How To Pack Heavy Items For Shipping

Tips To Pack Heavy Items For Shipping

1. Use a good pallet. If you need to ship heavy items, then your best bet is to properly secure them on a pallet. You should use a plastic or wood pallet so that they can be easily and moved and lifted. Now, you should keep in mind the weight limits of the pallet and never exceed them.

2. Strong packaging. Next, the packaging you use is very important, and you should use corrugated cartons that are very durable and can easily handle the weight of numerous packages stacked on them. Buy boxes from The Gaylord Box Exchange. Another way to additionally protect your products is to use an X-pad layering on the sides and bottom of your packages. This will provide a lot more cushioning which will ensure they don’t break during shipping. The water-activated tape will also provide more protection against water from getting into your packages.

3. Thoroughly cushion and wrap everything. All of the heavy items should be put in the middle of the box to prevent tilting during transportation. Then, use X-pad layers to fully surround and protect them. The spaces inside of the box should also be filled, however, avoid using packing paper or crumpled newspapers. These will likely get compressed during shipping and be ineffective. You should try your best to pack in such a way that your items don’t move and keep in mind that heavy items in particular usually shift more.

4. Use an additional box. Next, another great strategy is to place your box into another larger box. Then, fill up space in between the boxes with air pillows or X-pads. Make sure that there is a minimum of 2 inches of space between the boxes. If you have fragile items that are packed in your box, you should increase the amount of space between the boxes. This will provide more cushioning and protection in the event that the box is accidentally punctured or even dropped.

5. Use water-activated tape for sealing. When you have to ship heavy items, then you should use water-activated tape that is fiberglass reinforced in order to provide more protection. This type of tape is great for ensuring your boxes don’t accidentally open up during shipping. If you don’t use proper tape that is designed for this purpose, then it increases the odds that the box will open during shipping and people may even steal the contents.

6. Avoid packing the boxes too much and making them too heavy. If you have very heavy items to ship, then you should pack them in a couple of boxes as opposed to trying to fit as much as you can in one or two boxes. It may be even best to only pack one heavy item per box, depending on the weight. This is necessary because boxes that are two heavy tend to break during transport and they are very risky for the people who need to lift them as they are more susceptible to being dropped or the items may even drop out the bottom of the box.

7. Shake the boxes. Lastly, once you have sealed up your boxes, you should shake them. This is necessary so that you can rest assured that all of your items are secured and that they can’t move easily within each box. If there is movement in the box, then this increases the chances that they will break during transport. So, once you hear too much rattling and shaking, you will need to open the box and re-pack it. The vast majority of shipping companies will even refuse boxes that have items that are moving around too much in them.