Avoid Shipping Horror Stories by Choosing the Right Shipping Supplies

If you ship packages frequently for your business, you have likely had a bad experience at some point in your career. Packages can be mishandled, fragile items may be broken, and in some cases, your items may be stolen. Fortunately, you can minimize the chance that you will encounter one of these shipping horror stories if you choose the right shipping supplies, and other helpful tips are outlined below.

Include Extra Padding

Even if your item isn’t considered fragile, it is safe to be cautious and wrap it one extra time with bubble wrap, foam, or tissue paper. The one time that you choose not to include the extra padding could be the time you encounter a careless mailman or delivery person.

Find Affordable Shipping Supplies

It is important to find affordable shipping tools and materials in order to keep your costs low. Do your research in order to find the best deal on these supplies so that your items can be thoroughly protected without having to spend extra money.

Create a Shipping Checklist

In order to ensure that your items are being shipped properly, create a checklist of every activity that needs to be completed when an item in your business is shipped. This will be especially helpful if you need to have someone else help you to ship your items in the future.

Insure Everything

Your customers might not want to pay the extra money for insurance, but it may be in your best interest to do so on your own. You can also include it within the shipping price. Therefore, if anything is ever lost in transit, your expenses will be covered.

Use Plastic Wrap

Some logistics professionals recommend always wrapping items in plastic before shipping, regardless of how fragile they may or may not be. This could be as simple as dropping an item into a Ziploc bag. In the event that your package encounters water during the shipment process, you can rest assured that it won’t be damaged.

Invest in a Shipping Scale

You no longer have to go to the post office and weigh each of your items. Instead, invest in a shipping scale so that you can determine exactly how much your item weighs to save yourself time.

Complete Package Information Thoroughly

It is important to make sure that your shipping information is as complete and as thorough as possible when mailing out a shipment. Use your address labels to write out full names and addresses, or invest in a shipping stamp in order to make putting down your return address even easier.

[2/6/2014]