Is the world mad

[Simplicity]

I've just got home from a weekend away.
And was eagerly awaiting to open the package that I knew was waiting.
Due to a tex alert and email on my phone.
I've just brought my self a lovely bit of 01 tool steel precision ground 10 mm by 36 inches long.
For future projects ie may sit in the shed for 3456 days.Or be used next week not sure which way it will go.
But what is surprising the packaging, now I appreciate it's a lump of steel.
And I appreciate it was packaged correctly.
What I can not understand is the size of the packaging this piece of steel is only the length of grown mans arm.
Not an elephant trunk.
I am seriously considering giving up on humanity!!!

What a complete waste of resources.
Rant over


Cheers Matt

[DomAU]

Yeah what a joke. The rod should have been taped to a thick plank of hardwood, wrapped in bubble wrap and in a box at least twice that size. When will they learn?!!

[clear out]

At least DHL didn't drop it off the plane.
They did that to a rather delicate exhibition piece that had successfully done 8 trips to different venues in the states.
When it arrived back here in Oz they obviously just threw it off the plane.
H.

[NCArcher]

Standard size box. The next one down was 1cm too short

[rob streeper]

You should've seen the box my 9' long track for my tracksaw came in.

[tony_A]

It turned up undamaged and that is something to be thankful for. The courier industry seems to have a no care and no responsibility attitude when it comes to handling freight. I wouldn't like to be sending freight regularly as the damages must be significant. One supplier I dealt with recently had 5 electric motors damaged in one month. That kind of attitude necessitates using packaging that can withstand being dropped from great height and having sharp things poked into it. Although, no doubt, their breakages department will come up with other ways of damaging goods in transit. (rant over)

[Chris Parks]

When employees are handling thousands of parcels per shift or machines sort and automatically drop parcels into a cage fragile does not exist. I don't know any company that does a dedicated fragile service and if they did no one would pay for it. I wish I had taken a video of manual parcel sorting to show you guys.

[BobL]

Back in 2008? I purchased 7.5kg of tool steel from the US as part of a group buy.
The Steel consisted mainly of 50 and 100 mm wide by 900 mm long O1 flat bar of varying thickness.
It arrived in a tough USPS canvas mail bag, along with the shredded remains of the box, and newspaper and oiled paper packaging material.
It appears that the packaging disintegrated somewhere in the US but someone kindly put it all into the postal bag.
The steel was slightly scratched but as it was oiled it was not rusty at all.
The canvas bag says "property of the US Postal Service" - it's very useful as a camping tote bag as it has a drawstring with a lockable clip on it.

[Fuzzie]

A while a ago, a friend used to have a subscription to an American computer magazine. The mag company (and US postal service) used to batch up a number of copies destined for Australia in plastic wrap with a big sticker on the outside that said for the Aus postal service to unparcel in the local sorting center. Usually however, because his mag was on top he would collect 10 issues a month.

[dubrosa22]

Around 2007/8 I ordered a paperback from a small boutique publisher in NYC. After three or four months I'd about given up on it ever arriving when the parcelman knocked on the door. Slung over his shoulder like Santa's sack was an enormous nylon fabric USPS mailbag. Inside the bag was a box. In the box was about a cubic metre of styofoam peanuts. Then a satchel. Then bubblewrap. Then finally the paperback.
I think I'd only paid about $10 bucks for post!

Yep, BobL the USPS sack is indeed great for camping!

V

[Simplicity]

So from reading all the great replies. One can only assume the world has been mad for quite sometime.
Do the relative authorities know about this !!!!

Cheers Matt


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rrich]

I was talking to a manufacturer of a digital readout for table saws.

They were shipping the track inside a piece of vinyl sewer pipe, well padded and with caps at each end. They were having an extraordinary damage in shipping rate, like 65%.

UPS investigated and found that the packaging was excellent and that the cause of the problem was that most of the doors in UPS facilities were about 20 CM narrower than the sewer pipe was long. So throw the sewer pipe on the fork lift and full speed ahead to load it onto the delivery truck.

Sort of like, "They pay me to drive a fork lift, they don't pay me to think."

[Bushmiller]

Matt

That is an impressive piece of material. You wouldn't want it to break now would you?

Regards
Paul

[NCArcher]

One can only assume the world has been mad for quite sometime.
Do the relative authorities know about this !!!!

Cheers Matt

They're the one perpetuating this madness.

[richmond68]

When employees are handling thousands of parcels per shift or machines sort and automatically drop parcels into a cage fragile does not exist. I don't know any company that does a dedicated fragile service and if they did no one would pay for it. I wish I had taken a video of manual parcel sorting to show you guys.

I don't know about where you are Chris, but there's a COPE depot a couple of minutes away from me, and COPE are the biggest specialist sensitive freight operator in Australia. International shipping might be a challenge, but I'd have no qualms about sending fragile items within Australia with them having seen the local branch repacking items they thought weren't sufficiently protected. They seem to do good business.