MRR #339 record packing
This month I’d like to start out talking about BRUTALITY. Not the brutality of grindcore, or the pit at an NYHC show, I’m talking about the brutality of the US Postal Service and UPS. Despite it’s complaints about declining revenues, the post office is shipping tons of small parcels due to the explosion of online retailing. And UPS while better equipped to handle parcels, is smashing your little box of records between tons of other parcels. It seems like these days I spend/waste a lot of my record distribution time dealing with damaged parcels. I get a large number of records these days from Europe in parcels that are totally smashed, with record covers that are completely crushed, sometimes wet and always unsellable as new records. Much time, effort and money is wasted these days on having records sit on a shelf while a label sends replacement covers before they can be sold.

I’d like to talk a bit about record packing and mailing. Back when I first got into distribution, we didn’t put much thought into packaging. I can remember shipping out tons of orders in just whatever empty beer case or box was around with some crumpled newspaper. This is no longer good enough. Consider the massive numbers of parcels the post office and UPS are shipping each day. Picture your box of LPs at the bottom of a huge stack of bigger heavier boxes as it bounces down the highway, then in the cargo hold of a plane and gets thrown onto truck after truck until it reaches it’s destination. I think there are three major factors that can protect your records from destruction, double boxing, double wall cardboard, and taping. This sounds simplistic, but the number of trashed record I get in the mail bears out that it’s a science that should be studied in more detail.
Let’s talk a bit about how records get damaged. Record covers tend to get bent on the corners. This is especially true of European LP covers, many of which are printed on much thinner cardboard than US and Canadian Lp covers. Record covers not in plastic sleeves or shrink wrap that are packed too loosely and have cheap printing also can get pretty bad scuffing and ring wear. Also LPs can split the seams of the jacket “seam splits”. Seam splits are kind of controversial. Shrink wrap and plastic sleeves are supposed to prevent seam splits, but a lot of people today ask for records shipped outside the jackets to prevent seam splits. Removing the LP from the shrink wrap kind of defeats the purpose of shrink wrap (protecting the LP) I have always chosen to package my Lps in plastic sleeves, since the first thing most collectors do when they buy a record is put it in a plastic sleeve. I am always amazed at how many labels choose to ship their Lps with NEITHER plastic sleeves or shrink wrap. This is inviting damage such as scuffing and seam splits. Another form of damage is where thin/cheap cardboard covers get kind of pressed or mashed and you can see the outline of the LP through the cover. Some LPs arrive warped (though this is thankfully rare) or broken (also surprisingly rare). 7”s tend to survive in shipping much better. They are easier to pack in bulk and mail flat in small quantities. This means your 7” in an envelope or small flat mailer goes with stuff like magazines and catalogs as opposed to under a huge pile of heavy boxes.

Another thing to keep in mind is that records travel much better flat than on end. Almost everyone these days stacks records flat, so this is one lesson that seems to have been learned. If you stack records on end in a box, they will get crushed and bent much more readily than those laid flat. This is because most of the damage in shipping is from tons of boxes being piled on top of each other, not smashing into each other side to side.


