Anyone work in a packing/shipping area? Pics?

[carhunter]

Curious if anyone works in a shipping/receiving area and could share their layout? Looking to adapt something simple for my garage that is quickly getting overrun by ebay sales and shipping.

Over the years I've had several workspaces and have never committed enough to make a really efficient area.

Thanks for any advice

 

[signcrafter]

I don't work in a shipping area but I would think(depending on size of items being shipped) that you would want to create a work flow friendly space, a start and finish area. The start would be a shelf to set sold items along with print outs of the buyer's info. Then a bench or two as your work area for packaging and some shelves for boxes, tape, etc. A computer to quickly print out labels and look up buyer info and shipping info for USPS and UPS or whatever you use. Then another shelf for "done" packages that are ready to be picked up or dropped off. All of this depends on the area you have to work with and the sizes of your packages you are shipping. If you have the room I would set up a horseshoe shape of 3 benches, maybe even a tool box to hold supplies. Then have a set of shelves at the begining of the benches and another at the other end for the finish. This would give you lots of bench room to package and shelves to store items and can put boxes and bobble wrap and everything else under the work benches or build shelves over the benches also. They make nice tape dispensers and other things to keep your supplies organized. I buy some stuff from Uline, you can get free catalogs and they have just about anything you could need for shipping.

 

[apexit1]

Are you selling the same items? If so how many types and how big? At my job the shipping/ picking area has a 16' table 4' deep. It's up against the wall, we put shelves on the table against the wall where we put our biggest sellers. Then behind it we have more shelves set up. What you want to do is set up the items who move fastest nearest to the table. Items that are big and bulky should be kept close but not occupying the precious space near the table.

 

[carhunter]

Thanks guys. I sell a wide variety of stuff, about 1,000 pieces per year. Its mostly fedex or USPS-able vintage car parts or antiques, but I have runs where I'll sell several fenders and hoods, or some freight type stuff like engines or insustrial equipment.

We use recycled materials as much as possible - I buy bulk styrofoam at auction for pennies/lb, Kraft paper from grainger, tape from Uline...The boxes get knocked down for easier storage, and I try to keep bulk supplies handy.

Most of the work can be done on a kitchen counter sized bench, with a large rolling cart or open floor space for the big items.

BUT...what I end up doing is painting myself into a corner. A new load comes in while I'm still lotting and listing the items from 2 months ago, and I just start stacking it everywhere.

Finally I've decided to set something permanent up, with a larger area for storing packing materials, and more shelving for staging inventory (new items to be photo'd and stored, items currently listed, etc).

But I don't want to lose a lot of floor space to shelving either...Will try to post some (embarrassing) pics of my mess to illustrate...

 

[Heavy Metal Doctor]

Shipping / receiving is just one of the little tasks we all end up doing at our shop. Our dedicated space takes up a strip along one wall of the parts department about 25 feet long. We have a metal shop desk closest to the door with a shelf on top and a couple of drawers bellow the works surface and a lower shelf near the ground. That pretty much organizes all the little stuff - a few organizer bins up top with packing list envelopes, tape measure, knives, assorted packing tape machines and so on. The drawer / lower shelf is where the shipping scale and banding tool / strap all live. Beside that, a big ole pile of recycled boxes (we don't purchase much beyond tape) and a barrel full off packing - bubble wrap to newspaper - but absolutely NO peanuts (except for the small amount we'll keep in a box to use on shipping parts to a PITA customer). Then another shop cabinet full of stuff like Fedex / UPS overnight boxes / envelopes and bubble wrap envelopes, bulk boxes of tape. Last is small desk with a computer terminal for processing orders / printing labels and the UPS printer itself......I still remember when all this done on paper and we had reams of old shipping books / labels to keep handy in case you had to track something.......

I also discourage our guys from knocking boxes down. While it saves some space, it just eats up more labor in the time they spend on breaking down and then reassembly - extra tape and all - just not worth the space savings IMO.

 

[nine4gmc]

I have a small area set up in a office taht I use for ever day shipping. Mostly a 30"x36" table that I box up on, i keep all the free USPS shipping boxes sorted below it and the larger common cardboard boxes standing behind it. Off to the left is a table with a 70lb harbor freight digital scale and cubbies with a lof of my smaller listed items. To the right of the box table is my desk with comp for printing labels and directly behind me is a 4'x6' table that I use as an upholstery runout table for my machine. I box larger items on it or the floor and freight items get put on a skid in an empty parking spot out front for pick up.

 

[carhunter]

I also discourage our guys from knocking boxes down. While it saves some space, it just eats up more labor in the time they spend on breaking down and then reassembly - extra tape and all - just not worth the space savings IMO.

I've noticed that my desire knock down boxes is diminishing too...it lasted about a year, but when I got really busy it was hard to justify folding, measuring and marking boxes for easy identification. Plus you end up using more tape to re-do what you undid previously

You mentioned labels and such - I noticed the other night how much things have changed in the last 3 years or so. There's a little cubby in the basement 'bomb shelter' that was my workspace when we move in, and the shelves still have my bins of delivery confirmation labels, customs forms (2 different sizes), fedex pouches, insurance forms...

Now everything is done on label paper right off the printer. The most I write is a 'thank you' on the little card that goes into each package, and a weight notation on the outside. 5 years ago, all my labels and forms were handwritten!

Just bought a Zebra thermal printer and am excited to try it out. Works directly with fedex and usps software. Now if only there was an easy way to input weight from a usb scale so I didn't have to type!

 

[tfreer85]

I don't know for sure, but this might help: http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224205