10:34 – As it turns out, we won’t be using that U-Line packing foam I mentioned yesterday. I called U-Line to ask about shipping cost for the bundle of twelve 6″x2000′ rolls. The product itself costs only $26 for 12,000 square feet. The problem is that it has to be shipped by motor freight, which adds nearly $100 to the final price. The U-Line guy suggested an alternative, a single 12″x1,200′ roll, which is UPS-able. The problem with that is that it costs $47 per roll, not counting the UPS shipping charges, which’d probabably be around $30/roll. So, I could get 12,000 square feet for something over $100 delivered, or 1,200 square feet–one tenth as much–for around $75 delivered. What a deal.
So I’m going to go the low-tech route. USPS specifies that “Sufficient absorbent material that will not react chemically with the hazardous material must fully surround each inner receptacle and be capable of absorbing the entire liquid contents of the inner receptacle(s) in case of leakage.” For all of the regulated chemicals we ship other than sulfuric acid, paper towels meet that criterion. So we’ll just use paper towels to pad everything other than sulfuric acid, for which we’ll use thin bubble-wrap. I don’t even have to buy the bubble-wrap. We get plenty of it in incoming shipments.