How to Face a Crating Challenge

Packaging is an essential aspect of product preservation and safety as companies can incur significant losses if merchandise is damaged in route to its destination. Although we may not think of wood packaging solutions as products that have room for improvement, the truth is that custom industrial packing and shipping companies are continually developing innovative solutions to ensure the items entrusted to their care arrive unscathed.

Common Crating Challenges

Wide Loads: Wide load shipments of heavy-duty wooden crates can be a costly and difficult challenge to navigate as they require escort vehicles and permits, and are typically only allowed to be transported during daylight hours on weekdays. As a result, most shipping and logistics companies would prefer to avoid packaging wide load shipments.

Enter wooden canted cradles—a system in which a heavy-duty crate is lifted at an angle by a wooden support system built under it. By using the canted cradle to elevate the wooden crate at an angle, the width of the crate is reduced, thereby avoiding wide load shipping fees and logistics headaches.

Tradeshow Challenges: As a shipping logistics professional, the last thing you want is for a customer to unbox their trade show booth materials only to find that the items inside have been damaged during travel to the show. To protect tradeshow materials, crates are often designed so that each element of the booth is secure in its own compartment.

By designing a single crate with multiple slots, which should then be lined with ¼” foam and wool felt to protect the items inside, the various pieces of a tradeshow booth, products, and marketing materials can be shipped in one crate. Using this method, your customers will have peace of mind knowing that the hard work they put into designing and creating marketing materials, and products, will not be lost during shipping.

Collapsible Wooden Crates: While some customers may prefer to have a logistics expert measure their products in order to design a custom wooden crate, sometimes that is not practical. When you need a quality wooden crate that can be packed quickly, consider using a collapsible wooden crate.

In these cases, a company may be interested in purchasing collapsible wooden crates that can be stored flat when not in use and then quickly assembled when it’s time to pack a shipment. Collapsible wooden crates can be just as durable as their fully assembled counterparts, especially when they are reinforced using steel or wooden brackets.

Building Crates with SCRAIL®

The coarse thread Crating SCRAIL® fasteners, developed by BECK, are designed to save crate manufacturing time and labor costs, while maintaining build quality and customer satisfaction. Crating SCRAIL® provides unparalleled holding power and can be quickly installed using a pneumatic nail gun, allowing your company to manufacture more crates in a shorter amount of time. Plus, the coarse threads of Crating SCRAIL® ensure that your customers will have a consistently easy time dismantling their crates upon arrival. Learn more by downloading our Crating SCRAIL® brochure today!