Using a Custom Crate Service vs. Handling Crating In-House

When it comes to shipping large or fragile items, using a custom crate service can provide a number of benefits for your business. These benefits include:

1. Expertise and Experience: Custom crate services have the expertise and experience to properly package and protect your items during transit. They have the right equipment and knowledge to handle and package your items with care, which can help to ensure that they arrive at their destination in the same condition as they were shipped.
2. Customized Solutions: Custom crating services can provide customized solutions to meet the specific needs of your business. They can design and build crates to fit irregularly shaped items, provide additional protection for fragile items, and package multi-component items securely. Additional features such as ramps, shelves, tie downs, handles, latches, vibration reduction and more are available as well to make loading/unloading and transportation as easy as possible.
3. Cost-Effective: Custom crate services can be cost-effective for your business. Oftentimes, crating companies are able to get significantly better pricing on lumber due to the volume they order, which allows them to give you competitive pricing compared to the cost of building wood crating in-house. They can also provide you with the right crate for your items and help to ensure that your items are properly packaged and protected during transit, which can help to reduce the cost of damage and loss. Additionally, custom crating services can save your business time and resources by handling the crating process for you.
4. Time-Saving: Custom crate services can save your business time by handling the crating process for you. This means that your employees can focus on other important tasks related to your business, rather than spending time on the crating process. In our experience, companies will often pull people from other departments to build a crate. These employees typically take twice as long to build crates compared to a professional crating service and then cause downstream delays due to being pulled from their normal role.

In contrast, doing the crating in-house can be time-consuming, resource-intensive and might not provide the same level of protection and expertise as a professional custom crating service. Your employees may not have the proper training, equipment or knowledge to package and protect your items during transit.