Public Storage, headquartered in Glendale, California, is a real estate investment trust that invests in self storage. It is the largest brand of self-storage services in the US and owns approximately 9% of the self storage square footage in the U.S. As of December 31, 2024, the company operated 3,073 self-storage facilities containing an aggregate of 221 million net rentable square feet of space. The company also provides insurance services for tenants and manages 307 self storage facilities for other owners. Public Storage Inc. was founded in 1972 by B. Wayne Hughes and Kenneth Volk Jr. It grew to 1,000 locations by 1989, using funding from investors in real estate limited partnerships. The private company was re-structured as a publicly traded REIT in 1995, when Storage Equities merged with Public Storage and adopted its name. In 2006, it acquired Shurgard Storage Centers, an owner and operator of storage facilities in Europe, in a $5.5 billion transaction; the company was spun-out and Public Storage retains a 35% interest. Self-storage locations tend to be in dense clusters in major cities, especially near freeways and intersections. Wikipedia