Chapter 14. Packaging and international freight operations

• Cargo differentiation by transportation concepts
• Logistical packaging
• Containers
• Cargo and environmental impacts
• Cargo labelling
• Questions for chapter review
• Chapter bibliography

This chapter is the most technical and covers all the details starting from the size of the product packaging. It probably does not occur to the reader that the length and width of the package is important for the competitiveness of the product. Logistics is not only about the place and speed of delivery of goods, but also about the dimensions of the shipment and package. The savings in vehicle and container space when transporting many millions of product units add up to significant amounts of money. Such savings cannot be achieved in a small business, but in logistics serving global business, sizes are standardized.
The section presents international standardized packaging and transportation units, starting with box, pallet and finally container dimensions. Depending on the transported cargo, the packaging and method of transportation and even the mode of transport differ, so the chapter describes the types of cargo, their transportation methods, and vehicle capacities. The reader can find out how much cargo can be loaded into a truck, container, railway wagon, full train, ship or plane.
The material presented in the chapter allows reader to have the basics for planning large-scale raw material supply or finished product distribution operations in global business, to predict the most effective order sizes for one shipment, and to assess which mode of transport is the best to transport the shipment. The section contains material on international standardized cargo labelling, the specifics of dangerous cargo transportation, the transportation of perishable and other environmentally affected cargo. This chapter allows global business operations leaders and managers to better understand how the transportation of their raw materials, components or goods is organized from the point of view of transport companies.
With a better understanding of the technical details of transportation, even product designers immediately think about length, width, height and shape when planning product packaging, which later helps to save logistics costs and make the product more competitive than competitors.

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