Packing and Shipping, Mind You Do It Properly (but not like M & S)

Way back in the mist of time, when dinosaurs ruled the earth and Bills of Lading were written in a neat copperplate hand in the blood of a galley slave, there were rules about packing goods for shipment.

Time passed and the cardinal rule that as things progress they get cheaper and nastier (or more likely dearer and nastier)  went out of the nearest piece of fenestration and only the sad and lonely salty sea dogs remembered them.

In those days, if it wasn’t packed in a case or at least a crate, you couldn’t insure it for export.

Or rather you could until summat went awry and then you couldn’t get paid out.

“Insufficient packing” quoth the underwriters manservant, and that, as the Northern milliner would say, were t’hat.

When the big metal boxes kicked the dinosaurs out and themselves spanned the earth, a more reasonable age ensued and things have moved on apace since then. Nowadays you can pack your goods in all manner of wondrous things to coddle and defend them from the elements, to prevent spillage and seepage, to stop the contents from squashing, squishing and squeezing out from their neat little parcels.

First T/Chests, then boxes and cartons became the vogue, next was polystyrene, superb against shocks but not so clever when it ended up in the Sargasso Sea after blowing in all the way from Deptford or Illinois. Little plastic bags cunningly filled with air secured against shockwaves, Expandable builders foam kept even fine glassware secure from breakage as we moved toward a packing Nirvana. But now, sad to say, things have moved on a little too far. Take a look at what turned up this week, courtesy of Marks and Spencer.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think that’s overkill.

For those of you with a statistical bent here are the facts.

The empty box, measures 33 x 22 x 13 centimetres.

The mascara (for it is he) measures 10 x 1.5 x 1.5 centimetres.

In simple terms this means M & S have put one item into a box capable of holding 419 of said item.

That’s the shipping equivalent of loading a twenty foot box with a carton 50 x 40 x 40 centimetres.

That’s 20 x 13 x 13 inches to any as old as me but not so savvy when you start counting in tens.

There it is again look.

And yes, that is a pound coin to demonstrate the size (or lack of it).

But perhaps the Captain doth protest too much. This thing arrived (inside a plastic bag to boot) in perfect order.

The one thing we didn’t lose when we switched from the sturdy wooden crates of old, was the warehouseman’s (stevedore, docker - pick a term) ability to break anything due for shipment when in the mood.

Having spent over half my working life in and around shipping warehouses I have never ceased to be amazed by the unceasing and relentless talent that a man in a sweaty work suit can possess when he, unwittingly or not, sets himself to “handle” cargo of any description.

Here in tribute then, is a short video to that paragon of package placers (already credited earlier in this series) the ultimate destroyer of other peoples property – The Baggage Handler…………. 

Mr Rhod Gilbert in the very best of form.

Comments

[wotchit321]

Well, if you are gonna write about handlers smashing stuff then you will at least have an inexhaustable supply of material. A bit like M&S, by the look of it...