Boxes: Now and Forever!

A while back, (12 odd or so years back) it seemed that my life revolved around boxes. Boxes to be unloaded off trucks…boxes to be opened and contents distributed for sale…items not selling/out of date to be collected, boxed and then returned. Boxes surrounded me. I even sent the staff a haiku, by email (email being a somewhat flashy thing at that time), asking that they save certain sized boxes so I could do returns. I named my tape gun (used to make boxes) Mjolnir…the name of Thor’s hammer, which for you non-comic book dorks, you can read more about here.

It wasn’t a bad life in many ways (I had a very pleasant girlfriend at this time), but due to all the time I spend around boxes and handling them, I actually often smelled like corrugated cardboard (which, for the record, smell somewhat like stale and sour dirt with a slight hint of decay). While I don’t unload trucks for a living anymore, I am often surprised by how often I think of those days whenever I handle a large box.

As a result of Project Arcturus, I’m spending fair bit of time around my buddy corrugated cardboard again. Back in the Project Arcturus version 0.3 period, I used to fish boxes out of my former employer’s box dumpster (nothing beats free boxes) but I’m working at slightly more pro level nowadays. Now I order specific sized boxes for various items (while debating exciting things like size flexibility vs. price vs. box weight-ie, will this slightly larger box push the total weight over the pound increment and thus drive up my shipping costs?). While correct sized boxes are certainly easier to deal with and not necessarily expensive in their own right when ordered online (usually between 50 cents and $1.50), they are expensive to have shipped to me. Even though they are being shipped a relatively short distance (less than 250 miles), each order collectively weighs 50-100lbs in total. It’s not uncommon that the shipping cost is often 50% of the actual item cost. $100 worth of boxes often costs $40-50 to have shipped to my house. That’s a pretty big expense, although understandable…I know the UPS guy hates me when I get those box shipments…driving his nice cushy residential route filled with 99% light boxes and then he’s got my 150 lb, 5 cubic meter in size, box order rolling around in the back of his truck

I was in Costco a few days ago and I saw this.

I thought it was an interesting item for Costco to carry, since it’s one of those items that you really don’t consume that frequently….after all, how often do you move? It’s cost is around $50, which I think is quite reasonable for all that one gets: 30 boxes of various sizes, 50 feet of bubble wrap, 4 pounds of packing paper, box dividers for glassware, 3 rolls of tape, two tape dispensers, two marker…all in one, extremely large, heavy and unwieldy box. But if you were buy these items from a moving company, I’m sure they would cost significantly more. While the boxes weren’t necessarily the perfect sizes I could use, they are close enough and since I’m avoiding the shipping cost, the price is right….and I can always use rolls of tape, packing paper, and markers as well.

After I manhandled it into the back of my car, I noticed this.

Now at first I thought it was something cute/humorous like Apple’s warning to not eat the ipod shuffle, but then I noticed that this was printed on every side of the box. And I concluded that whimsy is likely one of those things that Costco likes to avoid having on their packaging (most items sold at Costco are custom packaged/specifically packaged for sale only at Costco). I’ve since concluded that it is probably someone at Allied’s legal department that had this phase put there. After all, if there’s a picture of truck on the box, I imagine the legal department’s view is that consumers will somehow expect that a truck is going to in the box. Then I sighed….I understand why it is there but I also think it’s just so retarded and how stupid things are getting in the US that things like this are deemed necessary.