Dunnage air bags- filling voids and stabilizing loads
Let your shipments catch some Zzzzs with dunnage air bags. Well, not really, but they do look like large pillows for your pallets. Instead of sleeping, they fill the void between pallets and stabilize your truck loads. Whether you’re shipping full truck or LTL dunnage air bags will help your products get to their destination in one piece.
Dunnage air bags are air-inflated bladders that are made of different materials. They can be paper, poly-woven, vinyl, and plastic materials. They’re used to effectively fill the spaces left between pallets when loaded into a trailer. Airbags start deflated, are inserted between pallets, and are then inflated for stabilization. This helps the pallets stay in one place, lessens the amount of movement between pallets, and keeps them upright.
Air bags are great for the beverage industry
Time for a history lesson
Alright, try to stay awake for this quick lesson in history. Not too long ago, the 1970’s actually, dunnage airbags were introduced. They were brought into the industry as a cost effective alternative to securing and stabilizing cargo in sea containers, trucks, rail cars, and other ocean vessels. Dunnage airbags are commonly misunderstood. Just by looking at them you probably assume they are made for void filling and lateral movement. Pro tip: cargo doesn’t just move from side to side.When airbags are used correctly, they can prevent movement from front to back, side to side, and up and down. 
Still awake? Cool, let’s go over the benefits of these air bags.
Ahhh, a nicely stabilized truck shipment.
Benefits of using dunnage airbags
- Ease of use: The compressed air does most of the work for you. Dunnage airbags are easily installed in minutes with little physical labor. It goes both ways too. Deflating is just as easy, and makes unloading truck loads faster than other void fill processes.
- Economical: When truck loads contain the same thing, one air bag can brace the entire trailer. Think of the savings if the entire truckload is stabilized from a single dunnage air bag. Less damage, less labor, lower cost of materials. That sound you hear is the little “cha-ching” going off in your mind.
- Gets rid of cargo movement: A major cause of packaging damage during transit is the shifting of loads. Like we mentioned earlier, pallets and boxes don’t just move side to side. Just think of the last time you drove down the street and hit a pot-hole with a piping hot cup of coffee. That hurt didn’t it? The coffee didn’t just go one direction. Now imagine and entire trailer full of pallets, boxes, and other cargo. That 3-dimensional shift is eliminated with dunnage air bags.
How to effectively use an air bag
So how do you use these things? It’s important to note that the best way to secure the truck load is to place the air bags in the back. The last 2-4 pallets are especially crucial.
70% of damage during transit happens over the rear wheels of the truck.
A single air bag can stabilize four similar pallets
Starting with air bags in the bag is a good first step, but there’s no one size fits all. It depends on the truck, what kind of delivery you’re using, and product type. Everything going to one place? Good, you can use fewer air bags than if your truckload is going to multiple locations. It all depends on the type of transit.
Go from this: To this:
See also:
AIR DUNNAGE BAGS: A COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE (2017 UPDATE)
HOW TO PREVENT DAMAGE DURING SHIPPING
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Load stabilization with dunnage air bags published first on https://www.thepackaginggroup.com/
It’s smart practice to keep in mind the average cost per package, and not just the cost of materials. We all know how different the units of measure can be when it comes to packaging. They’re all over the place right? cubic foot, square foot, length, width, grams, lbs., gauges, etc. You get my drift, and it can be hard to compare them to each other, but that’s what you have to do. Say for example, you’re using those little packaging peanuts. Those are most likely measured in cost per cubic foot. If you’re switching to an inflatable system you’ll be looking at cost per square foot. Understand how much material is used to protect your products and you’ll be in good shape. You may be using more material compared to what you use now, but make sure the total cost per package is lower.
It would take 450 cubic feet of void fill to create the same amount of protection that a jumbo roll of inflatable systems would produce. Even better? A typical system only takes up about 1 cubic foot of space. That’s saving you a lot of floor space in your warehouse for better protective packaging. There’s no need to store all the extra protective packaging you’re using now. With the inflatable system, it’s on-demand. You’ll only use it when you need it, freeing up other space for your warehouse.
The key to preventing damage is consistency. What better way to get consistent protective packaging then using equipment. Inflatable systems help you keep consistent packaging from one box to the next. They can be preprogrammed with certain parameters of you product and/or box. If you’re not using equipment, then this is all up to the operator. You could be wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars in wasted materials. With equipment, you’ll get consistency every time, leading to less damage and happier customers.
Tamara Hayesv 