I've been experimenting with stuffing bike boxes with lengths of corrugated plastic landscaping water drain pipes. The pipe is about 6-7 inches in diameter, and comes in 10 ft lengths for $2.50 at Home Depot. I cut it into 7.5 inch lengths (a half inch bigger than the width of my box, because the pipe compresses a bit) and stuff that into the main frame openings. Two 10 ft lengths nicely fill up a frame box. Cuts way down on the amount of packing peanuts or crumpled newspaper to fill up the box. The corrugations also nestle up to the frame tubes (which are also padded, of course) and help keep the bike from shifting from side to side. I laid a packed bike box down on it's side and stood on the box, and it hardly compressed at all (Don't try this at home! It was a raggedy frame going to the painters!). Your milage of course, may vary. Works best with bare frames: built bikes might have too many parts intruding into spots you want to put tubes.
Tom Adams, Shrewbury NJ
>From: Jpinkowish@aol.com
>To: kctommy@msn.com
>Subject: Re: [CR]Shipping a bike.
>Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:28:02 EST
>
>In a message dated 10/30/03 12:41:10 PM EDT, kctommy@msn.com writes:
>
> > As
> > always, stuff that box full of non crushable packing material to prevent
>the
> > mail gorillas from mangling the bike.
>
>Hi Tom,
>The trick that David Bilenky did shipping the Marinoni to me from Canada was
>to insert 2 cardboard triangles, 12" on a side and 8" high(the inner width of
>the box), into the 2 triangles of the bike. This prevents the middle of the
>box from compressing.
>
>Also, always write "FRAGILE" and "TOP LOAD ONLY" on several sides of the bike
>box. This helps to keep the bike towards the top of the load.
>
>Jan Pinkowish
>Bristol, CT