Loading day is the last chance to change the freight bill. By then the cartons exist, the container is booked and the forwarder has quoted against a packing list — but what goes where inside the box still decides how much of the cube you actually paid for, and how much of the order arrives sellable.
The short answer
The load plan starts with the carton, not the container: carton dimensions, units per carton, stack height and gross weight decide how much of the box you use. Volume-heavy pet products — pads, mats, covers, ramps — are lost to air rather than weight, so the plan is drawn from the packing list and checked against the container’s usable cube before the cartons are made. That spec is confirmed on your packing list; samples at US$25–40 per model, ready in 5 days, are how most buyers verify it.
Start with the carton spec, not the container
Every cube calculation begins with five numbers from the packing list: carton length, width and height, units per carton, and gross weight. Add the stack rating — how many identical cartons can sit on the bottom one — and the board grade behind it. These are the figures the forwarder prices against, and the figures a terminal will re-measure if they look wrong.
The carton is also a design decision. A shape that stacks badly wastes cube even when the volume is right: a wide shallow carton may not fit the pallet pattern, and a tall narrow one may not bear the load above it. Settle the carton with the packing spec, not on the day the goods are ready — the sample stage is where a dimension change is still cheap.
Cube, not weight, is the constraint
For this category the usable cube runs out long before the payload does. Calculate total cubic metres from the carton dimensions and the carton count, then compare that with the usable cube your forwarder confirms. Usable is smaller than nominal: pallets, dunnage and the door end all take space out of the same box.
Palletising is the trade-off to settle first. Pallets protect the load and speed up handling at destination, but they consume cube and add height. Floor loading recovers that space and shifts the labour to the receiver, and it puts the entire weight of the stack on the bottom cartons. Dense items such as ramps and hardware can hit the payload limit before the cube limit, which is why both figures belong on the same sheet.
Stacking: what carries what
Heavy cartons go low and over the axles; light cartons go high. Ramps, hardware and dense packs form the base. Pads, mats and covers sit above them, but not in a stack that flattens the loft — compression is a retail defect even when the carton survives.
Three habits prevent most load failures. Keep stacks vertical rather than bridging a gap between two lower cartons. Put slip sheets between layers so cartons do not catch on each other during loading. Respect the stack rating on the carton, because the bottom layer carries the whole column and the middle layer carries everything above it.
Moisture: the claim nobody plans for
A container crossing climates sweats, and the water lands on whatever is highest. For textiles that is a slow, quiet loss: the carton looks fine, the top layer does not, and by the time it is opened at the retailer the damage is hard to attribute.
Inspect the container before loading — holes, rust, a damp floor, a smell from the previous cargo — and reject it rather than load into it. Keep cartons off the container floor and away from the doors, use a liner or desiccant for moisture-sensitive goods, and never load pallets that have been standing in the rain. Photograph the empty container before the first carton goes in; it is the evidence that the moisture came later.
Marks that survive the trip
Shipping marks belong on two sides of every carton, large enough to read from a forklift: SKU, PO number, carton number and total cartons, destination and the handling symbols that apply. Put the barcode where a scanner can reach it without moving the stack, because receiving checks it before it checks anything else.
Inside a mixed container, marks do the work that a warehouse would otherwise do by opening boxes; the blocking logic behind them is set out in consolidating orders into one shipment. Block each SKU together and label the blocks on the loading list. That is also the load order: goods needed first go nearest the doors, slower-moving SKUs go to the nose, and the void at the end is filled with dunnage rather than left to collapse.
Questions we get asked
Who decides the carton dimensions?
They come from the product and the packing spec, and they are confirmed before production. Tell us the channel — pallet, parcel or shelf — and the carton is specified for it, with the dimensions and units per carton written into the packing list.
Should I palletise or floor-load?
Palletising costs cube but protects the load and speeds up handling; floor loading recovers the cube and shifts labour to the receiver. The right answer depends on the destination’s unloading setup and on how fragile the cartons are, not on habit.
How do I stop pads and mats arriving crushed?
By loading them above the dense goods, never below, and by respecting the stack rating. If the carton is not rated for the column above it, the fix belongs in the carton spec, not in the loading plan.
Can you load mixed SKUs in one container?
Yes, and it is routine. Each SKU is blocked together and marked, and the loading list shows the receiver which block comes out first.
Send the models, quantities and destination and we will come back with the carton dimensions, units per carton and total cube for each model — the figures your forwarder needs before quoting. The private label service shows how packing and loading are planned, and the contact page reaches us directly; replies go out within one business day.