There are plenty of stories about industrial strap choices going wrong. Chances are if you’ve been in the shipping business awhile, you’ve had one yourself! When strapping mistakes happen, the results can be messy and expensive. When strapping fails, the costs incurred are time, money– and sometimes injury! Overall, a very bad day for everyone involved. Let’s talk about some of these stories and discover how you can prevent poor choices in strapping from ruining your shipments in the future!
SWITCHING
IT UP
Imagine you are talking to a salesperson who suggests that you switch from polypropylene strapping to polyester strapping. How do you react? Well, it should depend on the load that you’re carrying. If you are planning to ship a large number of bricks across two states, then Polyester (PET) strapping is the way to go! A shipment like that would be far too heavy for a polypropylene strap to handle. A real-life example of not using proper strapping was one company using polypro strapping for pallets of beer shipments instead of polyester. A few distended and broken straps later, several pallets of beer had toppled over and been destroyed. The only thing that can be gained from this story is a firm lesson: do not use polypropylene strapping if your cargo exceeds the tension required!
One of the most common strapping mistakes is using polypropylene precuts for hefty products. Poly precuts are quite popular, relatively inexpensive, and easy to use, but they can easily break at the seal when put under too much stress. Good reasons to get polypropylene would be for its elasticity, its lightweight composition, its easy application, and recyclability. While its inexpensive price is certainly beneficial, using polypro exclusively for its cost is an overdone and disastrous mistake.
While polypropylene strapping is perfect for transporting lighter loads at a much lower cost, it doesn’t fare too well when tasked with handling a heavy load for a long time. This is because its tensile strength is much lower than PET or steel strapping, meaning it just simply isn’t going to be strong enough for long enough. If you plan to use polypro strapping, be sure that your load is the appropriate weight and size. Poly strap has a tensile strength that ranges from 300 to 1000lbs, but those who have mistakenly used it instead of steel or polyester strapping for heavier loads have learned their lesson the hard way– hundreds to thousands of dollars’ worth of product wasted!
BREAKING UNDER PRESSURE
Another story of strapping gone wrong comes from one of our warehouse workers. A client company had used strapping that was too thin to band a pallet of cardboard boxes together. Unfortunately, this was only figured out when a forklift attempted to pick up and transport the boxes. Almost immediately, the banding fell apart and the boxes fell to the ground! In this particular case, polyester strapping would’ve been the safer strapping choice instead of polypropylene.
Polyester strap is fairly versatile and can be used for most light and heavy loads without an issue. It strikes an excellent balance between elasticity and strength, with a tensile strength that ranges from 500 up to 3,000lbs. Most of the time it’s a much safer alternative to steel strapping as well! Lacerations from removing and applying steel strapping are fairly common in warehouses. PET strapping eliminates these fears, is very strong, and boasts a much lighter weight and lower cost than steel.
Steel strapping still remains the top choice for the toughest cargo with sharp edges. If you ever find yourself going back and forth between using PET or steel strapping, be sure to consider your cargo’s weight, size, shape, and material. If you are handling bundles of steel coils, baling wire, bricks, and other wide, rigid loads, steel strapping should be used. Will your cargo be shifting around quite a bit during transport? PET strapping has elastic properties that allow it to conform appropriately to the shape of shifting cargo. Steel strapping, on the other hand, is rigid and will not shift along with your cargo. This is good when handling extremely heavy and solid materials such as metal and rock, but not ideal at keeping together many objects that are prone to shifting. A stack of wooden planks, for example, will naturally slide against each other and must be secured together by a flexible material such as polyester. Steel strapping may be tough enough to handle the weight of the planks, but the strapping is not flexible and will break when the stack is deposited from a steep ramp. On the other hand, if your cargo is especially heavy and has rather hard, sharp corners that may wear down plastic strapping, your best choice in strap is steel.
WEATHERED MATERIALS
Weather is another overlooked factor when talking about load containment. Plastic strapping does not do too well after extended periods of time exposed to UV light or extreme temperatures. On the other hand, it is moisture resistant and will not rot or corrode in stormy conditions as steel would. You would not want to end up on either end of the spectrum– distended plastic or corroded metal! Consider the distance and locations through which your cargo will be traveling. Say you are transporting a bundle of lumber from the state of South Carolina to Louisiana in stormy weather, and you opt to use steel strapping. Where exactly did this scenario go wrong? Just because steel is the strongest strapping as far as rigidity goes does not mean it is the strongest material for every load in all conditions! Steel is a sturdy material that will not distend or lose its shape, but it will not hold up to onslaughts of rain over a long period of time. Furthermore, lumber is porous and can swell when exposed to large amounts of water. Steel cannot change its shape to accommodate as PET strapping can. In this scenario, you’d be much better off using PET strapping.
The bottom line when you are considering which kind of strapping to use is how flexible and tough you need it to be. Polypropylene straps are far cheaper and should be used for bundling or sealing lighter cargo that requires lower tensile strength, such as newspaper and corrugated bundles. Polyester strapping should be used for cargo that requires some heavy-duty strength and flexibility, and steel should be used for the heaviest loads with sharp corners that cannot be allowed to shift. It is also important to consider external factors such as the weather, and other potential bumps in the road. One thing is for certain: you don’t want to make the same strapping mistakes! Be sure to think ahead and consider all possibilities in order to contain your cargo safely, effectively, and affordably!
Please refer to our strapping comparison chart for future questions. When in doubt, please call our customer service representatives for assistance on your strapping needs!
(800)-292-7177 or info@cwcglobal.com
Find our most popular strapping options online at cwcglobal.com
