I have a 1 acre lot with a 4000 square foot building on it.  I'm currently using about half of the building (in red) for my CNC operations, with a little more area in the red circled area for kitchen and my comfortable office I could do away with.  I'm the only one here.  I use the rest of the land for storage of my own crap.

The building already has multiple exterior doors and it would be possible to divide off a part of the office area (About 1000 sq ft, in blue inside the building in the below picture) to be it's own office and bathroom with it's own entrance.  This could have approximately 1/4 acre of flat parking lot in front of it for storing various goods, also circled in blue in the below picture.  There is additional room (circled in yellow) behind the building if things took off.

It would be great if I could hire someone who works on straight commission and start a dealership business out of it or something.  I had someone recommend a Uhaul location, which would be possible, but I'd be surprised if I could afford an employee to man it full time.

My time is almost completely taken up by the CNC machine shop side of the business, young family (4 month old and 2.5 year old), and farm, but I am also extremely flexible with my time.

The location is a rural/suburban/town mix, my shop is right next to a very popular county waste facility, so traffic very often goes by at slower than 25 mph.

It SEEMS like starting something like a tractor dealership would do great here.  I have the shop space to assemble them and fix them, I know a bit about them, and it seems like the right mix of people in the area to support it, but there are already several large tractor dealerships within 15 minutes of my area (Kubota, Mahindra, John Deere, New Holland, Bobcat, CAT, Case, etc).

I don't really have any desire to sell Chinese tractors or knock-off implements.  I just know I'm under-utilizing my property and assets and could be more diversified.  I just need to figure out which direction to go.

I am also 3 minutes away from I-81.

Automatic $6 car wash...or, an open air, you-store-your-boat/RV lot inside a fence.  Receive payment by website or USPS.  Very little interaction with people to keep you in your shop.

I like the storage idea.

Also, instead of a tractor dealership, how about selling tractor tires? You have space to store an inventory there, and how hard is it to mount a tractor tire?

Billy and bob dump off their trash and are hungry and thirsty. Be there for them.

07/C2 and make suppressors.

Power sports. Selling inexpensive chicom atv's, UTV's, motorcycles. Get a decent salesman on commission. You can do assembly/ set up in your free time. People want to get out of the house and these places seem to do well.

Stumbled into this thread because I'm a storage unit guy that came to ask a question of my own. With that in mind, I could offer some insight into UHaul that would lead me not to recommend.

I'm a smaller operator, about 15K sqft under roof, 51 units, and about 20ish outside RV parking spaces.

Our best month with Uhaul over a period 3 years ago of May - October was $827.  I'm 1.5 miles from the town center of 137K people, and .3 of a mile off I-24, roughly 30 minutes south of Nashville. There's at least a dozen Uhaul locations within 5 miles of me, likely more now.

UHaul will bring you the people of Walmart customers you never wanted to deal with. They'll damage property, abandon vehicles blocking access to crucial areas, and once or twice a month you'll have a stolen one abandoned somewhere on the premises.

We had trucks returned that needed a gallon of purple power dumped in the back and literally hosed out. UHaul will credit you $20 for your troubles.

3/4 of the time a truck won't be returned with the proper fuel level, so you'll be responsible for driving it to the gas station, filling it up, submitting paperwork to UHaul, and waiting to get reimbursed on the next month's direct deposit.

On average we did 10 rentals a week, and had 16 trucks taking up space on the lot, and I couldn't attribute a single one as a conversion to a customer whom later rented a storage unit when it was all said and done.

Those 16 spots now generate over $700 worth of hassle free, hands off RV parking every month.

This has been my experience with uhaul as well. About 2 good months a year, college move in and out. I was hoping it would bring enough business that I could justify adding an employee, but we averaged maybe 300/month with it. It keeps you tethered to your location, and people always call and want their hand held for a rental at your least convenient time of day (when they could do it online).
I'd maybe have dealt with that kind of stuff. Heck, having uhauls full of gas on my lot seemed advantageous to me if we had a big SHTF scenario. But, the customers uhaul brought in are people that I previously just thought didn't exist. Terrible people, just pure trash. 1/4 customers were pleasant, renting it for some hobby or business use, but the rest were just awful disgusting people bitching at you on their most stressful day of the year which is moving day.
Can't believe how nasty people are. Hotboxxing the truck for 1000 miles windows up chain smoking , dog hair, melted hard candy, gum, sunflower shells. Just awful.
That being said I think uhaul is a great company run by conservatives, and if you think the location would be busy enough to hire someone else to deal with the assholes, it would probably be worth it.
As to your question, we had better luck growing the business which grew into the space we had. Getting side tracked with crap that we weren't passionate about just slowed us down. If you're doing CNCing, the growth potential is incredible. Could be manufacturing widgets and the rest of your space would be dedicated to a warehouse and shipping department eventually.
If you want to utilize the parking lot, see if someone local is making stuff they want to display but they deal with the sales/delivery and everything. Maybe a local guy making deer blinds, sheds, or utility trailers to display. Something without a long contract and they offer you rent or a % of sales.

Thank you both very much about the Uhaul testimonies.  They were supposed to have someone else contact me last week, but I never heard from them.

Seems like they did me a favor.  I HATE dealing with people.  Generally dealing with any stupid person makes me sit in my office and grumble in the corner about how fucked we are for much longer than I should.  So I now know I'm definitely not cut out for Uhaul.

I'll have to keep thinking on it.  Thank you, everyone.

You make some good points, Uhaul themselves isn't a terrible company at all, but their price point seems to bring the worst type of customers. Being tethered to my location was the biggest issue for me, as I don't have a physical presence for leasing my storage units, it's all done online. I think it's best suited as an add on to a few specific types of already functioning businesses.

If I owned a gas station and I'm already profitable paying staffing and associated costs to have somebody there running the business, adding Uhaul only amounts to a small amount of increased workload for my current employees, and brings in enough extra cash to likely cover my property taxes at the end of the year.