Preparing goods so the movement goes the way the quotation assumed

Once goods are on a vehicle, nobody handles the individual items. What is lifted, moved through a hub and delivered is the handling unit, so the unit has to be able to survive being handled — stable when tilted, liftable from at least two sides, and no wider than the base it sits on.

A load that overhangs the pallet is the most common single defect. It cannot be placed against another load, it is damaged first when anything shifts, and it occupies more floor than the pallet dimensions suggest — which means it was quoted as something smaller than it is.

Stretch wrap that binds the goods to the pallet turns a stack of items into one unit. Wrap that only encircles the goods without anchoring them to the base leaves a stack that can slide off it, which is what happens on the first roundabout.

For heavier or denser loads, strapping to the pallet does what wrap alone cannot. For anything with a high centre of gravity, the question worth asking before the vehicle arrives is what happens to this unit when the trailer brakes.

Goods that can carry another pallet on top release the space above them for somebody else's cargo, and a shared vehicle prices that. Goods marked unstackable occupy their footprint to the roof whether or not they use it.

Where a load genuinely cannot be stacked, that is the answer and it should be stated clearly — a pallet stacked against instruction is a damaged pallet. Where the instruction has been applied out of habit to goods that could take a light second tier, it is worth revisiting before the enquiry goes out, because it is one of the larger levers on a part-load price.

A handling unit that arrives at a consolidation hub without clear identification on the outside is a unit somebody has to open or guess about. Marks should be legible on at least two sides, should match the consignment note and the packing list, and should survive the journey — a label under stretch wrap stays attached; one on top of it does not.

Where a consignment is several units, numbering them (1 of 4, 2 of 4) is the cheapest possible protection against a partial delivery that nobody notices until later.

The weight, the footprint and the loaded height are what the movement is priced and planned against. An estimate carried forward from a previous shipment is the usual source of a revision at the ramp, and the revision is never in the shipper's favour because the vehicle has already been committed.

Anything that changes the regime — a battery, a fuel, a gas, a solvent, a pressurised component, a temperature requirement — belongs in the enquiry rather than in the packaging. A forwarder can arrange for it; it cannot arrange for something it has not been told about.