Start with the right pallet
- 48" × 40" GMA, 4-way entry is the standard — it fits forklifts, pallet jacks, and trailer layouts everywhere your freight will travel.
- Condition matters. Cracked stringers, missing boards, and protruding nails destroy cartons from below. If you wouldn't stand on it, don't ship on it.
- Match the pallet to the load. Heavy freight needs hardwood or block pallets; a 2,000-lb load on a lightweight pallet is a claim waiting for a forklift.
Stack for the real world
- Heaviest cartons on the bottom, weight spread evenly across the deck — never clustered on one side.
- Column stacking (corners aligned) carries the most weight. Cartons are strongest at their corners; interlocking adds stability but costs up to a third of stacking strength. Column-stack with a top cap is the best of both.
- Zero overhang. Anything past the pallet edge gets crushed, snagged, and rubbed — and the extra inches lower your density and raise your class. Keep the footprint inside the deck.
- Keep it under ~96" tall, pallet included, with the center of gravity low. Two stable pallets beat one towering one.
- Fill the gaps. Voids inside cartons and between them let everything shift; dunnage and void fill are cheap.
Wrap like you mean it
- Anchor the film to the pallet itself — wrap the base so cartons and pallet become one unit. Wrap that stops at the deck boards lets the load walk off in transit.
- Overlap at least 50% per revolution and make several full passes, tighter at the base and top.
- Add corner boards on anything with crushable edges, and a top cap (flat cardboard sheet) so strapping and stacked weight spread instead of cutting in.
- Banding/strapping adds security for heavy or dense loads — over the top cap, never bare cartons.
Crate the irreplaceable
Stretch wrap has no crash protection. For fragile, high-value, or irregular freight — machinery, glass, electronics, anything with protruding parts — a wood crate or fully boarded pallet box is the difference between a delivery and a claim. If a forklift tine or another shipper's pallet could hurt it, put wood between them.
Label like it'll get lost
- Label every handling unit with full origin and destination addresses — not just one pallet of four.
- Put a label inside a carton too. If the outer label is torn off, that's how freight finds its way home.
- Mark orientation and stacking limits ("this side up," "do not stack") — and know that "do not stack" is a request, not a guarantee, unless you ship partial or volume where freight isn't crossdocked.
- Photograph the finished pallet before pickup. Thirty seconds of photos is the best claims evidence there is.
The payoff
Good packaging pays three times: tighter cubes mean higher density and often a lower class (see the freight class guide); intact freight means no claims and no downtime; and if damage happens anyway, solid packaging protects your recovery — carriers reduce or deny claims when packaging was inadequate. When a claim does happen, our claims guide and claims team take it from there.
