Gateway OT/Crate and Freight/DeliveXy

So another peak season is upon us and with the growth of e commerce year over year, this holiday shipping season is sure to bring more volume and more challenges. The number one challenge during this time of year is ensuring your items arrive safely to their destination. With so many packages and freight shipments running through the system, damage is the number one issue facing shippers. It has been estimated that shipping packages between October 15 and December 15 increases your chances of damage to your shipment by 36%. In fact some major carriers have published statistics that show over half of their freight damage claims for the year occur in this 2 month period. In a major study of online retailers most report that they plan on a 5% damage ratio of product being shipped during the year and another recent study indicated that the 3 major carriers UPS, USPS and FedEx have damage ratios of 11%, 10% and 7% respectively during the year. The peak season deluge of ship...

We have picked up, crated and packed some pretty large heavy and awkward items over the years including this metal transformer. If you are a movie buff you would recognize this as Bumblebee, at 8 ft high and weighing over 1,000 lbs he needed to be moved from a basement movie theater and shipped to be shown at a Trade Show in Texas. This would have been a much easier job if he could have just transformed into a Camaro and drove himself to the Expo, but in the logistics world not much is that easy. He did disassemble into a few pieces, the largest and heaviest being a leg-torso fitting that was close to 300 lbs. After having four guys get the pieces up a staircase we got Bumblebee back to the warehouse and custom crated him and shipped him off to the show. Once in our warehouse, handling, packing and crating was easy. The logistics of picking these types of items up or delivering them is the difficult part.  Some items we crate, pack and ship are not heavy but just L...

Like many freight shippers you probably have a number of different sized pallets sitting around to ship your product on. For years shipping departments have settled with shipping product on standard sized skids 48 X 40 or some variation thereof. But many have learned that shipping product on skids that are too big or too small leads to damaged product, unhappy customers and lost revenue.  The biggest mistake, and what leads to the most shipping claims is product overhang. You have a 55" box and you let it hang over a standard 48" pallet. This most certainly leads to damage. In a freight system either loading full truckload or LTL, pallet bases are used to bumper each other, in other words once the pallet on the forklift touches the next pallet the forklift driver stops. So invariably if your product is overhanging a pallet there will be pressure from the palleted items being loaded next to it. This will cause damage. This box below greatly overhangs its palle...

V.C.I is an acronym for Volatile Corrosion Inhibitor. V.C.I is a chemical (a film) applied to poly and paper products that provides rust protection against moisture and humidity for steel, iron and metallic components. In the picture above you can see the yellow poly film we use, this is the V.C.I wrap. Gateway Crate and Freight utilizes V.C.I wrap when we ship these types of materials via ocean L.C.L (Less than Container Load) or full container load. We primarily utilize a poly wrap on these materials to protect the items from the damaging effects of salt water and the ocean humidity. The V.C.I wrap works as a desiccant which is a hygroscopic substance used as a drying agent, if you have ever seen the little white canisters in medicine bottles or white packets these are filled with silica gel, an inert, nontoxic water insoluble solid that basically is there to protect your items from the damaging effects of moisture. When shipping International or domestically on the ...

Our clients have become accustomed to using our online transportation management system (T.M.S), ACCUFRATE, to quote, book and track their freight shipments. These clients who use the system to schedule outbound, inbound and third party shipments, all online, love the fact that they can manage their own transportation, they pick the carrier, service and price they want for their shipments. We call these users the (D.I.Y) Do It Yourself T.M.S shipping managers. The whole idea behind a T.M.S is to automate shipping functions. I started developing T.M.S software for use in worldwide distribution centers in the early 90s. Developing T.M.S software that ports to accounting or ERP software and rates, routes, books, tracks and produces reports on these activities was at the time, the most important development in supply chain logistics. Since these early days the T.M.S has come along way and has made it easy for anyone, even those with not much experience in Traffic or Freight managem...

Shipping International in or on any wood packing material like pallets or crates requires the shippers adherence to the rules and regulation of the FAO or the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization who established regulations for Wood Packing materials controls through country cooperation with the IPPC or International Plant Protection Convention. What does all this mean? Well if your an exporter of goods and you want the items packaged for freight transportation it is likely you will want to use wood pallets or crates. If you do use these items the WPM must have a stamp (Like Gateway Crate and Freight's Stamp pictured above, our license number is US-20468) visible on the outside of each pallet or crate. The stamp is the certification that the material used in the packing meets the IPPC requirements of being either Heat Treated HT or treated with Methyl Bromide MB. On our stamp above you can see for this crate we utilized Heat Treated wood signified by the HT...

Shipping Truckload or LTL shipments to Canada is pretty easy for someone who has been doing it for decades, but for a U.S company shipping to a client in Canada for the first time the rules and paperwork requirements can be pretty daunting. I have been fortunate to have logistics experience on both sides of the border and have benefited from years of experience in dealing with the Canadian Border Services Agency and Revenue Canada while bringing a multitude of commodities in and out of Canada. The transportation of materials in and out of Canada has become seamless, a routine and easy task for truckload haulers and LTL Carriers, but for many U.S manufacturers, distributors and e commerce retailers the paperwork and customs requirements can be a bit confusing. We have a client who sells auto part kits and we recently shipped an LTL shipment to the province of Alberta for him. He was here at our offices for over an hour asking questions about Canada shipping. One thing h...