How to ship a box

Box or carton — and when to palletise instead

Carton is the trade word for a cardboard box, and the two are used interchangeably here. What changes the shipment is not the word but the count: loose cartons are handled individually at every stage, which is slower at both ends and where most damage and separation happens.

From roughly four or five cartons upwards it is worth building them onto a pallet, even for a small shipment. A palletised unit is handled once instead of five times, is charged on tidier dimensions, and arrives as one delivery rather than four boxes and a missing one.

How loose cartons are priced

By sea, on volume in cubic metres, or on weight where the cargo is dense. By air, on whichever is greater of the actual weight and the volumetric weight — the size converted into a weight — which is why an oversized box costs real money on an air shipment.

Either way the measurement is the outside of the carton. Right-sizing the box to the goods and using void fill rather than a larger carton is the single cheapest thing you can do to a small shipment.

How to pack a carton for international freight

A carton going overseas is not a carton going across town. It will be stacked, it will sit under other freight, and it will be lifted by people who cannot see what is inside.

• Double-wall board for anything over about 15kg or anything fragile. Single-wall collapses under a stack.
• Fill the void. A part-empty carton crushes; a full one carries weight.
• Tape every seam along the length, not a single strip across the middle.
• Write the consignee and reference on two sides, and remove old labels and barcodes — a stray one is how a carton ends up on the wrong pallet.