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A Product Design That Would Never Work in America or China: "No Stack" Shipping Pyramids

By Rain Noe - October 23, 2020

in Object Culture

I was amused to see that companies like U-Line and others make these "No Stack" pyramids to be placed atop packages:

Image source: RatMan00

The idea is that package-senders pay extra to have one of these affixed atop their packages, and throughout the entire shipping journey, no one puts anything on top of the box and damages it.

My first thought was "That's cute--but it'd never work in America." At least, not consistently. There's are entire Reddit threads (here and here) populated by comments about these things from truckers and shippers, and I'm admittedly just assuming they're American by the comments, like:

- "Work at Home Depot, can confirm they don't stop those that aren't paid to give a shit."

- "Use to work at UPS we'd just rip them off lmao"- "I get paid to stack. Not to care or read."

- "At my current job I have never seen one of those intact! Every single one I've seen here has already been crushed because people don't care."

- "We shipped and received fragile equipment all the time, and I never saw one of those intact. Always bent, but mostly squashed."

- " I understand most people don't work in freight/warehousing but it's all about hitting numbers and being fast/efficient…. When a fork lift driver is loading a trailer out, he is taught to treat it like tetris or a puzzle. If your pallet, with or without a cone, fits his puzzle when stacked with another pallet, thats whats going to happen. Not saying its right, just saying it what happens."

- "I am a shipping manager at a company that puts these on everything! They don't prevent a damn thing. Pallet show up to my customers all the time with these crushed."

- "In my experience, it has never stopped the trucking companies from stacking our equipment."

And hilariously:

"I see this is made of cardboard, that way you don't have to deal with pyramid-shaped holes in things."

There were just a handful of comments from shippers saying they do respect these things.

I could see these pyramids being respected in a country like Japan or Germany, where folks generally stick to the rules; I just can't see these offering reliable protection in America or China, for that matter. In my experience neither of these countries are consistently interested in providing great customer service. And where workers may not always be careful, the best you could probably do is follow this guy's advice:

"Before launching a delicate electronic product, we sent out a number of weighted and instrumented boxes with Tip 'n Tells, G-meters, and these cones via different shippers then chose the one that didn't mishandle the shipments (as much)."

o

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Dale Mason

4 years ago

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When most warehouses/DCs see these useless signs they take it as a personal challenge to see how many boxes they can stack on top of it. If want to 100% assure the package is tortured and endless number of stacked on it-put this sign on it. The usual treatment is to flip the box over -no sign on the other end lol while stacking it 4 high in a trailer

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jason campbell

4 years ago

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At first glance I thought the pyramid was the shipping box.

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Donald Jones

4 years ago

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if you pack the pyramids full of stink bugs I bet that would be a deterrent.

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Alessandra Canfield Petrecca

4 years ago

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I was wondering if two empty boxes staked on the top of the main box wouldn't be more efficient...🤔

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Nathan D.

4 years ago

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Their main purpose is making it easier to collect on the insurance claims you already know you're going to file and have factored in to the cost of doing business with national freight carriers that are giving you a cheaper rate than the regional ones that provide their drivers with adequate training and equipment.

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- Francisco Hernandez
  
  Nathan D.
  
  4 years ago
  
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  Something I try not to do is give my opinion on something I haven't used or tried before. Finding responses on blogs regarding a specific subject is narrow minded at best. I saw a lot of these intact and if you are shipping thousands of dollars across the country these make sense specially if you are asking the receiver to photograph the package when it's delivered. Yes, a lot of drivers abuse their loads but the ones working for reputable companies take pride in their work. Just like every industry. One step down is the "this way up" arrow stickers. One step up are tip and tell or shock watch indicators.
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