Shipping Boxes

Shipping boxes are corrugated cartons rated for carrier handling, and this collection carries them in ECT-32 and heavy-duty grades: cubes, long boxes, shallow-depth cartons, multi-depth boxes, bin boxes, and master cartons, mostly in 25 and 50 count bundles. ECT-32 is the workhorse rating for parcel shipping; heavier grades exist for dense or palletized loads, not for making a light parcel feel safer. For a worked fragile-load example, what size box for wine glasses routes stemware from measurements to a stock carton and cushioning.

Pick the format before the size

Sizing without the guesswork

• Measure the packed product, add cushioning allowance, and size the box to that. Extra air costs void fill on the way in and billable cube on the way out.
• Shipping USPS Priority Mail? Check your candidate size against the flat rate box size chart before committing to a custom dimension.
• Use the box size finder to test whether an item fits a stock size, and how to calculate how many boxes you need to turn order volume into bundle counts.
• Budget tape at the same time; how much packing tape per box converts your seal pattern into rolls per month.

Freight is part of the price

Corrugated is the bluntest example of the landed-cost problem in packaging: boxes are cheap per unit and expensive to move, so on small orders freight can rival the price of the boxes themselves. Most suppliers bury that; we would rather you order around it. Buy full bundles, prefer sizes that pack flat together, and combine boxes with tape and void fill on one order so a single freight charge does more work. The packaging cost and cube index lays out the cube math by category.

Related collections and guides

• Cardboard boxes for the full box-and-carton family, including folding cartons and tubes
• Corrugated boxes for the plain kraft core of this collection
• Moving boxes and supplies and mailer boxes
• Gaylord boxes for pallet-scale containers, insulated shipping for temperature-sensitive loads
• Packaging calculators and tools