This is a small decision that I keep being asked to justify, usually by people who think it is a marketing gesture. It is not. It is an operations choice with a real cost, and the reason we make it is that the cost lands on us instead of on you.
The film arithmetic
A standard 53-foot trailer carries 42 nested empty totes. Wrapping those in the conventional way — two to three wraps per unit at the base, plus a top pass over the stack — comes to roughly 11 lb of 80-gauge stretch film per load.
| Measure | Per load | Per 50 loads |
|---|---|---|
| Film consumed | ~11 lb | ~550 lb |
| Film cost to us | $9 – $14 | $450 – $700 |
| Labour to apply | ~12 min | ~10 hours |
| Labour to remove, at your dock | ~18 min | ~15 hours |
| Waste arriving at your dock | 11 lb | 550 lb |
| Disposal cost, yours | Hidden | $180 – $400 |
Stretch film across a year of moderate volume
Note where the lines fall. We pay for the film and the application. You pay for the removal and the disposal, and neither of those appears on any invoice, which is exactly why nobody counts them.
What we use instead
Reusable corner board with ratchet straps. Corner board is laminated paperboard angle, roughly 50 mm × 50 mm, placed at every strap contact point. Straps go laterally across the load, two per row minimum, three on a three-high stack.
The set comes back on the next inbound run on the same lane, gets inspected, and goes out again. We get around 40 round trips before the board starts delaminating at the fold, at which point it is cardboard and goes into the recycling stream.
| Item | Quantity per 42-unit load | Round trips before replacement |
|---|---|---|
| Corner board, 50 × 50 mm angle | 84 pieces | ~40 |
| Ratchet straps, 2 in | 42 | ~200 |
| Edge protectors for the top course | 12 | ~60 |
| Load bar (rear block) | 1 | Indefinite |
Dunnage set, per load
It is better restraint, not just less waste
This surprised me. I expected to trade load security for environmental virtue, and the opposite happened.
Stretch film restrains by friction and tension across the whole surface, which works well for boxed goods and poorly for a steel cage. Film slides on galvanised tube. Under braking, a film-wrapped tote stack can shift inside its own wrap.
Straps restrain mechanically. The corner board is what makes it safe — a ratchet strap tightened directly onto a cage rail crushes one tube and does nothing to the rest of the frame, whereas corner board spreads the load across several rails. We have had fewer transit damage claims since the switch, which I did not predict and cannot fully attribute, but it has not gone the other way.
Film restrains by friction. Galvanised steel is the worst possible surface for friction.
What it costs us
About $4.20 a load more than film, all in: the amortised dunnage set, the inspection labour, and the return leg — which is mostly free because the truck is coming back anyway, but not entirely, because somebody has to load and account for it.
Against that we save the film purchase. Net it out and the honest number is roughly break-even to slightly negative for us, plus the 15 hours a year of your receiving team's time that nobody was costing.
There is also an administrative cost I underestimated: dunnage goes missing. Roughly 8% of corner board does not come back on any given lane, usually because somebody at the receiving end binned it with the pallet. We now put a line on the delivery note asking for it to be set aside, which recovered about half of that.
When we will still shrink-wrap
Some automated receiving lines genuinely require a wrapped pallet — the scanner expects a particular profile, or the conveyor needs the unit to behave as a single mass. If that is your facility, say so at order time and we will quote it. We are not going to argue with your receiving line on the dock.
We also wrap for ocean containers, where a set of dunnage is not coming back, and occasionally for very long single-direction hauls where the return leg is empty mileage we would otherwise not run.
If you want to do the same
Several customers have asked how to switch their own outbound shipping. The practical sequence is simpler than it sounds.
- Pick one lane with regular two-way traffic. Do not start with your longest or least frequent route.
- Buy one set of dunnage for that lane plus 20% spare. The capital is a few hundred dollars.
- Put a line on the delivery note asking the receiver to set the dunnage aside for collection.
- Count what comes back for the first ten loads. If you are recovering over 85%, extend to a second lane.
- Keep film on hand for the exceptions. This is not an absolutist position.
The point
This is not a large environmental win. 550 lb of film a year is not going to show up in anyone's reporting, and I would be suspicious of a supplier who claimed otherwise.
What it is, is the kind of decision that makes the larger numbers credible. We say we keep 41,200 tons of HDPE in service. If we were simultaneously shipping a bale of single-use film to every customer dock, that claim would sit badly. Consistency at the small scale is what buys you the right to be believed at the large one.
Loading patterns, strap counts and the four site facts that prevent a reconsignment are all on our freight and palletizing guide.
Written by
Dale Ferreira
Logistics lead
Books every load that leaves the yard. Asks "is there a dock?" in his sleep.