Originally Posted by canklecat

I was listening to an NPR interview with some folks studying packaging and shipping. Their study indicated packages are dropped on average 17 times before final delivery.

That didn't surprise me. I worked on a freight dock about 25 years ago. Boxes are rarely picked up and carefully placed down. They're tossed. Not with deliberately attempt at abuse. But tossed because it's quicker and when you get the knack it settles boxes snugly into trucks to maximize space.

Little or no consideration is given to how much load a box can handle. There's no time for that. We'd heft a box and quickly guesstimate whether it could withstand being near the bottom of a stack.

The goal was to stack and stairstep everything so it would either be self-supporting or, if something tumbled, it was tumble down a stair formation of other packages. If we had time and material we'd use dunnage -- scrap boxes and materials -- to reinforce the loading. Basically, just shoving bits of scrap cardboard between stacks and stairsteps to keep them more or less in place.

During the earliest era when trade with China was opened and cheap Chinese goods flooded in, mostly headed for dollar and discount stores, the Chinese manufacturers and shippers used the cheapest, flimsiest packaging. If you bought items made in China, you remember how flimsy the packaging was (and still is in some cases). Well, their shipping containers weren't much better. They often packed dozens of items into cartons that barely qualified as "cardboard". Usually the thinnest, flimsiest, cheapest possible corrugation methods, a couple of pieces of stiff brown paper with some corrugation between them. That's about all. Those cartons could barely support their own weight, let alone stacking.

During a winter holiday rush season our official instructions and policies for handling were ignored. Supervisors would roam the dock, cracking the whip, yelling FASTER, FASTER!!!

I was loading a truck with lots of Chinese glass and crystal ware. The cartons were flimsy. After awhile the supervisor was pressuring me more and more to finish loading. I finally began throwing the cartons as hard as I could from the tailgate toward the front to save a few steps. All over the dock you could hear glass shattering inside the cartons. The supervisor grinned as said "That's the way to do it!"

Often those cartons would collapse under their own weight when loaded onto pallets moved by forklifts. Even when wrapped in plastic to contain the mess, the boxes were crushed.

I never saw anyone deliberately destroy a package, but packages were often damaged in routine handling under heavy pressure from management.

I suspect managers and owners knew insurance would cover the losses, and most insurance claims would be denied or slow-walked until the claimants gave up.

So while the official policy was careful package handling, at times that was ignored in favor of rushing the jobs.

The damage in those photos looks very much like what happens when you need to cram in one more box that wasn't in the original bill of lading. Someone drops off a container just as you're about the close the gate. It's gotta go in and your careful stacking and stairstepping goes to hell. So you jam and cram and knee it into place.

So if you're shipping anything that can be damaged. double box it, or use a sturdy single box and plenty of crushable inner padding. The key is to leave plenty of crush space, like modern cars are designed to protect occupants.

BTW, it might not just be the USPS. Many shipments nowadays use hybrid shipping. The damage may have been caused by a contractor or other carrier somewhere in the stream. It's possible USPS was only the final delivery agent, not the one packing the truck or transferring between trucks.