5 Reasons Packages Get Destroyed (Learned Working at UPS)

The trailers that take your stuff across the country are gigantic metal or wooden boxes that sit outside in the elements for years. Sometimes they get holes in them. Then, when it rains, they leak. Nothing made me feel guiltier than loading stuff under a leak, water trickling down over the cargo you clearly expected would stay dry during its trip. We can ask for a replacement trailer, but that backs up the whole process -- in the 20 minutes it takes to get a non-leaky one up to the door, the packages are backed up, stacked up, and basically murdering each other as the belt throws more and more at the heap.

If I've made you paranoid that you can't ship something expensive without spending two hours vacuum sealing it in layers of Kevlar, let me offer a quick tip: Buy a cheap plastic cooler. They're like 10 bucks. Put the expensive item in the cooler, put both inside a box. If you don't understand why, take a cooler out back and pound on it with a baseball bat until it breaks. You have a better chance of the bat bouncing back and breaking your nose than you do of breaking through that cooler.

Please don't underestimate how much this thing is going to get abused -- these packages sit on a slide while hundreds of other packages push from behind. If an especially heavy package comes sliding down on top of yours, it will burst that box and flatten it in a spray of packing peanuts. If not, then I'm going to use your box to play a game of Tetris in the back of a semi (and I won't lie and say I never stood on a package to reach the top of the trailer).

Look, I'm just the messenger. This is a process built with speed in mind -- everything else is sacrificed in the name of cramming the packages into the truck as fast as possible. That's going to be a recurring theme today.

Packages are like children. To the sender, every one of them is a unique snowflake that must be protected at all costs. And, like children, your package is nothing but a burden to the rest of humanity. But you know what you'll do: Just write "fragile" on the side (regardless of what's in the box) so all of those strangers handling your package will take extra care!

Ha, no. Each loader is loading at least 1,000 packages a day in a four-hour shift. Four hours in a dark semi trailer that's either too hot or too cold. No one is going to treat your box like a princess because you had a Sharpie and five extra seconds. I learned this my very first day.

My supervisor took me to one of the trailers to show me how to load. He explained how you load left to right, pack them in tight, and go all the way up to the ceiling of the trailer. He took a rather light package that, sure enough, said "FRAGILE" on it and tossed it up to the top of the wall to finish off the stack. He missed. The box fell to the floor of the trailer. He picked it up and tossed it back up there. "That said 'fragile' on it," said I, scandalized. He looked at me like I was crazy and said "They all say 'fragile.'"

So you figure you might as well mark that shit anyway -- it can't hurt, right? Well, Popular Mechanics shipped sensors in both marked and unmarked packages, and the "fragile" boxes wound up taking more punishment. Why? Well, sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but some people in this world are just terrible. And those people will actually treat your package worse if you write "fragile" on it. Maybe they felt that their ability to do their job was being challenged. "So you think I can't load a package without smashing it? I'll show you!" It's a positive feedback loop of smashed shit.

If you have to ship something that MUST get to its destination in one piece and you think it's better to entrust it to the care of total strangers rather than, say, drive it there, you have an option. You can pay more to have your package deemed a "high value" package. These packages are escorted the entire way by special employees. They put these packages in waterproof bags and load them in the trailers, and anybody that touches them has to sign for them. They don't go on any belts. They are hand carried the whole way. The UPS website doesn't say how much this princessification of your package will cost, but it's probably more than your box of heirloom Penthouse magazines is worth.

So what can be done if you want your regular shipment handled with care? My suggestion is ...

See, I'm not about to smash a package that belongs to some kid. I see all the crayon scribbles and poorly spelled adulation for mom, or grandpa, or whoever the hell, and all I can picture is a toddler sending his beloved teddy bear to grandma on the raisin ranch because she only has days to live. And I'll be goddamned if I'll let anything happen to that teddy! Maybe you aren't allowed within a certain distance of small children. That's fine; just make the package look like a gift. Some stickers, "Happy Birthday" written on it, whatever. As long as it's enough to create a heartwarming story to make us care a little more.

Maybe you aren't in the mood to charm somebody. Maybe you don't have time to fuck around. Maybe you have a cold, black heart. In that case, just write something horrible on the package, like "urine samples" (or, as this Reddit poster suggested, "ANIMAL SEMEN"). You know, something no package handler would want spilled on them if the thing got ruptured.

NOTE: If you take this to a wacky extreme and mark your package "high explosive" or something like that, this will just get your package destroyed by a bomb squad.

Granted, that didn't look too bad, but the important things to remember here are 1) that's a video from the manufacturer of the machine making it look as gentle as possible and 2) that video shows a machine that is designed for envelopes. The system at UPS absolutely is not -- it's built with packages in mind.

The boxes ride belts, and metal arms go across at the right spot, directing them into the trailer. Every time one belt meets another, there is a chance an envelope can get stuck between the belts. When that happens, it's like tripping at the head of a stampede. There's nothing we can do for your envelope but say a quiet prayer and slosh a bit of our 40-ounce onto the warehouse floor.

If you need to send a letter and email just won't do, put it in a box or use the Postal Service. Envelopes are their specialty, and the way things are over there right now, it'll probably get a truck all to itself.

So you've decided to reuse an old box for shipping. Look at you, all saving the environment and shit. I hope that makes you feel like a big man when the box of dildos you were mailing to your Canadian girlfriend wind up at your mom's for Christmas.

The problem is the old labels, and the fact that many, many of you forget to remove them. No, we have no way of knowing which is which -- when the packages tumble down to the sorters and loaders, if they see a label on whatever side of the box happens to be up, that's where the box is going.

If I do happen to notice that the box has two labels, I have to guess which one is the right one. I have maybe 30 seconds to make this decision. I usually go with the cleaner label, as I figure it's been through the system fewer times, making it newer. This is an easy way to solve the problem while giving zero fucks. But even then, there's no guarantee that your box will end up anywhere at all. If I'm in Missouri and I only see the label that says Arizona, that's where it's going. But say the guy in Arizona only sees the label that says it's going to Missouri. Theoretically, your package will just go back and forth forever until the recycled cardboard finally gives up and spills your Beanie Babies all over the dirty, dirty trailer. Tags will get ripped off.

And it's even worse with the Postal Service, by the way. Did you know the Postal Service considers reusing their old Priority Mail boxes a federal goddamn crime? Much like manufacturing sawed-off shotguns or bathtub gin, stealing a used Priority Mail box from the trash is a short way to Uncle Sam's shit list. "Misuse of postal property" can land you up to three years in jail, but we're assuming the feds don't exactly have a task force dedicated to this.

If you don't like the environmental impact of buying a brand new box every time, well, the world is full of boxes -- just steal some from Walmart at 3 a.m. when they're stocking the shelves. None of the workers will care if you take them. In fact, at three in the morning, I doubt they'd care if you walked right out with a cash register under your arm. And seriously, get a cooler while you're at it.

Robert Evans is Cracked's head of Dick Joke Journalism and writes many of the captions you enjoy each day. You can contact him here.

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