May has spring in full swing and brings many exciting events. Flowers blooming all around, more people getting to go outside and enjoy the outdoors more, a lot more produce coming into season and arriving on our plates, and Mother’s Day! With so much life coming in, it’s the perfect time of year to celebrate mothers and what they do for us, whether it’s our own moms, friends who become moms, or even recognizing the work that moms all over do and contribute to the world!
With Mother’s Day coming, many businesses offer deals on gift items. Flowers and cards are often very popular items, but what about others? We will look at just a few gift types that people usually get for Mother’s Day and see the journeys they go on. Where do these items come from, and how do they get here?
Gifts To Stay Cozy
The one thing moms most want to do is to relax and worry about nothing. Cozy gifts like soft blankets, fuzzy socks, mugs, and many more items help give moms a way to feel more comfy and relaxed. So many of these products are shipped quite differently, from vacuum sealing for soft, squishy, and light items like clothes and fabrics, to needing lots of cushioning for fragile items like glass and ceramic dishware.
It truly depends on the product and its durability. However, most of these items are available either in large stores, specialty stores, or small businesses. Different stores experience varying levels of demand, so the shipment process varies widely depending on a business’s size and the product’s destination.
For shipping to a store, businesses will tend to do bulk orders. Bulk orders allow businesses to order more of a product while having each individual product be cheaper to buy for the business. The more of the product the business buys, the cheaper each individual item gets!
Depending on the size, durability, and amount of items ordered, a business can freight ship from LTL for smaller shipments, all the way to FTL when an entire truck is needed. Typically, businesses prefer to do FTL or at least PTL so that there is less handling happening, meaning less of a chance for interaction and damage to occur to the items.
Gifts To Feel Rejuvenated
Continuing from cozy goods, spa goods move to make people feel more refreshed, unwound, and serene. They are like cozy goods in that they help people feel calm and relaxed, but have the added benefits of improving physical health, such as skincare and muscle tension.
Because these products are geared towards health and well-being, most of them tend to need extra care when it comes to shipping. A seller can’t just stick perishable body cream in a dry van and call it a day. Rules and regulations have to be followed when dealing with perishable and hazardous goods.
For perishable goods, these are items that can go bad quickly. This will usually include items like serums, creams, lotions, gels, basically anything with a shelf life on it. These items need to be kept in an appropriate area so that they stay good for the entire trip. For that, shippers usually have these products shipped in refrigerated trucks or reefers.
Reefers are temperature-controlled units that maintain a set temperature inside the trailer. They are often used for ingredient-sensitive products like spa goods as well as food, medicine, and other perishables. The reefer trailer maintains the set temperature for the entire duration of transport, ensuring that the items stay good from factory to store shelf. Without it, the trailer would be subject to outdoor temperatures, making the items inside vulnerable to heat or freeze damage.
Gifts To Keep In Touch
For our fast-paced lives, there are lots of technological goods that many people, mothers included, love to get! They can be all sorts of things, from air fryers to light therapy face masks to smart watches and even electronic picture frames. There are so many choices available, but when it comes to shipping these products, there are a whole lot of safety protocols to follow.
For electronic goods with a rechargeable battery, they will need special handling and labeling as they are considered hazardous materials. Since lithium-ion batteries can catch fire or explode more easily, they need more experience handling.
That is why items like these are required to be transported by a trained driver and have specific labeling, such as the product’s UN number, its hazard class and symbol on the package, its packing group, its proper shipping name, and emergency contact info.
And not only does the packaging, labeling, and driver need to be specialized for the shipment, but higher protections need to be placed for the transportation too! Whether it’s separating hazardous materials from non-hazardous materials, ensuring certain shipments aren’t together in transit, setting quantity limits, or planning the route, it can be exhausting just trying to bulk ship something as simple as an electric razor.
That’s why expert carriers make sure that they handle the hard stuff so that mom can get these gifts as quickly and safely as possible! Freight shipping happens every day, and carriers ensure that shipments make it to the store so that you can get them easily as a gift. Because while we take care of the shipping logistics, moms everywhere take care of their kids’ logistics. It’s true what they say, moms truly make the world go round!
