Furniture Logistics

The movement of furniture is a bit trickier than other products.

Furniture warehouse

Logistics General

Logistics is the art and science of managing and controlling the flow of goods, energy, information and other resources like products, services, and people, from the source of production to the marketplace. It is difficult to accomplish any marketing or manufacturing without logistical support. It involves the integration of information, transportation, inventory, warehousing, material handling, and packaging. The operating responsibility of logistics is the geographical repositioning of raw materials, work in process, and finished inventories where required at the lowest cost possible.

Logistics and Supply Chain services are provided by a wide range of 3rd party suppliers.

Containerization

Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport cargo transport using standard ISO containers (known as Shipping Containers or Isotainers) that can be loaded and sealed intact onto container ships, railroad cars, planes, and trucks.

Containerization is also the term given to the process of determining the best carton, box or pallet to be used to ship a single item or number of items.

ISO container dimensions and payloads

There are five common standard lengths, 20-ft (6.1 m), 40-ft (12.2 m), 45-ft (13.7 m), 48-ft (14.6 m), and 53-ft (16.2 m). United States domestic standard containers are generally 48-ft and 53-ft (rail and truck). Container capacity is measured in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU, or sometimes teu). An equivalent unit is a measure of containerized cargo capacity equal to one standard 20 ft (length) × 8 ft (width) × 9 ft in (height) container. In metric units this is 6.10 m (length) × 2.44 m (width) × 2.59 m (height), or approximately 38.5 m³. These sell at about US$2,500 in China, the biggest manufacturer.

Most containers today are of the 40-ft (12.2 m) variety and are known as 40-foot containers. This is equivalent to 2 TEU. 45-foot (13.7 m) containers are also designated 2 TEU. Two TEU are equivalent to one forty-foot equivalent unit (FEU). High cube containers have a height of 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m), while half-height containers, used for heavy loads, have a height of 4 ft 3 in (1.3 m). When converting containers to TEUs, the height of the containers typically is not considered.

The use of Imperial measurements (also still used in UK) to describe container size (TEU, FEU) despite the fact that much of the world uses the metric system reflects the fact that US shipping companies played a major part in the development of containers. The overwhelming need to have a standard size for containers, in order that they fit all ships, cranes, and trucks, and the length of time that the current container sizes have been in use, makes changing to an even metric size impractical.

The maximum gross mass for a 20-ft dry cargo container is 24,000 kg, and for a 40-ft, (inc. the 2.87 m (9 ft 6 in) high cube container), it is 30,480 kg. Allowing for the tare mass of the container, the maximum payload mass is there reduced to approx. 21,600 kg for 20-ft, and 26,500 kg for 40-ft containers.

Standard containers

The 20 foot container is the most common container worldwide, but the 40 foot container is increasingly replacing it, particularly since costs tend to be per container and not per foot. The longer container types are also becoming more common, and are especially common in North America. Shorter containers, e.g. 10 foot containers, also exist, but are rarely used.

The following table shows the weights and dimensions of the three most common types of containers worldwide. The weights and dimensions quoted below are averages. Different manufacture series of the same type of container may slightly vary in actual size and weight.

more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization