8 May
2008
8 May
'08
8:04 a.m.
David Comley wrote:
--- On Thu, 5/8/08, Tim Shoppa <tshoppa at
wmata.com> wrote:
I've come to the point that if a piece of equipment weighs more than
40 pounds and is less robust than a motor block, it needs to be in a
crate on a pallet before it leaves my sight. If it has a CRT in it,
there's just no way to guarantee safe delivery, outside a rigid crate
with several inches of shaped foam.
I actually got into the training business doing setup and teardown of
IBM's traveling AIX classrooms.** IBM used mostly 6091-19 displays, a
monstrous 19-inch Trinitron weighing 70+ pounds, and they lost very few
of them to shipping damage. Why? The display is maybe 22" x 20" x 24",
and they shipped in individual 36" cube cartons with injected foam
bracing. Having seen what happens to monitors in shipping, I'm
convinced that really wasn't the overkill I thought it was at the time.
** Sunday I'd unbox systems, displays & peripherals, hook 'em up, turn
'em on, log in, and play Ping-Thy-Neighbor, then on Saturday I'd reverse
that and slap a shipping label on it all for the next site.
Doc
That's not bad at all compared to some of the
stuff
I've bought over Ebay. I've been pretty
disappointed
at some of the 50 or 70 pound lab instruments that look
to be in perfect pristine condition before they're
shipped
My business makes and sells a 70lb medical device that when packaged correctly is around
20"x20"x20", so it's quite big and cumbersome. We've seen some
truly horrible packaging when units are returned to us from the field including pillows,
bits of upholstery foam and old rags. Peanuts are the worst though and I am constantly
tempted to levy a 'recycling' charge to anyone who ships to me using peanuts.
Frankly, after analyzing shipping methods and the state of packages sent out and
returned, we no longer ship outbound units ground apart from in-state or adjacent states.
The handling is just too unreliable.