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LTL shipments can now take performance packaging route

Users of performance-based Rule 180 for less-than-truckload shipments may face some obstacles. But opportunities exist to reduce transit damage and please customers.

At the company?s Aurora, IL, Center for Customer Satisfaction, Weyerhaeuser?s Dick Warrick stands at the control panel of a vibr
At the company?s Aurora, IL, Center for Customer Satisfaction, Weyerhaeuser?s Dick Warrick stands at the control panel of a vibr

Rule 180 is revolutionary in that it allows packagers for the first time to ship products in performance-tested fiberboard boxes. But the revolution has been slow getting started.

Rule 180 is administered by the National Classification Committee, part of Alexandria, VA-based National Motor Freight Traffic Assn., made up of about 100 trucking representatives who are elected each year by state. The number of representatives depends on state size. Rule 180 serves as a test standard to safeguard less-than-truckload (LTL) common carrier shipments packed in fiberboard or corrugated boxes.

NCC adopted this standard as a general rule (180), that became effective January 21, 1995. Technical corrections have since been adopted. The finalized version became effective April 29. Rule (or Item) 180 provides an alternative to the Test Shipment Permit program (Item 689); and other packaging rules not relating to drums, pails, bags and numbered packages.

NMFTA packaging engineer Jerry Stone says his group "would love" to include these packages. He says that NCC is waiting for interest to be shown by technical committees that represent makers of pails, steel containers and drums.

The new performance standard is aimed at packagers of high-end merchandise. For them, the added protection against damage is well worth the added cost of improved packaging. The standard also applies to less-chic items. Plumbing manufacturers, for example, that despair when a toilet bowl cracks during shipment, may be ecstatic over 180.

If a company uses a 180 box, and the product is damaged, the container is analyzed by an independent lab certified by the International Safe Transit Asso- ciation, Chicago, IL, and registered with the NCC. If that lab finds the box in satisfactory condition, the truckers pay damages. If not, packagers "eat" the cost.

"As damage claims within the trucking industry have been conservatively estimated at $3 billion annually, there exists a significant potential business opportunity to qualified testing labs to perform as arbitrators using the third-party testing concept," NMFTA's Stone says.

"Rule 180 now provides the opportunity for any ISTA-certified package testing laboratory to act as a damage claims arbitrator, or a 'third-party laboratory.' In the event of a disputed carrier/shipper damage claim, the procedure now exists for these matters to be settled through testing by an independent, non-biased third-party laboratory."

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