Unlocking the Secret to Building Crates that Won’t Fail

Good things come in small packages. But great big things require great big crates. Manufacturing a great product will only benefit your company if you can find an effective way to get those goods into the hands of your customers. Wood crates are the most common containers used for shipping great big items as they can be adapted relatively easily to meet the requirements of almost any item needing to be transported, even large items.

A wood crate is a framework of boards fastened together to form an inflexible structural enclosure that will protect items enclosed within it. A crate differs from a wood box in construction method and in strength. A box consists of flat boards on the top, bottom, sides and ends and the strength of the boards dictates the strength of the box. A crate gets its strength from a framework of interconnecting boards on all sides. The basic framework of a wood crate is similar to trusses used in the construction of bridges. Both the bridge and crate frameworks are designed to absorb and distribute stress.

Perhaps the most frequently given reason that folks are hesitant to switch to wooden crates is the fact that their use requires more specialized, expensive tools and crate fasteners to seal them. While both cardboard and plastic shipping containers can be easily sealed with tape, wooden crates require you to use screws as crate fasteners to securely seal them up.

And herein lies the secret to a strong crate: skimping on the fastener used will negatively impact the integrity and strength of the wood crate itself.

Combination screw and nail fasteners have become a favorite fastener for building crates as they combine the speed of nails driven in by a pneumatic nailer with the holding strength of screws. The SCRAIL® fastener from The BECK Fastener Group®, for example, can be used to build or seal crates at a rate two times faster than collated screws and up to eight times faster than traditional bulk screws driven in with an ordinary power drill or screwdriver. Sealing crates can now be done quickly and effectively.

As an added bonus, SCRAIL® fasteners can be removed almost as easily as they are installed with little or no damage done to the wooden crate or the SCRAIL® themselves. This means that both the wood and the crate fasteners can be reused, reducing the cost of using wooden crates for shipping.