Most freight damage does not happen in a crash. It happens slowly, on an ordinary motorway, to a pallet that was built in a hurry. A trailer brakes, corners and vibrates for hours, and a stack that looked solid in the warehouse leans a little further with each roundabout. Building a pallet properly takes about four minutes longer than building it badly.

Start with the pallet

Use a sound pallet of a standard size: 1,200 × 800 mm in Europe, 1,200 × 1,000 mm for most sea freight. Broken boards and missing blocks are the first thing a forklift finds. Nothing should hang over the edge, because an overhanging carton carries the weight of the pallet beside it.

Stack like a wall

Heavy cartons go at the bottom, light ones on top. Interlock the layers the way a bricklayer would where the cartons allow it, and keep the top flat so that another pallet can stand on it. If the load must not be stacked, say so on the booking as well as on the label, since the label is the first thing to fall off.

Wrap it to the wood

Stretch film holds the cartons to each other; it only holds them to the pallet if the first three turns go round the pallet itself. Add corner boards and two straps for anything heavy or tall. Keep the height under 1.8 m unless you have agreed more.

• One label on each of two adjacent sides, at eye level
• Write the gross weight on the pallet: drivers and cranes both need it
• Photograph every pallet before it leaves; it settles most claims in a day

A pallet should survive being tipped ten degrees. Trailers do that at every junction.

When it is not a pallet

Machines, long steel and anything with a high centre of gravity need lashing points and a plan. Send us a drawing and the weight, and our planners will tell you how it should be secured before the truck arrives.