Building a wood crate to protect and ship your equipment can be expensive and time-consuming, especially when specialized packaging, like military or international crating standards, are required. Ensuring safety and compliance in the international shipping industry is a must. Custom crating enhances shipping capabilities, especially for industrial equipment or items more likely to incur or cause damage. These standards and customization adds extra research, materials, and time to the crating and packaging process, costing your company more time and money. However, instead of carrying these costs and the associated risks, you can rely on an experience crating company to provide all your crating needs.

Building a shipping crate costs more than you think. Here’s a breakdown:

• Materials and tools – While specialized tools aren’t required, you still need to have a few on hand, like drills, drill bits, saws, eye protection, measuring tapes, etc. The materials needed include plywood, structural lumber, screws, wood glue, and hardware. You also must consider the quality of your lumber and prices for lumber and plywood have significantly increased over the past few years, further increasing these costs.
• Labor – Depending on the size of the product or equipment you’re shipping, building a wood crate can take hours or even a day or two. In some cases, you may need a small team to deal with larger materials. Do you have craftsmen who understand the valuable equipment and skill required to not damage the equipment during transit?
• Insurance and overhead – Workers are required to be covered by workers compensation insurance, and there are the other costs of hiring and maintaining a workforce, like benefits, employer taxes, training, and providing safety equipment. Your company also spends a portion of its overhead supporting its workforce.
• Cost of damaged equipment – Replacing the product includes the cost of materials or components, labor, and company overhead to rebuild or assemble a new product to match the one that was damaged. When experts are not building a wood shipping crate, you create the risk of damage to your equipment.

Outsourcing your crating to a crating company can save you money in a variety of ways:

• Experience – experienced craftsmen have years of knowledge to draw from when it comes to designing and building wood shipping crates. Crating companies, such as MEI Rigging & Crating continue to learn from each crate they build, and we share these lessons with our team. In addition, we ensure that our team is up to date on all the latest techniques and materials available to protect your valuable equipment.
• Speed – With a skilled team dedicated to only crating and packaging, a crating company can build just what you need, even custom crating, faster. This reduces wait times and keeps the labor costs for each crate low.
• Custom Features – When building a wood crate, there are a variety of features that need to be included for specific equipment depending on the size, shape, and sensitivity of the equipment. An experienced crating company can provide a wood crate with an enclosure for maximum protection or partially enclosed for ventilation. Removable panels for easy access and hinged doors are also an option.
• Lower materials costs – Crating companies order materials in bulk, allowing us to save money and pass those savings on to you.
• Reduced risk – With highly skilled and experienced craftsmen, the risk of equipment damage is greatly reduced. MEI assists in the development and engineering design, according to the needs customer, as well as the requirements of the specific material to be packed.
• Turnkey Solution – At MEI, we are a turnkey, rigging company offering storage of your wood shipping crates for long-term or just-in-time delivery and transportation to and from job sites. Once your equipment is on the job site, our riggers can then rig your equipment into place.

The MEI Rigging & Crating team can build wood crates for equipment of any size or shape. Our crating services include:

• Custom crating – Our custom wood crates include shelves, braces, handles, hinges, wheels, and other specialty protection for your cargo. MEI also specializes in specific packaging for delicate instruments by using foam products to absorb vibrations and shock, as well as designing special engineered crating for oversized, electronic, and delicate equipment.
• Military crating – Our team can construct military crates, military spec packaging, and aerospace packaging. Our dedicated military specification packaging experts are trained to complete the required labeling and documentation.
• International crating – All crating for shipments outside the United States must be ISPM 15 compliant and carry the proper stamp with the required IPPC symbol. MEI has the ISPM 15 stamps and clearance needed to ship anywhere in the world.
• Hazardous materials shipping – Hazmat packaging requirements differ considerably and can be complicated. MEI has a certified team that packs all hazardous materials according to IATA, IMO, and DOT regulations.

Our team at MEI can provide crating services at one of our 18 locations or we can supply on-site services when needed. Contact us to get started.