subject: What Packing Items Will My Courier Provide Me With? [print this page] Many people that don't have a lot of experience dealing with couriers seem to have an expectation of some kind that their couriers are going to provide them with a certain amount of packing supplies to help them package their shipments. However, if you ask your PA freight service, there is a very good chance that they are going to tell you that they actually don't provide any kind of packing materials directly to their customers. There are good reasons for this though, and there are some companies which have a sort of compromise on the matter.
The main reason that courier companies don't offer their customers packing supplies is twofold. The first part is that they know that if they started delivering supplies to their customers to pack their shipments in, customers would stop having their shipments ready for pickup at pickup time, and would instead want to pack the shipment with the arrived packing materials, negating the need to store packing materials at their own site. This though, would slow down the delivery process far too much to make it practical.
The other half of the problem is space. Courier companies charge their customer by the amount of space that their packages take up in their vehicles among other things. They make their highest profits when they can make sure their vehicles are as full as possible. If the vehicles are full of packing supplies, this means less room for paid shipments.
The compromise is that some couriers might sell packing supplies of certain kinds to their customers. As long as they can charge enough for their packing materials, they can help offset the cost of the wasted space in their vehicles. Usually though, orders have to be placed in advance, they aren't just going to have a van full of supplies that you can buy at will.
If a courier company does sell packing supplies though, there is usually a stipulation that goes along with their offer enabling you to buy those supplies. This is that you still have to have your package ready for pickup. Some couriers even have policies that give them the right to refuse to pickup any package that is not packed properly when they arrive to take possession. This helps to keep people from abusing this type of system in a way that would delay the shipments of everyone using the courier on that given day.
