How not to pack... Options

[Red-Beard]

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[airsix]

Guys, you gotta think about this logically. You are going to pay less than the cost of a meal to ship a heavy package across the country with up-to-the-hour tracking and an ETA of just a couple of days. That alone is amazing.

Your package is going to pass through several sorting facilities in different states, travel thousands of miles by truck, train, and air. It will be moved from docks to box-cars to trailers to shelves to rollers to chutes to belts. It will be placed in semi-trailers where packages are stacked 8ft high. Will it be at the top of the 8ft stack or the bottom? Imagine the force placed on your package at the bottom of the 8ft stack when that 18-wheeler hit's a Montana-sized chuck-hole at 65mph. Imagine the forces on your package as the whole load shifts as a truck breaks to avoid a deer (or a moron in a Durango). Ever seen train-cars being linked up? It's not very gentle on your package burried deep in that box-car.

I'm sure that UPS would oblige if you'd like to have your packages delivered on a velvet pillow, but don't expect to pay the typical $15.

Everybody thinks package damage happens when some guy has his hands on your box. Nope. It happens durring the travel or sorting. Sometimes something goes wrong and a good package is damaged - but 90% of all damage I saw was due to poor packaging. I did shipping for a national scientific lab. They sent and recieved huge-value delicate instruments to/from other labs on a weekly basis via UPS. They never had any problems because they packed their shipments according to their fragility and value. If you're shipping $35,000 worth of precision optics, you don't put it in an old shoe box and then pitch a fit when it get's crushed.

You can't send a 100lb transmission in a single-layer carboard box. I don't care how much bubble-wrap you use. HINT: If your stuff feels like it's about to rip out of the bottom of the box when you pick it up then you need a pallet or a crate.

-Ben M. (Used to work for UPS as a kid. People who don't handle packages gently get fired. Period.)