How the U of Minnesota Solar car and its support equipment are being shipped to Taiwan
This document attempts to answer the following question:
“> Dear Jeff,
>
> In your e-mail, can you clarify what you mean by "materials are not 'boxed'."
Eric
The following quotes come from your emails to us:
Email 6/5/10
We would suggest that you can include everything in a wooden case and it can be loaded into a 20' dry container.
Email 6/10/06
The solar car can be sent any time after July 1st, as long as it has a wooden container. The shipping containers are recommended to arrive by Sept. 1st because of customs reasons.
You used the words "wooden case" then "wooden container". We are not sure what you mean by that. If by wooden case or wooden container, you mean a six sided box that completely encloses the car or its support equipment in plywood then we have no wooden cases or wooden containers. The car and its support equipment are on pallets or skids that are a wooden rectangle under the item. The items on the pallets or skids are completely exposed, secured to the pallets by strong straps, and wrapped in clear shrink wrap film. The email I am responding to says "We will have a place to store the box at our school." We don't know what you mean by "box" in this sentence either. So I will try to clear up our use of terms and include photos of the items in our shipping container:
Definition of Terms
"Container" or "Shipping Container" means the large (40 foot long, 8 feet wide, 9 feet tall) metal container the holds our car, and its support equipment on the truck, train and on the ship going to Taiwan. The picture below shows the back doors of our shipping container.
A "Pallet" is a wooden platform with space underneath for the forks of a fork lift truck to pick up the pallet and the items strapped onto it. Pallets are moved by picking them up completely off the floor and carrying them on the fork lift. This is not true of "Skids”. We have 5 separate pallets in our shipping container and one skid. Some examples of loaded pallets are shown below:
The black strap down strips and clear shrink wrap film are clearly visible.
The above picture shows the only six sided box we are shipping. The large tan box is made of very heavy card board with steel bands holding the lid on and securing it to its wooden pallet base. The box and its contents (tool boxes) weigh 550 pounds. To the left of the large box is another pallet with some jack stands strapped down to the pallet.
A "Skid" is like a pallet in that it has space underneath for the forks of a fork lift truck to lift, but a skid cannot be lifted completely off the floor. The solar car being 5 meters long, is on a skid. The fork lift truck raises one end of the skid no more than about 1 foot or 1/3 meter, and then drags or "skids" the skid with the car on it over the smooth floor of the shipping container and out onto the smooth floor of the loading dock area. The following pictures show the wooden skid with our solar car on it, being skidded over the floor by a fork lift truck.
The above picture shows the back end of our solar car with solar cells on top. The fork lift has raised that end of the wooden skid about a foot off the floor. The fork lift operator can drag (skid) the car over the floor and control its direction of motion very accurately. The wooden skid is larger than the car in all directions to prevent damage of the car if the skid sides should contact the shipping container or any obstacle on the loading dock floor.
The skid is too long to lift completely off the floor with the forks of the fork lift. If the fork lift operator were to attempt to lift the skid completely off the floor, its so long that one end would stay on the floor, and it would likely break in the center where the bending moment would be too high. This would surely damage the car.
Once the items in the shipping container are safely out onto the dock, we can remove the car from its skid. Then the skid can be stored somewhere until we need it again for the return trip.
If the building where the shop area is has a loading dock, we will want to remove the car from the shipping container there and use the fork lift to move everything into your shop. If the loading dock is not in the same building as the shop, we have to move everything from the loading dock to the shop by some means. We will need help with that.
We wrapped the car in plastic and bubble wrap for shipping on its skid.
Then we taped this sign on the car:
The covered car was skidded into the container first.
Car secured behind temporary wooden barrier:
Some of the pallets loaded behind the car:
Container loaded with everything, as it will
appear when we
open it in
shipping_details.doc