Gaylords in Framingham, Massachusetts

Between two rings

Framingham lies on I-90 on the Boston-Worcester corridor, and corporate headquarters of national consumer brands are in town. Those are employers, not customers of ours, and they are not named here for that reason. What matters is the pattern: office headquarters sit next to distribution operations, and distribution means gaylords.

Retail distribution brings in goods in partial flap boxes with slip sheets and ships them out in cartons. Biomedical production sites in the city handle clean outer corrugated, with the same boundary as at Devens and Marlborough: non-regulated boxes only. Automotive service and parts operations round out the mix.

Automotive boxes, one trip at a time

Automotive packaging is generally one-way. The trade press notes that automotive packaging for ocean containers is usually expendable because returning it costs too much, and suppliers such as PCA offer expendable triple-wall corrugated in place of returnable plastic containers or metal racks. Spare parts shipped to service centers also usually go one-way.

That is useful to a Framingham parts dock. A triple-wall box that carried parts once and stayed dry is the definition of a Grade A single trip box, and the sell request is the one to send.

Using the Mass Pike corridor

I-90 gives Framingham a line to Boston in one direction and toward Worcester in the other, with Route 9 and Route 126 as the surface roads. The I-495 belt, with Marlborough and Franklin, lies farther out, and Boston-side buyers are nearer.

In the request, say whether the boxes are standing or knocked down, give the footprint and the wall count if known, and name what was in them.

Framingham sits between rings, so a request benefits from naming the road that matters to you. A dock off the Mass Pike is reached differently from one on Route 9. Retail distribution, biomedical production and automotive work each leave a different empty; say which yours is.

Retail headquarters, biomedical plants and automotive suppliers do not look much alike, but they share the Mass Pike corridor. If your dock is part of a campus rather than a stand-alone building, mention that and the delivery entrance.

Close by on the chart: Marlborough, Franklin, and Norwood.