Can a Shipping Crate Eliminate Damage? Yes.

Secure and Sustainable Crating Solutions Rewrite the Rules of Cargo Protection

For millennia, shippers have accepted damage as an inevitable consequence. But what if you could find a shipping crate platform that eliminates damage?

Tompkins Ventures’ partners have that solution. This revolutionary shipping crate platform solves three of the greatest pain points in logistics: damage, environmental waste and theft. In fact, over years of operation, no customer has ever reported damage.

That record is unmatched in a global transportation environment. Depending upon industry and geography, damaged goods account for anywhere from 2% to 21% of shipments.

Eliminating this damage can be an enviable competitive advantage when companies measure their cargo in millions of dollars. Wood, cardboard and packaging may have sufficed for sacks of grain or boxes of shoes. But companies need better solutions to ship integrated server cabinets, surgical robots, advanced medical equipment, defense electronics, robotics, automation systems and more. Such higher-value goods make the packaging itself a mission-critical part of the supply chain.

Controlling Damage in a High-Risk Environment

Material handling in the less-than-truckload (LTL) shipping market has deteriorated. Forklifts pierce crates. Cargo is dropped from docks or tipped off ramps. Units fall from forklifts.

Traditional wood crates were never engineered for this reality. They splinter under impact, collapse under stress and offer little vibration absorption. By contrast, our partner designed this platform from the ground up for the rough and tumble LTL environment. Its flexible double-wall system disperses shocks, vibrations and impacts, while also eliminating forklift penetration damage.

And in the real world, these reusable shipping crates have performed. Customers have tested the system in ways that would terrify most shipping managers:

• A customer tried to jump a loaded container over a ramp. The box crashed from an eight-foot drop. The computers inside? Safe.
• Forklifts have dropped containers from nine feet. Cargo arrived intact.
• Units have fallen off docks. Still no damage.

A 40-year veteran of freight handling summed up the ease and reliability of the system: “Having worked with pallets and wrapping stuff and moving things for 40 years, this was great for me because it was just like putting up a kids playset outside. It was beautiful and survived all our drop tests.”

These easy-to-assemble crates allow teams to set them up quickly without special tools. Easy to use and zero reported cargo damage ever? That kind of combination is unprecedented in shipping crates and packaging.

Environmental Gains Beyond Comparison

The logistics industry is under enormous pressure to reduce waste. Wooden crates consume trees, nails, fuel and landfill space. They are expensive to return, because they cannot collapse. Most companies simply throw them away.

This new platform changes the equation entirely:

• Reusable shipping crates offer up to 94% environmental savings compared to wooden crates.
• Zero-waste solution – containers collapse to less than 30% of their assembled size, making them economical to return and reuse.
• Each reuse saves trees, fuel and the carbon dioxide associated with production and disposal.

This is high-quality packaging engineered for the circular economy. Instead of filling landfills with splintered crates and wasted wood, companies get crates that are endlessly reusable, endlessly collapsible and endlessly sustainable.

For shippers who want to reduce waste, few choices will have a greater impact than shifting away from wood and cardboard toward this smarter platform.

A Universal Shipping Platform That Protects Million-Dollar Shipments

Loss prevention is another pain point in logistics. Cargo theft is rising worldwide. Some companies report annual theft losses exceeding $100 million.

Our partner designed this platform’s security system with those risks in mind:

• Locking systems cannot be opened without authorization.
• Electronic tracking with full chain of custody visibility
• Each unit operates like a moving warehouse, individually tracked and monitored,

In an era where a single stolen shipment can derail production lines, delay hospital procedures or compromise national defense projects, such protection is priceless.

But previously, such protection created one of the greatest inefficiencies in logistics: the proliferation of specialized containers.

Shipping a robotic arm requires one design. A medical imaging device requires another. A server cabinet requires yet another. Each unique design adds cost, complexity and waste.

Because you can’t just throw these expensive items in any old box or wooden crate. Not unless you want them to arrive damaged or even splintered to pieces.

The platform Tompkins Ventures connects customers with solves that problem. It is not simply a box. It is a universal shipping platform.

Engineered fixturing systems secure cargo along the X, Y and Z axes. A single base can be adapted to thousands of cargo types – servers, medical robots, advanced electronics, robotics, automation systems. Users can customize fixtures for unique commodities, ensuring that cargo does not move during transit

This flexibility eliminates the need for fleets of specialized crates. Shippers get one adaptable system that can carry nearly any high-value product safely, securely and sustainably.

Beyond their success in the field, labs tested these reusable shipping crates under demanding protocols.

Independent testing dropped these crates from multiple heights and angles. Vibration frequencies mimicked long-haul trucking. Forklift blades impacted the walls and risers.

Each test confirmed what real-world users discovered: these reusable shipping boxes absorb punishment while protecting cargo. The combination of flexible walls, vibration dampeners, reinforced risers and engineered latches ensures resilience that wood and cardboard cannot match.

Packaging as a Service: Smarter, Cleaner, More Cost-Effective

Some will resist change. After all, shipping has used wood for thousands of years. Businesses have used plastic boxes and packaging since the middle of the 20th century.

But be they plastic, wood or cardboard, traditional crates are a one-way cost. Companies buy them, use them once and then discard them.

Tompkins Ventures introduces a different model: packaging as a service. Customers lease these crates, reuse them as many times as they want and return them when not needed. Reusable shipping crates save money, reduce waste, free up valuable storage space and ensure consistent access to the latest generation of protective technology.

Because every wood crate and plastic box that ends up in a landfill are reminders that old systems cannot meet modern sustainability goals.

And every shipment that arrives damaged creates cascading costs: repairs, delays, lost production, angry customers and reputational harm. And every shipment that disappears due to theft is a loss no insurance policy can fully replace.

This new way of thinking about shipping offers zero reported failures, unmatched security, universal adaptability and massive environmental savings.

Modern, High-Value Supply Chains Demand Smarter Crating

The world is changing. Damage rates tolerated for purses or inexpensive consumer goods are unacceptable when companies ship multimillion-dollar integrated server cabinets or surgical robots.

So if your supply chain pros are tired of dealing with damaged goods, reporting thefts or filing for insurance claims that jack up premiums, connect with Tompkins Ventures.

Stop wasting money on crates that fail or accepting damage as inevitable. Stop compromising security. Start using a shipping crate solution that has never let a customer down.

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