Consider the cardboard shipping box. Is there anything more easily taken for granted in the world today than a cardboard box? We don’t think so. You see cardboard boxes everywhere, everyday. They’re stacked up in grocery stores, are full of paper in the office supply cupboard – you might even have them in your home, holding all of those college textbooks you were definitely going to use as references after you graduated!
But all of these cardboard boxes that surround you have a secret. They’re really, really, really no good at serving as shipping boxes. If you trust your fragile items – or really, frankly, your not-so-fragile items – to one of the boxes you recycle from the grocery store or supply cupboard, guess what is going to happen?
If you’re lucky – some would say extremely lucky – that used cardboard box will have enough strength left in it to stand up to the rigors of traveling through the shipping environment. It’ll stay together when it’s tossed onto a truck, stacked under heavy boxes, and manhandled off of that truck onto another vehicle (a plane, boat, or other truck) where it is stacked again, unloaded again (and perhaps again and again!) until it reaches your recipient’s door.
But sometimes you’re not so lucky. Cardboard boxes are designed to make one trip through the shipping cycle. They lose essential rigidity and strength by being open, closed & manipulated. The box that can stand up to having a heavy box stacked on top of it once might not be able to bear the same thing twice. And do you know what happens then? The box collapses, and your stuff inside gets crushed. Or lost, because now the box has split open, and can’t keep your items inside. If this box is going to a customer, they’re not going to be happy. If you’re sending a present to a friend, they’re not going to be thrilled it’s broken either.
The answer is getting new shipping boxes from your South Shore shipping store, Boston Pack and Ship. You’ll spend a little money, but save a fortune in terms of heartache and disappointment.