Of all the businesses that use packaging, none will use it quite so much and so often as a removal firm. If your company is new to the business, you will be discovering quickly just how extensive and diverse your needs are.
The first and most obvious reason for this is that your patterns of packaging use will be different from others. A delivery firm will send something in a box, a padded envelope or other form of packaging in a single-use fashion. Once sent, the recipient owns the packaging too and can keep it for storage, recycle it or dispose of it otherwise as they wish.
In such circumstances, this is not a problem as a company that transports goods will have a range of custom packaging for the products it distributes.
Don’t Be A Mug, Be Packaged
If, for instance, it or its client produces a range of mugs, it will have a range of small boxes with the appropriate protection, such as shredded paper. That means it needs to repeatedly make or order the same packages, of the same size and materials, to continue transporting the same goods.
When it comes to moving house, it can be quite different. There will be some turnover of boxes and containers, which starts with the people who are moving, who will if they are preparing well, have set out to obtain the right kind of boxes and containers.
Unfortunately, not all the boxes and containers collected by householders for this purpose will do the trick. Some may be weak and flimsy, perhaps old ones affected by damp and mould, or simply too thin and fragile for filling up with heavy stuff. These will be at risk of breaking in transit, leaving items damaged or lost, so they simply will not do.
This is where you need to have a stock of your own containers. Among these, foam lined boxes that can take the most fragile items will prove invaluable.
Porcelain And Picture Perils
This can be particularly useful for the most vulnerable objects. The smallest of these that won’t be carried individually by hand are porcelain, such as glassware, cups and crockery, or small ornamental items of the sort found on mantelpieces. Not only are these eminently breakable, but they can often have sentimental value as well.
Such small items will need appropriately sized foam boxes, but larger and narrower ones will be vital for transporting framed items like paintings, framed photo montages and educational certificates. This is especially important due to the irreparable damage that can be done to paintwork or paper, wooden frames and, most dangerously, glass.
Once again, It is important to note that these items are not just of financial value, but can be of very high sentimental worth. This is particularly so with certificates, but paintings may represent significant gifts or might even have been produced by the householder’s own artistic talents.
Of course, framed items can vary greatly in size. Anything particularly large might need to be handled individually and not put in a box at all, with some sort of covering placed over it to shield it from any dirt, debris, or rain that might threaten it. But in most cases, it will be all about finding just the right sort of box size.
There are various things that can be done to protect artwork when moving like providing extra covers and padding, with some improvisation possible with items like bubble wrap. This may be of greater importance if a framed item does not have a glass cover but is exposed to the elements, as, for instance, some oil paintings are.
This may be useful to offer extra security, but the benefit of a foam layer inside a box will be to cushion and hold the item firmly in place while offering protection against bumps and collisions, which will inevitably occur either when carrying boxes out of a home (or into the next one) or during transit on the road.
Remember To Replenish
Another way in which moving is unlike providing packaging for goods that will be posted to customers is that with moving, you may get some of the boxes back and might acquire some left over after a move. While the latter factor might be handy in the next job, you should always assess what you do have and make sure you acquire enough of the right kind of box.
That means you will need to obtain plenty of foam line boxes to ensure that even after one move that has involved a lot of pictures or fragile glass and crockery items being moved, you won’t suddenly be left with a major shortage because you didn’t get these back.
