“My husband Greg is always looking for ways to save money,” Amanda said. “Cutting coupons, refunds, discount cards – he does all of that and more. Which is great – I love it. But sometimes he takes the whole being frugal thing to the extreme.”
“We had some furniture that we needed to ship to Georgia. When it came time to pack it up, Greg said we didn’t need to pay for custom crating. He’d just go down to the hardware store, buy some wood, and build the crates himself.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “The thing is, Greg’s more of a shopper than a builder. He got plenty of wood – I think he spent something like $125 just on plywood! But the crates he built weren’t very good. Just to top it all off, when UPS showed up, they refused to take the boxes! They said they had the right to refuse any packages if they didn’t believe it would survive the trip and Greg’s crate just wasn’t good enough. On top of that, they told us the crate was too big and heavy for regular pickup.”
Building a shipping crate sounds easy, but ask your Boston shipping store: it’s more complicated than you might think. Freight companies have very specific rules and regulations about what type, size, and weight packages they’ll accept. They’re also very particular about how shipments are packaged. This is especially true if you need a shipping crate for international shipments. There are rules about what types of materials can and can’t be shipped, as well as what type of materials are acceptable for shipping crates and boxes.
“We didn’t save any money trying to build the shipping crates ourselves,” Amanda said, “And we sure didn’t cut down on the stress and headaches of shipping! I wish we’d chosen custom crating right from the start.”