Key takeaways
- A customer who believed they got four trips per box measured 1.8 when they actually counted.
- The experiment costs about eleven dollars and five minutes a week for twelve weeks.
- Two fixes followed: a $200 modification to a tipping frame, and switching one-way shipments to reconditioned 4A stock.
- Cost per trip is the only packaging metric that matters, and no supplier can give you the number — only you can.
A metal fabricator south of the river had been buying 2A five-wall boxes for three years on the reasoning that the better grade lasted longer. When we asked how many trips they were getting, the answer was “about four”. That was an estimate, and estimates in packaging are almost always generous.
The experiment
Fifty boxes marked with a paint pen on the inside base — a number and a date. One person on the receiving dock recording, once a week, how many of the fifty were still in service.
Cost: about eleven dollars for the pen, twenty minutes of setup, five minutes a week thereafter.
| Week | Still in service | Cumulative losses | Main loss cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 50 | 0 | — |
| 2 | 44 | 6 | Damaged on first discharge |
| 4 | 38 | 12 | Forklift damage, bottom edge |
| 6 | 29 | 21 | Damaged, plus 4 shipped out and not returned |
| 8 | 19 | 31 | Shipped out one-way |
| 12 | 9 | 41 | Accumulated damage |
| 16 | 4 | 46 | — |
Average trips achieved, weighting for how long each box survived: 1.8. Not four.
Why the estimate was so wrong
Three reasons, all of them ordinary:
- Boxes shipped to customers never came back. Nobody had counted those as losses because they had done their job — but they were still boxes that had to be replaced.
- The damage was concentrated in the first two weeks, from a specific discharge operation that was tearing bottom corners. Nobody had connected the two facts.
- The people estimating were the ones who saw the good boxes. The damaged ones were removed by a different shift.
What changed
Two things, worth roughly fourteen thousand dollars a year to them.
First, they fixed the discharge operation — a two-hundred-dollar modification to a tipping frame that was catching bottom corners. Trips went from 1.8 to about 3.1 within a quarter.
Second, for the boxes going out one-way to customers, they switched from 2A to 4A reconditioned stock. If a container is making exactly one journey and being baled at the far end, paying for durability is a donation.
We had been buying one box for two jobs and another box for one job, and paying the same price for both. Nobody had ever separated them.
Do this yourself
- Mark fifty boxes on the inside base with a number and today’s date.
- Record weekly how many are still in service. Five minutes.
- Note why each one left — damaged, shipped out, wet, lost.
- After twelve weeks, calculate average trips. Then calculate landed cost divided by that number.
- Compare that figure across grades. It frequently reverses the intuitive answer.
The number you get is the only packaging metric that matters, and almost nobody has it. Suppliers cannot tell you — we know what happens to a box before it reaches you and after it comes back, but the middle is yours.
Questions