Frequently, steel silos are supported by discrete supports or columns to permit easy access beneath the barrel. In such cases, large loads are transferred to the limited number of supports, causing locally high axial compressive stress concentrations in the shell wall above the supports. If not dealt with properly, these increased stresses will lead to premature failure of the silo due to local instability in the regions above the supports. Local stiffening near the supports is a way to improve the buckling resistance, as material is added in the region of elevated stresses, levelling these out to values found in uniformly supported silos. The aim of a study on the properties of local stiffening will then be to increase the failure load, governed by an interaction of plastic collapse and elastic instability, to that of a discrete supported silo. However, during the course of such a study it was found that, although the failure remains local, the cylinder height is also a parameter that influences the failure mechanism, a fact that is not properly taken into account in current design practice and codes. This paper describes the mechanism behind the effect of the cylinder height on the failure load, which is related to pre-buckling deformations of the shell structure. All results and conclusions are based on geometrically and materially non-linear finite element analyses.