Pack It Right By George McKinney The sale isn’t fi- nal until the delivery has been com- pleted. Simply put, but words all too | > © often ignored. Would you ship a concrete block ina paper sack? That may seem like an exaggeration, but nearly every day we have to deal with product losses and damaged freight claims that could easily have been avoided if someone on the shipping end would have taken a little more care in packaging the order. Sometimes what appears to be adequate packing at the time a ship- ment leaves the dock is really nothing more than a recipe for broken part stew. Just for fun sometime, drive down to your local freight company and watch the trucks being loaded and unloaded. Do your packages pass the “drop-kick” test? Don’t be fooled into thinking that any one freight carrier will give your precious cargo any more TLC than the others. It doesn’t matter if the trucks are brown, yellow, or red, white and blue, the name of their game is quantity, not quality. Whether you’re a rebuilder, a parts supplier, ora little of both, everyone in the business likes to think of their prod- uct as being the best. But what is the point in making sure that every nut and bolt is properly tightened, the paint job is perfect and the label is on straight if the product doesn’t make it to the customer in one piece? As warehouse manager for a large supplier of parts for the auto electric industry, I see a lot of freight come and go from my dock. I see good quality packaging as well as a tremendous amount of shoddy, careless packaging by large and small companies alike. Case in point: John Doe Auto Electric in Smalltown, USA sends me a solenoid to rebuild. It’s a real oddball from a 1950’s Jaguar and finding an- other core like it would be next to im- possible, so he wraps it up like his mother’s life depends on it. Good job. Now it’s my turn. I owe it to that cus- tomer to make sure his one-of-a-kind solenoid gets back to him without the cap being cracked or the plunger be- ing lost. On the other side of the coin, a major bearing supplier (that we no longer do business with) sends me a couple thousand bearings in a box looking like they’ve literally been picked up off the warehouse floor with a shovel. Go figure. In my opinion, the most common factors contributing to shipping prob- lems are as follows, and I will attempt to list them in order of importance: – Flimsy Boxes: Cardboard contain- ers are graded according to their weight carrying capacity, and a thin box will not handle a heavy load. If you do not have a box heavy enough to carry what you want to ship, beefup the in- side of your next best choice with ex- tra pieces of cardboard cut to fit. – Shifting Contents: Not only do parts bang into each other, but they will also hammer their way out of the box if they aren’t kept from moving. Whether your filler material of choice is newspaper, Styrofoam, or something else, don’t be stingy. Fill the container completely and pack it tightly. – Inadequate Box Closure: It doesn’t take a lot of tape to secure a box, it just takes the right kind of tape in the right places. Don’t use masking NOVEMBER, 1999 tape. (Yes, I’ve actually received boxes covered with masking tape.) Use a good grade of commercially- available carton sealing tape and watch out for loose box flap edges. Many freight handlers send boxes down a conveyor which can snag loose edges and tear them open. The same can be said for packing lists. If you place any accompanying paperwork for your parts on the inside of the box, be sure it stands out from the packing material and that it can’t be sliced by someone opening the box with a knife. If you use a Self-adhesive “packing list en- closed” envelope on the outside of the box, be sure it’s flat, straight and it can’t come off. I like to put a strip of clear shipping tape over mine. While all of the preceding obser- vations may seem exceedingly simple, they are often overlooked. All of us in the industry can benefit by taking a good look at what went wrong the next time we get a box of broken parts. It isn’t always the freight carrier’s fault. So remember, whether you’re shipping complete 50MT starters or 10SI brushes, quality control doesn’t end at the test bench. It has to go out the door. George McKinney is warehouse manager, PCO Wholesalers, Orlando, FL. Page 1 of 1