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Raw material pricing has everyone cringing. How can you save money on your shipping materials while still ensuring your product arrives safely? In today’s marketplace, businesses are hampered by inflation while still trying to offer products that are advantageous for customers to purchase. How do you accomplish this when material costs are going up from the time you place the order to delivery? Two words... smart packaging.  Smart design starts with understanding your product attributes and shipping environment.
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In previous discussions about pallets, I touched on the nature of the load that a pallet might be expected to handle. If you are a pallet geek like me, the term “unit load” is often used to describe the goods that are configured in such a way as to be easily handled by that pallet. So, I guess the unit load is and has always been associated with pallets, right? Well, not exactly. Although we can trace the use of pallets all the way back to ancient times, the common use of pallets to handle the unit load did not get going until World War II.  Labor intensive material handling in New York City (1877) Why is my 2x4 lumber not 2 inches by 4 inches? Many decades ago, lumber purchased from a sawmill physically matched the common dimensions we use today. So why does that pine or spruce 2x4 from your local lumber yard now come up short? The short answer is modern surfacing and shrinkage. Over time we've come to accept these nominal (approximate) dimensions as standard. But there's still a catch. Shrinkage can be highly variable. This makes it very difficult to manage and regulate dimensional accuracy.  Dimensional lumber is a term given to boards cut to standard sizes (specified in inches). Have you tried any products that could extend the life of your current warehouse pallets? Reducing damage can be achieved by using pallet protectors, forklift fork-guards, and warehouse racking add-ons.  End plates improve pallet durability at forklift entry points. Every pallet user has experienced fastener failures at some point. Putting a nail or screw into a wooden pallet sounds simple enough, but it can actually get quite technical. When there is a failure, a good set of photos is often enough for an engineer to identify if the problem is the fastener or something else entirely.  Different types of fasteners, from the left, helical (screw) thread, Annular (ring) thread, plain shank, and staple. You might be asking yourself how is it possible to save money by spending more money? It is always important to consider the BIG picture. Spending a little extra money in one area might create cost savings across the board. We have the perfect case study to demonstrate this claim.
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