TECHNICAL 20 · LOGISTICS

Packing and marking: the difference between a frame and a pile of tube.

A frame arrives as several hundred members. If they are not bundled, marked and sequenced, the site crew spends days sorting and the first mistake is a member in the wrong bay.

Packing conventions we use
Item	Convention	Purpose
Arches	Nested, 10–20 per bundle, strapped	Volume efficiency, no rubbing
Gutters	Nested in pairs or sets per bay line	Avoid distortion
Purlins	Square bundles, punched face protected	Hole alignment on site
Posts	Bundled by length	Fast picking
Fittings	Cartons inside a tube bundle, itemised	Nothing lost loose
Doors	Flat, corner-protected	No twist

Every bundle carries an ID; every member carries a mark that matches the drawing set.

Marking scheme

A workable scheme is two characters plus a number: house (A/B), member type (arch/gutter/purlin/post), and a sequence. “A-ARCH-07” tells a crew everything. Paint or a durable label, on a face that is not a fixing surface.

Edge protection

Steel rubs steel in a container. Contact points lose coating first, and a bare patch in a bundle is the start of a claim. Strawboard, plastic corner strips or timber dunnage at contact points is cheap; a touch-in kit on site is cheaper.

Ask for the packing plan with the quotation

If it is not in the quotation it is decided by the loader, and the loader's priority is the container, not your site sequence.

Open selection list

Turn this into a quoted frame list

If this page answered the technical question, the next step is a number. Send the parameters and we will price the tube, profiles, gutters and fittings as one package.

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