Covington GA & Sacramento CA
UNITED STATES
The short answer: paper dunnage — honeycomb blocks, wedges, void fillers and load-lock panels — does the same job as inflatable airbags and lumber bracing at lower total cost, with no disposal problem at the receiving dock and no ISPM 15 documentation for export. It is the default answer for immobilizing palletized freight in trailers and containers, provided the block is sized to the actual void rather than to whatever is on the shelf.
Dunnage is not packaging. It is the material that stops packaged freight from moving inside the conveyance. That distinction matters because the failure modes are different: packaging protects against handling, dunnage protects against acceleration.
Three forces act on a loaded trailer. Longitudinal forces from braking and acceleration, which are the largest and can exceed 0.8 g in a hard stop. Lateral forces from cornering and lane changes. And vertical forces from road inputs, which are usually the smallest but act continuously.
A load that is not blocked moves. Once it starts moving it builds momentum, and a pallet that shifts eighteen inches into another pallet at highway braking rates does more damage than any drop test simulates.
Cut blocks of honeycomb paperboard sized to fill the void between load and wall, or between two loads. Compression capacity is high along the cell axis, which is exactly the direction the load pushes.
Angled sections that fill tapering voids and resist rotation as well as translation. Common at the tail of a trailer and around irregular loads.
Flat honeycomb panels used to close a partial void across the full width of a trailer, distributing force across the whole load face rather than a point.
Angle board and honeycomb corner pieces that let strapping and load bars apply force without crushing the case corners underneath.
Sheets between stacked units that prevent nesting and let the stack behave as a single mass rather than a set of independent items.
| Factor | Paper dunnage | Inflatable airbags | Lumber bracing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material cost per void | Low to moderate | Moderate | Low |
| Labor to install | Low — place and go | Moderate — inflate, check | High — cut, nail, brace |
| Equipment required | None | Air supply | Saw, fasteners |
| Failure mode | Progressive crush | Sudden deflation | Fastener pull-out |
| Temperature sensitivity | None | Pressure varies with temperature | None |
| Disposal at receiver | OCC bale | Plastic waste | Wood waste, nails |
| Export documentation | None | None | ISPM 15 required |
| Injury risk at unload | Low | Low | Protruding fasteners |
The line that most often decides it is disposal. A receiving dock that has to deal with punctured airbags or nailed lumber will eventually push back, formally or informally. Paper dunnage goes into the same bale as the cases.
Most paper dunnage failures are sizing failures, and they come in two varieties.
Too small. A block that does not fill the void allows the load to accelerate before contact. The impact energy at contact is far higher than a static push, and the block crushes in one event rather than resisting.
Too large. A block forced into a void preloads the load and the trailer wall. On a long lane with vibration, that preload works the load against the wall continuously.
The target is a snug fit — the block should go in with hand pressure and stay in place without support. In practice this means measuring your actual voids rather than assuming standard trailer dimensions, because loaded trailer interiors vary by more than most planners expect.
A simplified approach is adequate for most freight. Take the mass of the load being restrained, multiply by the design deceleration, and divide by the bearing area of the block face.
For a 2,000 lb pallet at 0.8 g longitudinal, the restraining force is roughly 1,600 lb. Distributed across a block face of 2 square feet, that is 800 psf — comfortably within the capacity of a 1″ honeycomb block, but only if the load actually bears on the block face rather than on a corner of it.
Two adjustments matter. Add a duration factor for long dwell, because a block holding a preload for two weeks creeps. And check the bearing surface on both sides: a block bearing against a smooth trailer wall behaves differently from one bearing against a ribbed one.
Ocean containers introduce three additional considerations.
Humidity. Container relative humidity routinely exceeds 90% with condensation cycles. Specify water-resistant adhesive and a coated face, and derate the block capacity accordingly.
Duration. Transit times of three to six weeks mean creep is not a marginal consideration — it is the design case.
Motion profile. Ship motion applies sustained lateral and rolling loads rather than the short longitudinal spikes typical of road freight. Blocking has to resist in more directions.
The compensating advantage is significant: paper dunnage carries no ISPM 15 obligation, which removes treatment cost, certification and the risk of a container being held at destination over a wood packaging non-conformity.
Material comparisons between paper, airbags and lumber usually land within a few dollars of each other per void. Labor does not.
Cutting and nailing lumber bracing takes a trained person several minutes per void and requires tools, fasteners and a work area. Inflating airbags requires an air line, a gauge and a verification step. Placing a pre-sized honeycomb block takes seconds and requires nothing.
At current US warehouse labor rates, a two-minute difference per void across a hundred loads a week is a meaningful annual number — and it is a number that shows up in throughput as well as in payroll.
Where damage claims are a recurring cost, a documented load plan changes the conversation. It should specify the pallet pattern in the trailer, the location and size of every dunnage component, the strapping or load bar positions, and a photograph of a correctly loaded trailer.
That document does three things. It makes loading repeatable across shifts and sites. It provides evidence in a freight claim that the load was secured to a defined standard. And it gives you a baseline to change deliberately when damage data suggests an adjustment, rather than changing informally and losing the ability to attribute results.
The same load needs different restraint depending on how it moves, and applying one standard everywhere means over-blocking easy lanes and under-blocking hard ones.
Longitudinal restraint dominates. Void fill at the tail plus lateral blocking on partial widths handles most of it. Friction between the load and the floor does more work than most planners credit.
The hardest road mode. Freight is re-handled at every terminal, and the load configuration around your pallet changes without your knowledge. Here the pallet itself has to be a self-contained, stable unit, because you cannot rely on adjacent freight for support.
Longitudinal shock at coupling is the governing case and can substantially exceed highway braking. Blocking has to be sized for that peak, not for road conditions.
Sustained multi-directional motion, high humidity and long dwell combine. This is the case where creep and moisture derating matter most, and where the ISPM 15 exemption is worth the most.
Three numbers make the case for converting from lumber or airbags to paper dunnage, and all three come from data most operations already hold.
First, labor minutes per load, measured rather than estimated — a stopwatch on ten loads is enough. Second, annual freight claims attributable to load shift, which the claims file will show. Third, the receiver’s disposal cost or complaint history, which is qualitative but frequently the argument that carries the decision.
Material price differences between the options are usually small enough to be a rounding error next to those three lines.
Yes. Honeycomb blocks carry thousands of pounds per square foot along the cell axis. The limiting factor is almost always bearing area and fit, not material capacity.
Yes, and better than airbags, whose pressure varies with temperature. The consideration is condensation on the return to ambient, which is addressed with a coated face.
Blocks that have not been crushed can be reused within a controlled loop. In open distribution they generally are not, and the receiver bales them with the corrugated — which is precisely the advantage over airbags and lumber.
Measure your ten highest-volume load configurations and size to those. Most operations find that three or four block sizes cover the large majority of voids, with custom cuts for the exceptions.
Paper dunnage wins on labor, disposal and export documentation more than on material price. Size it to the measured void, spread the bearing across a full load face, derate for humidity and dwell, and document the load plan. Those four steps eliminate most in-transit shifting.
Premier Packaging Products supplies honeycomb dunnage, blocks and void control components from Georgia and California, cut to your measured voids. Send us your load configuration.