Cradles serve and protect

When it comes to shipping materials, whether it's across town or across the planet, what matters most is making sure your product arrives undamaged. That's precisely the challenge the Coated Products Operations of converter Green Bay Packaging faced when shipping 2-ton rolls of its pressure-sensitive label material via rail from its plant in Green Bay, WI.

The company found that the jolting starts and side-to-side rocking motion of the boxcars caused the wood wedges it was using to loosen from the shipping pallets, allowing the rolls to move against the metal banding used to secure the product. The rolls measure 52-60 in. long and 32-50 in. in diameter and sustained heavy damage from friction with the metal banding. This movement also put additional pressure on a customized, honeycombed wedge product, causing it to fail and ultimately allowed the rolls to move even more.

There were also instances where the loosened wedges broke free of the banding altogether, even though each pallet was stretchwrapped. Along with leaving the rolls totally unprotected, this greatly increased the likelihood of a load shift that could have resulted in a derailment. It's one thing to have a semi-truck tip but quite another when it's a rail car tethered to other boxcars.

“We knew we had to do something quickly to get the damage under control because it was becoming very costly,” says Green Bay Packaging production manager Todd Keckhaver. “There were times when the entire load shifted and sustained some sort of damage.”

The solution, provided by nearby Appleton, WI-based Rollguard® Products (www.rollguard.com), was literally in-house. “I saw some incoming material from one of our suppliers packaged in a way I thought could work for our large rolls,” Keckhaver explains. “It was a fiber-roll cradle from Rollguard. They brought in product samples, which we took out to the floor and used right away to ship a couple of rolls,” Keckhaver adds. “Everything shipped just fine.”

The RF-40-FRS full-roll support cradle Green Bay Packaging uses is made from recycled-corrugated, molded pulp and measures 37 in. wide by 47 in. long. The density of the molded pulp also reportedly has less dusting compared to similar cradles made from honeycomb material, Rollguard says. And because the full-roll cradles use more surface area to support the product, they eliminate marking damage caused when roll products are supported by their edges alone.

The RF-40-FRS is engineered to hold large master rolls in place. Its higher-than-average wall height of 5-1/2 in. provides a deep well that holds the roll securely, providing a better overall fit to the contour radius of the roll compared to a honeycomb product, the supplier says.

Green Bay Packaging simply sets the Rollguard cradle on the pallet and places the roll in the cradle. Two bands are positioned across the roll lengthwise to secure it and the cradle to the pallet. Because plastic bands are used, no band padding is required. Stretch wrap is then applied to the entire pallet, protecting the roll's outer layers and further unitizing the load.

“The way it works now is perfect,” says Keckhaver. “We just take the cradle off and reuse the pallet.”

The sturdiness of the cradles has delivered an unexpected bonus to Green Bay Packaging. “We thought the cradles were a one-use item; that we'd send them one way and that would be it,” he explains. “But we often ship material to our other facilities for converting. When the product is returned here to Green Bay, the other plants actually send the cradles back. So we've been able to reuse them.”