We are just starting a job that is to be shipped to Alaska. The contractor is paying the bill and arranging the carriers. It will go by common carrier to Seattle then be put into a container with other stuff for the sea voyage to an Alaska port. There it will be loaded onto a truck for its final destination. Contractor doesn't want to pay for full crating, just palletizing. LTL is risky enough W/O the rest. Should something get trashed it would mean another shipment, expensive! In that case everyone involved will say it wasn't palletized well enough. Been there before. We occasionally ship in containers, that will make a sea going trip, but they stay in the container until its destination. We load the containers at our dock & brace everything to the container walls so it can't shift. Any good ideas to a bad plan?

Get it in writing that the contractor doesn't want the order crated as you have recommended. Also get in writing that if there is any damage during the transportation, the contractor will be paying for the repairs and/or rebuild of the order.

Protect yourself so that you don't get stuck because of their bad decisions.

On LTL shipments we always try to get the contractor to look at the shipment when it is ready to ship. But they aren't going to fly in just to take a look see. People only hear what they want to. If there is damage we will still get blamed, signed paper or not. We normally will use sealed divider for less than truckloads, but doesn't apply to this shipment. Have you ever watched a longshoreman move freight?

I ship a lot of furniture. Been down the palletized road before. Close to a 50% failure rate. I either crate of pad wrap.

I simply refuse a job when they balk at the crating price.

I guess you have already bid the job? If not, put enough in the bid to crate it. If all pricing is set, go ahead and crate it anyway. Loosing a few hundred is way better than the legal hassle down the road when someone doesn't want to pay for a damage, or want a second one at a discounted price. I ordered a recumbent tad pole trike, a $3,500 ride. The first one came on a pallet in a cardboard box. The trucker wouldn't even bring it to the back of the truck it was damaged so badly. All he wanted was a signature for refusal from damage. Something had fallen on the box, and crushed it. What ever fell on it, rode on top of the box for a lot of miles and cardboard dust was ground into the trike. 2 or the 3 bands were broken, it was only partially on the skid. It was a mess!

Blanket wrap is usually less than making a bunch of custom size crates.

Alan,
Who do you use for blanket wrap shipping? I've been using Mayflower for years, but would like to have a second option.

I have shipped to Southeast Alaska, Juneau. We did not crate it. We did box every cabinet and the boxes were all loaded on a pallet and well wrapped to hold them together. Then, we shipped them to Seattle, they were loaded into a container, barged to Juneau, picked up by the contractor. We had no problems.

Southeast Alaska is on the Inside Passage, the barge does not experience heavy seas. Everything is expensive in Alaska, do a good job and it can work out very well for you.

Matt
We use a company that is also a Mayflower rep as well as
Tabatha Beltramo
Piedmont Moving Systems
1555 South 7th Street
San Jose, CA 95112
408.288.5600 Office
408.499.9053 Cell
piedmontmoving.com

We did about 240 blanket wrap trucks for one project, for that we used Corovan and they loaded and unloaded at the other end.

With Peidmont sometime we load and sometimes they load.

You can also find brokers that let you load and charge by the mile and that is less money but they are more problematic on pickup times and delivery times as they are outsourcing so your truck may show up at 4 in the afternoon and expect to be loaded that day.

"your truck may show up at 4 in the afternoon and expect to be loaded that day." So what's wrong with that? Yes, we sometimes use brokers and know the game.
Our problem with this shipment is the # of times the work will be handled by different operations.

Matt,

50% is ridiculous. I used to get furniture palletized. I cant remember one time I had a damaged piece. Maybe 50+ pallets over the years.

I would most definitely get your customer to state in writing that he absolves you from any liability owing to the fact that the shipping method is HIS choice. You do your best to try and make sure that everything is ok of course, but should there be any damage at the end of the day when the storage container is open, that's because he didn't want to pay better money to ensure that everything would be properly protected in transit.

It does look rather foolproof but you can never be too safe. Ensure you ask the contractor on every aspect of the scheduling plan from the collection until the arrival of the storage containers. You could be perceived as a non-trusting party but that is how it is. Business cannot go forward if hiccups were to arise halfway through the operation that might incur additional costs.

If there is damage we will still get blamed, signed paper or not. We normally will use sealed divider for less than truckloads, but doesn't apply to this shipment.