Shipping and display carton

Abstract

A product tray having shrink-wrapped plastic stacked, shipped and sold on pallets due to an improved design made from a single blank of cardboard or other package material. Such improved product tray resists horizontal shifting and prevents vertical stack failures when exposed to horizontal forces during shipping. Each improved product tray supports a comparable compressive load while being composed of less material or less expensive material as compared with prior art designs. Such improved product trays may be stacked, shipped, and sold on pallets without first packaging them into boxes, and without the substantial additional labor normally required for trays made according to the prior art, at warehouse club stores and other outlets.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] 1. Technical Field [0002] The present invention relates generally to a stackable tray package. More specifically, the invention relates to a tray for retail sale which may be filled, wrapped and stacked without the need for inserts or dividers to provide additional necessary support for a compression load. The invention also relates to a method of making the same. [0003] 2. Description of Related Art [0004] Millions of dollars are spent each year in packaging products for transportation from manufacturers to retail outlets. Rather than require these products to be packaged and ultimately removed from boxes and pallets, and individually placed on shelves in a store front, it has long been desirable to ship products in large quantities in relatively large containers such as pallets and sell them directly from such containers to consumers. Retail outlets, including member-only warehouse stores, provide the buying public, including private individuals ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0017] Product trays shrink-wrapped with plastic may be stacked, shipped and sold on pallets due to an improved design made from a single blank of cardboard, corrugate, or other package material. Such improved product trays resist horizontal shifting and prevent vertical stack failures when exposed to horizontal forces during shipping. Each improved product tray supports a comparable compressive load while being composed of less material and / or less expensive material as compared with prior art designs. Such improved product trays may be stacked, shipped, and sold on pallets at retail warehouse stores, club stores, and other outlets without substantial additional packaging and without the additional labor normally required for packing and unpacking such trays.

Problems solved by technology

These trays do not easily survive undamaged while being shipped alone on pallets to retail establishments.

Consequently, manufacturers are required to use substantial extra labor and shipping materials to get these trays to market.

Specifically, these trays require significant manual labor as trays are boxed at a manufacturing facility before being stacked onto pallets, secured with stretch wrap, and shipped.

Once at a retail establishment, additional manual labor is required to remove individual trays from boxes before displaying and selling them.

During shipment on pallets, these trays experience horizontal forces which cause one tray to move relative to another.

The weight of one or more trays is frequently sufficient to cause a puncture in the shrink-wrapped plastic stretched over the top of a misaligned tray, especially where the cargo of a product tray cannot bear a compressive load.

The ruptured shrink-wrapped plastic makes a supporting bottom product tray 502 unsuitable for sale.

As one bottom product tray 502 fails, other stacked trays within a column above the bottom product tray 502 are likely to shift and cause the shrink-wrapped plastic on other trays to rupture.

For example, a misaligned upper corner 508 no longer can provide vertical support for trays above it because the walls must be carefully aligned according to trays made with prior art designs.

Such tray failures are especially frequent for products such as bags of snack products which cannot provide any support for a compression load.

For example, plants, gift baskets, lamps, bags of chips, buckets of cut flowers, and stuffed animals are not easily amenable to sale from pallets.

Since these items do not easily support a compressive load, they generally are not amenable to stacking.

These inventions may solve alignment and shipping problems, but also require substantial manual labor prior to final display and sale of goods even though such packages may be stacked and shipped on pallets.

Further, these solutions require additional packaging.

Further, such tray is not designed for use with a shrink-wrapped plastic covering.

None of these inventions solves the problems associated with frequent punctures of shrink-wrapped plastic over a tray.

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