Storage will be useful for all boarding students on campus, including graduating seniors. Mr. George added, “One thing that is popular is, especially for seniors, they will often store and need their storage shipped to wherever they’re going to college. That is something that we also offer. Being a part of the UPS store franchise network, we do a ton of shipping, as you can imagine.”
Choate has a fairly long history with various solutions related to dorm storage. Mr Yanelli explained, “We managed our own storage, and we would hire people to take school vehicles and drive things down to the basement of the gym. There were long lines everywhere, and no one was happy, and it just didn’t work at all.”
He continued, “So, a young alum of this school, who was graduating from college, had started this program at his college and asked if he could try it here. We were excited, and he did it successfully for a number of years and grew the program. But he actually sold his company, so it gave us an opportunity to, I think, look more broadly at other options and opportunities.”
Though Boomerang Storage has now been confirmed as Choate’s storage provider, Mr. Yanelli explained that there is still some time before the arrangements will be complete: “One of the things that we’re planning is the release of information. We’re going to have to figure out how to notify parents, the student body, and keep the faculty in the loop so they know how to address questions for kids in dorms.”
On the general process of selecting Boomerang Storage, Mr. Yanelli stated, “I think it was just finding a company that was really good at addressing our needs. When you think about it, we’re a fairly large school with a whole lot of kids moving in and out within a very short, compressed period of time.” He continued, “There’s just too much that has to happen in a short period of time to trust the process to people who aren’t really good at it and haven’t been doing it for a long period of time. This company answered all of our questions really well.”