Now let’s talk about packing big boxes of records. First, double wall (or double strength) cardboard boxes are some of best protection. This cardboard is just extra thick and heavy and resists crushing and bending much better than typical cardboard. I use ULINE double wall cardboard boxes for all my big shipments now. Second, double boxing is the best way to ensure records are not bashed up or damaged. I find that two boxes with the outer box slightly larger works best, with an inch or two of newspaper, packing peanuts or bubble wrap between. Two boxes that are about the same size stuffed together don’t do nearly as much to protect records. Some labels get really serious about putting a LOT of padding between the boxes. In fact, the USPS will NOT pay out on an insurance claim unless there is 3 inches of padding around a record. And UPS will NOT issue insurance unless records are double boxed. A third, and often overlooked factor is taping up the boxes. Shipping boxes almost always fail on the corners. I have examined many damaged shipments and a pattern emerges. Your nice rigid square box you dropped off at the post office, emerges at the other end of it’s journey soft, pliable and smashed into a roundish oblong form. This is why double wall cardboard helps alot, it just doesn’t get pounded into a soft and pliant form like single wall. Again, European cardboard is almost always worse than US and Canadian here. The best thing you can do is to TAPE EVERY CORNER OF THE BOX. As boxes get crushed and piled upon the corners blow out. Once the corners blow out they get crushed flatter and flatter and lose their rigidity fast. Even if there is a lot of padding in the box, it gets smashed flat. The records inside will get thrashed quickly. Taping up the corners helps keep them from blowing out. Even better is to put some scraps of card board in every corner folded over into the corner as you packaged. And best yet are corner protectors from shipping supply companies like ULINE. I have increasingly starting using the corner protectors as they keep the inner boxes snug with a gap for padding, and project against both crushing and side impact. It doesn’t hurt to wrap tape around every axis of the box as well. Some of the least damaged boxes I get from Europe are heavily wrapped in tape.
A lot of European pressing plants use a double box system with 25 or 50 count boxes inside a bigger box for shipping. These boxes might be OK for shipping inside Europe. But they DO NOT survive well in transatlantic shipping. The outer boxes are way too soft and there’s not enough room for padding between. The inner boxes alone are never enough for shipping overseas. The worst damaged parcels I get from overseas are a small stack of records in one of these pressing plant boxes with no or minimal padding.
Now let’s talk about shipping single and small quantities of records. As noted before 7”s seem to hold up the best. Typically you can just cut any two pieces of cardboard and tape the four corners. Putting the record inside a padded envelope as well can help. I shy away from putting 7”s in manila envelopes unless there’s some stiff cardboard in there, for fear they will get bent. 7” mailers are of course even better because they have fold up sides which offer added rigidity. Also when shipping 7”s you are rarely too concerned about weight driving up the shipping cost, so putting a small stack in any little box you can scrounge up is usually OK as long as there’s tons of padding around the actual records. The bigger the box though, the more likely it’s going to spend it’s shipping life smashed under many bigger boxes, so get more and more thorough the bigger the box you are packing.

Single LPs are harder to protect, although it seems to me the biggest problem with shipping single LPs (as far as feedback from customers goes) is seam splits. These are typically eliminated in small shipments by separating the LP from the sleeve. This is something I did not do for many years, as I always felt that the plastic sleeve was supposed to protect against seam splits. But I got so much customer feedback on this issue, I started taking the time to separate most all non-shrink wrapped Lps from the jackets for shipping. Lp mailers are great for shipping small numbers of Lps, but they are increasingly costly. At 50 to 60 cents each a mailer doesn’t sound too expensive, but with the margins on one or two Lp orders super low it’s difficult to recoup this cost as well as paypal fees and postage and still sell a record at a reasonable price. So many people (including myself) look for salvaged cardboard to cut up for mailers. I cut up appliance boxes and the like for LP mailers, especially if the cardboard is double walled. I’m often seen rummaging through the cardboard dumpster at the record store for good shipping boxes to re-use. I find that scoring the cardboard with a knife to give it a raised edge (like an LP mailer) helps a great deal to make it more rigid and prevent damage.
I personally prefer the LP mailers and buy all my shipping supplies from ULINE who have a warehouse here in Minneapolis where I can pick up the goods. I’ve tried many other mailers sourced from online retailers that were cheaper, but none of them are as sturdy as the ones from ULINE. I would also say to anyone who does a lot of mail order, save all your LP mailers and find a local record shop or distro to give them too, they will be stoked to save on shipping supplies and you are recycling the mailers for their best possible use. Anyone who runs a label or distro can tell you about LP mailers they’ve gotten records in with layers of address labels on them as collectors and distros have re used mailers over and over again. I have toyed with the idea of giving people a discount on show admission if they brought their LP mailers just like some promoters do with canned food for the homeless.
I was going to talk about the UK Subs this month, but here we are at 1700 words just talking about tape and cardboard…..

Publication Date:
January 1, 1984

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