What Transportation Packaging Solutions Work Best?

For manufacturers, finding the perfect packaging solutions isn’t just a want, it’s a need. Your products are the result of your valuable time, money, and materials. Simply put, skimping on your packaging solutions puts your valuable products at risk of in-transit damage, and you deserve better than that!

Although it’s important, it can certainly be difficult for manufacturers to find the perfect packaging solutions for their products. Today, we’ll be breaking down the many transportation packaging solutions that manufacturers use to protect their goods in transit. Truly, there’s nothing more important than this job! We’ll cover the uses and variations of wood packaging such as pallets and crates, supplementary products such as dunnage or banding groove lumber, as well as integrated packaging for more specific protection.

In the world of transportation packaging solutions, pallets and crates reign supreme. On the back of thousands of flatbeds, in every warehouse and every cargo hold you’ll find plenty of these wood packaging products. Let’s take a deep dive into what makes these industrial wood products so effective.

Pallets – The Most Plentiful Industrial Packaging

When it comes to packaging solutions, pallets quite literally run the world. With an approximated 5 billion pallets in the global supply chain at any given time, it’s hard to deny that pallets are the go-to packaging product for hundreds of thousands of manufacturers around the world. For some, the question remains, “What makes pallets so popular with the number of different packaging solutions available?” To answer this, we’ll break down the numerous benefits of wood pallet products.

Although there are many different reasons for the popularity of pallets, versatility, cost-effectiveness, and customization are definitely at the top. As far as packaging solutions go, pallets are among the most versatile options out there. With the ability to securely transport a large variation of products from many different industries, almost every manufacturer can find a use for this amazing wood packaging solution.

Being made of industrial lumber, which is usually #3 or #4 SYP, manufacturers can save on the cost of their wood packaging solutions as well. What makes these materials so effective, however, is that while being cost-effective, pallets are still incredibly strong and long-lasting. On top of all of these traits, comes one of the most valued aspects of pallets – customization. The advantages of being able to order custom-built pallets cannot be overstated. From industrial-sized HVAC units to large pipelines, pallets can be custom-made to whatever your product may be.

 Crates – A Super Secure Packaging Option

When choosing packaging solutions, crates are the best option for some manufacturers. When crates are the preferred method of transport, it’s typically because the manufacturer’s product needs an extra level of security. With packaging solutions like crates, this security can come in a few different forms. Closure, compartmentalization, and layering are different features of crates that make them one of the best packaging solutions for manufacturers concerned about security. Closure, simply put, is the ability to securely open and close the crate – sometimes having four walls around your product is enough.

Compartmentalization, on the other hand, uses the principles of a closing crate and adds to it. Rather than having one large area inside of the crate for manufacturers to store their products, compartments within a crate are used to separate each product. This decreases the chances of products bumping into one another significantly. Lastly are simple layers, this can be done by layering panel products on top of products one after the other. Although it may seem tedious, this can ensure the security of your product.

When talking about packaging solutions, supplementary materials such as wood dunnage or panels may not be the first thing to come to mind. Despite this, these materials are essential in securing products across the globe. Supplementary packaging solutions help secure your products in two inverse ways – preventing movement and allowing space for movement. Although this may sound counterintuitive, these processes can significantly decrease the chances of in-transit damage.

Preventing Movement

If you’ve ever been behind a flatbed or a pickup truck with loose materials in the back, you’ll surely understand how important it is for products to be securely transported. Loose materials can easily create a dangerous situation for any form of transportation, whether it’s by land, air, sea, or rail. This is why almost all manufacturers use supplementary packaging solutions such as dunnage or banding groove.

These wood products can be placed against products that are strapped down, wedged between pallet boards, or even propped up inside crates. When it comes to preventing movement inside of industrial packaging, there’s no better choice than with dunnage.

Creating Space

Inversely, wood dunnage products create space to prevent in-transit damage as well. These packaging solutions can be used as spacers so that products that need a little bit of movement, or can’t touch other products, can be safely transported. This can be frequently seen on trucks that haul lumber – each stack can only be so tall without a piece of dunnage in between. This allows enough movement to be stable, but not enough to topple over.

For some manufacturers’ products, unique packaging solutions are needed that have a lighter touch than standard transportation packaging. Using a combination of foam, corrugate, and cardboard, manufacturers can create specialized integrated packaging solutions. These integrated packaging solutions are anything but one-size-fits-all.

To produce this type of specialized packaging, many manufacturers employ packaging engineers to do the job right. With expertise in the manufacturing industry, these engineers skillfully craft integrated packaging solutions that are custom-fitted to your product. A common example of this would be refrigerator boxes. When transporting these large appliances, manufacturers simply can’t put the fridge on a truck in its commercial box, if this were to happen it would get to the store filled with bumps and scratches. Rather, manufacturers use integrated packaging to protect the product’s edges, handles, and other delicate parts.

With integrated packaging solutions, you can rest easy knowing that your product’s packaging is uniquely designed for that product.

If you’re new to manufacturing, it can be pretty easy to become overwhelmed by the number of packaging solutions that are out there. Luckily, the most important thing for manufacturers to understand is their product. If questions ever arise as to what packaging solutions to use, you can rely on experts, like us at Conner, to point you in the right direction.

With a combination of wood packaging, supplementary packaging materials, and integrated packaging, there isn’t a product out there that we can’t protect! So, the next time you find yourself needing packaging solutions, or simply having questions about them, we hope you think of us!