Keeping your products safe during transit is crucial to the success of your business. Product damage is costly, from the expense of replacing products to the potential hit your business could take from unhappy customers requiring returns.
Quality freight load protection is required for protecting your products. Custom load securement solutions that are designed with your unique shipping modality and products in mind are the best way to protect your products from damage.
Read on to explore the key factors that impact product protection, how load securement solutions can address your unique needs and challenges, and how you can partner with an industry-leading team of load securement specialists to find the best fit for your product protection needs.
Key Factors that Impact Product Protection
Shipping Modality
Tailoring your load securement solution is dependent on your unique shipping modality. There are four common types of modalities to choose from:
- Over the Road (OTR): This modality involves the shipment of products from the place of loading to the place of unloading using motor vehicles and road networks. Using the OTR modality requires lightweight and durable protection solutions, making air bags and void fillers ideal for the job.
- Intermodal Transport: Using large containers to ship products in, this modality refers to instances where two or more modes of transportation–such as rail and truck–are required. The containers used are not opened or reloaded when changing shipping methods, requiring unique shipping designs with multiple modalities in mind. Bulkhead protection, corner board, and other solutions can be designed to keep your products protected and secure during the entirety of the intermodal journey.
- Ocean Transport: Often used for large quantities of goods, this modality utilizes vessels traveling the ocean to move products. Ocean voyages can be rough, making corrugated pallets, collapsible void fillers, and rubber friction matting the best choices to enhance product protection.
- Boxcar: Products are placed in boxcars and transported via rail. When designing a product protection plan for this modality, you need to take both lateral and longitudinal impacts into consideration, making bulkhead protection one of the most efficient protection options.
Product Type
Nearly everything is shipped now, including agricultural products, electronics, e-commerce, industrial sectors, and more. Every industry and every product requires unique load securement solutions to ensure maximum product protection. The type of product you are shipping needs to be taken into consideration as well when choosing a modality and a load securement method.
The most popular products shipped by road, boxcar, ocean, and intermodal transport are:
- Clothing
- Produce
- Paper products
- Building materials
- Vehicles
When considering your load securement plan, you need to consider how fragile your product is. If you are shipping something very fragile, or a volatile substance, you will need to choose more protective options and potentially design a more comprehensive product protection plan.
Speaking with a load securement specialist can help you decide what kind of product protection assets you will need. Whether it is air bags, void fillers, void filler panels, or collapsible void fillers, they all have different capabilities.
Why Do I Need Load Securement?
Load securement is important to all industries. Cargo loss or damage is costly, causing you to lose profit on damaged goods and potentially lose the business of unhappy customers who receive damaged goods. Load securement and proper product protection can ensure that your shipments do not leak, spill, shift, or dislodge from their place in the shipping container during transportation.
Utilizing the proper product protection and load securement plans also protects those who are working in the shipping industry. Loading, transporting, and unloading products is a dangerous task. Load securement plans that prevent any kind of movement during transportation keep those who are responsible for the transportation of your products safe.
Ultimately, load securement protects your products and your profits, while keeping those working with your product during transportation safe.
Develop a Custom Load Securement Plan for Better Product Protection
Freight securement products offer diverse capabilities, and an expert manufacturer of product protection supplies can help you determine which are best suited for your specific needs. They can help guide you toward the right products and give you more information so you can make the correct decision that will provide your products with the best protection.
Working with a team of freight protection experts can help you develop a custom damage prevention plan to secure your products better. To achieve the ultimate product protection, a custom plan can be designed with your unique needs, budget, shipping modality, and products in mind.
Contact Sunrise Manufacturing for Superior Product Protection
Sunrise Manufacturing has a variety of products that you can choose from for your product protection needs. With our unique SQUARE BAG® and BUF-BAG® air bag solutions, DIAMOND-CORR® line of collapsible void fillers, and SUNRISE SMALL CELL™ void filler panels, we offer all of the unique products you need to design the perfect product protection plan.
If you aren’t sure which of our freight protection products would be best for your needs, our team of freight load securement specialists can help you design a custom damage prevention system. Our team will assess your key load characteristics, the nature of your product, the nature of your packaging, and how the load is organized to create the most secure and protective custom damage prevention system.
We don’t stop there. At Sunrise Manufacturing, we want to support you every step of the way with our extensive services and capabilities, so we:
- Provide on-site training for loading dock personnel to maximize safety and efficiency while still complying with the Association of American Railroads loading requirements
- Evaluate load unitizing materials
- Evaluate blocking and bracing materials
- Complete origin and destination inspections and audits
- Provide CAD drawings and load diagrams
- Act as Railroad Liaison
Choose Sunrise Manufacturing to be your custom product protection plan designer. Contact us today to get started on designing your unique, custom damage prevention systems.