Whenever you are dealing with international shipping of goods, there’s a number of important considerations to make. One of the most important things to decide is how you will ship your goods; will you use a pallet, or a crate to protect your shipment from damage.

Crates

Crates are perfect for shipping fragile items. When special care has been taken to avoid damage during transit, they can be superior to pallets for more delicate goods. Still, even though freight crating can protect your goods to a certain extent, you can take extra steps to ensure your shipment’s safety:

Fragile items like glass or electronics should be wrapped separately.
If you are shipping fragile and non-fragile items together, keeping them separate. Doing this will minimize damage during transit.
Pack crates with fragile goods as full as possible. This gives the items less room to shift during transit.

Using crates for international shipments provides a safe, flexible option to ship fragile items. There are crates built to accommodate standard and non-standard freight dimensions that can continue to provide protection for fragile goods.

When using crates to ship goods internationally, there are a few tips you should know:

• Minimize movement when shipping fragile items by packing them closely together.
• Place heavier items on the bottom of the crate.
• Fill crates to capacity to minimize shifting during transit.
• If crates cannot be filled to capacity, use cushioning packing material to fill excess space.

Pallets

Pallets’ popularity exploded early on in the industrial boon of the first half of the 20th century– but has been largely taken for granted in modern day materials handling strategy. The industry had made movements to eliminate their cost, weight, or the cube (space that pallets require during transport and storage).

When they were first introduced, they had an enormous impact on the efficiency of material handling in the exports industry. Goods transported by rail had previously taken a day or two to unload– now they took just a couple of hours.

As it was in the past, using pallets as a base unit load presents a number of benefits:

• A quicker turnaround of delivery vehicle; increasing operational efficiency of transport equipment
• The next arrival gets a more efficient turnaround of the trailer door
• Dramatically reduced labor costs vs the manual handling of goods
• Reduced risk for perishable goods on unrefrigerated docks.

Palletized goods, by nature, require less manual handling which offers further protection of goods– reducing product damage by a significant amount. Pallets are a good option if goods are not immediately arriving at a destination other than a warehouse. If they need to be stored for a significant portion of time, pallets can be moved more efficiently and stored more efficiently in warehouses– making them more cost effective for the exporter in long-term storage situations.

Customers also prefer palletized goods– they are easier to manage. Palletized goods are typically easier to manage with material handling equipment than other methods of unit load bases– things like slip sheets may require special equipment, which can prove to be costly.

Pallets also provide an opportunity for air circulation and drainage for goods that need it; fresh produce especially comes to mind.