How to calculate square footage for crates

[jeremy]

Hi, I just found this site and have been reading a bit and its got a lot of great info on it. I may have overlooked it, and couldn't find an answer searching the forums, but can anyone tell me the correct way to calculate square footage for a crate?

My company makes pallets and we are considering to branch out into crate manufacturing too, for one of our customers, but they told us they pay by the square foot from their current supplier. Since a crate in 3 dimensional, we assume that they mean by taking the square footage for one face and multipliying it by 6. Is this correct or is there another standard way to do this?

What we are basically trying to do is calculate the cost in materials for a crate of say 4'x4'x4' and learn the proper way to do that.

Maybe you can point me in the direction of a book or industry reference that could answer my question.

thanks
Jeremy

[BoxALot]

Hi Jeremy,

It sounds like what you are talking about is cube tables. They can be HIGHLY inaccurate.

The cube method is Length x Width x Height / 1728 ( / 1728 converts the inches to feet).

The problem with this is it can become costly when dealing with odd shapes of containers. For example, at a cost of $7.5/cuft a box that's
- 24" x 24" x 24" would sell for $60 and one that's
- 12" x 12" x 96" would also sell for $60 BUT
the cost (these are rough) would be $20 for materials and labor would be $30, while the cost for the second one would be about $35 and $35. So although the price for the first box would be accurate, you would actually lose $10 on the second box.

By this example you could say that you simply raise the price to, say, $8.00/cuft but then you would be charging too much for the first box and your competition would undercut you. So you can't win.

Also, You need to determine different prices for different size ranges of boxes and crates. A container that's 24 x 24 x 24" will cost less per cubic foot to manufacture than one thats 100 x 100 x 100" so you need ranges of prices per cubic foot. Without years of experience, it's difficult to judge.

My recommendation is to look into Crate Pro. It's the only thing on the market that will accurately cost a box or crate. It uses exact pricing and shows profit. It also shows you the cost per cuft so the customer can know what they're paying.

Typically, a customer wants you to provide a cube rate so they can determine their crate cost without having to call you. It's fine for budgeting but you have to make sure they guess high and MAKE them call for an exact price. There are a lot of other variables that can go into the cost per cuft as well. Customers will sometimes start throwing on labels, stencils, skidmates, etc and expect you to not raise your price because the size is still the same but if it costs you time and money, you need to recoup that. Again, Crate Pro handles that stuff too. We use it and would never go back. Especially starting out, I would take a look into it.

Good luck. It's a big jump from pallets to crates but the profit is much higher.

[jeremy]

Thanks for the reply Boxalot. I mentioned it to my boss and Cratepro sounds interesting. Do you happen to know if there is a trail version available for us to see if it is worth investing in?

[BoxALot]

Unless things have changed, they don't have a demo. I was told that it's because it's too hard to learn on your own so they do training over the internet and have videos online. www.cratepro.com. I had to do the training before they would sell it to me. I think (it's been a while) but they also will do free retraining whenever you need it. I didn't find it that hard but there are still little things that I'm learning that it does. I would probably be better off doing another training.

Although they're the only kid on the block, you've got a bit of an advantage because the industry is small and I think most craters that are willing to use software probably have it (they've been around since the '80's) so they need new companies to get into crating to generate sales. I talked to Krystal in sales and this is what she told me as 'inside information'. This is why they do so much training.

[albert]

I got their Easy Crate in about 1985. It was real basic but even then it was the only thing out there. I still use it for fast quotes but you need Crate Pro for anything more than a basic box.

They also run this website so their the only company that does anything to promote crating. Everyone else is a joke.

[BoxALot]

Easy Crate was on DOS. It still runs but they don't sell it anymore. I had it too. It was great but I lost my copy and just upgraded. After Easy Crate, they had Crate Generator. It was more like Crate Pro but still on DOS.

[jeremy]

I contacted Cratepro and they do have a demo available after you take a intro web course with them. Thanks.