Is It Time To Right Size Your Crating & Packaging?

If you think you need to reconsider your current crating and packaging, please consider the following five questions.

1. Are you experiencing product damage?
It is important to identify the cause of damage, then assess the solutions:

• Change your crating process/procedures.
• Choose an alternative solution to improve the performance of the package.
• Get to know your distribution environment and possible variables associated with land, sea, air, or rail transport.

2. Has your packaging been tested?

Premier crating and packaging calls for quality testing. AW2 Crating & Packaging has a number of testing methods to ensure your package gets to its destination with the contents intact.  Some our testing procedures include Drop Testing, Vibration Table, Incline Impact Tester, and Environmental Testing Chamber - we cover all aspects of freight testing.

3. Have you considered alternative materials?

Shipping, packing, and warehousing your products or manufactured components isn’t always as easy as placing them in a cardboard box or securing them to wood pallets. To prepare for harsh storage and shipping conditions while protecting high-value, narrow or oversized items, you need custom crates and transport supplies. For example, corrugated containers and crates are built strong enough to protect certain products from damage and are priced to optimize shipping budgets. They are also eco-friendly, low-waste designs that help you exceed sustainability goals.

4. Is your packaging tailored to the shipping mode?

The destination often automatically determines the design of the crate. In surface shipment overseas the crate might either be placed in the hold of a ship or on the deck. For easy passage of a crate through the average hatchway and into the hold, the outside dimensions should not exceed 41 feet in length, 9 feet in width, and 7 feet in height.

Ordinarily there is a maximum size for rail shipment. This limit is to assure proper clearance of crates on a flatcar going through tunnels, under bridges, and around curves. Consider if trucks may be used for short or long-distance hauling. For truck transportation within the country only a basic framework may be needed to conveniently handle the item. Shipment of material by airfreight is becoming more practical for certain high-value items.

To design a crate capable of withstanding the most severe of the many hazards to be encountered in transit can result in overdesign and unnecessary cost. The veterans at AW2 Crating & Packaging have been challenged with every mode of transportation, travelling through diverse environments nationally and internationally.

5. Are you using the correct preservation products?

There are many ways to get your product from point A to point B securely and without damage if you remember the inside components of a wooden crates matter just as much as the outside.  The correct preservations products will insure your goods arrive free of rust and condensation damage.

AW2 Crating & Packaging protects your product against damage from vibrations & impact by customizing the internal and external components to maximize safety. Here are our top 10 methods of properly securing your product in wooden crates.

1.  Saddles
2.  Tie Downs
3.  Filler
4.  Steel Hardware
5.  Blocking & Bracing
6.  Pallet Wrap
7.  Plastic/metal banding
8.  Custom Foam Inserts
9.  Corrugated Inserts
10. Bubble Cushioning

For more information please contact Tim Hoy, Director of Business Resources & Marketing, at 414.766.7508 or complete the contact form below.

Tim Hoy,
Director of Business Resources & Marketing

414.766.7508

Email me here