How Much Weight Can My Cardboard Box Hold?

How much weight can my box hold?

What you’ll need to do is to use the board test on the box and consider which packing tape you’ll need.

If it’s light, you can use standard packing tape.

If not, you should consider using water activated tape.

Watch the video above to learn more!

Video Transcript

Hi everyone. Ricky Chu from Chu’s Packaging Supplies here. Here’s another question we get a lot in our mail bag. How much weight can my box hold? Well, that’s a very tricky question because boxes are rated by the board test, like 200 pound, 32 ECT, and you can find that at the bottom here on the BMC (Box Maker’s Certificate) this one here is 200 pound test.

So a lot of people take that number and think that that’s the weight that the box can actually hold. That’s not actually true. The board tests just how strong the corrugated board is that’s being used to make that. So how much weight can your box hold really depends on the board test and the tape that you’re using, the heavier the product, the stronger the tape

you’re going to need to keep the flap shut. For example, I’m shipping this tape dispenser. I’ll use this box just because it’s here. Very lightweight. Doesn’t matter. You could use a standard packing tape for that. On the flip side, we’re gonna ship something heavy like this water activated tape machine, which weighs probably I want to say 25, 30 pounds.

If you put that in a box and you try to use it with regular carton sealing tape, the flap is gonna pop open during shipping, you’re gonna get returns, you’re gonna get complaints, you’re gonna get bad reviews; all the things that you don’t want. So you’re gonna wanna beef up to a thicker mil tape or switch to hot melt, adhesive to make it, a little stronger bite or extreme cases, something really heavy.

You might wanna look into switching to water activated reinforced paper tape. We talked about this before. It’s got really strong adhesive on it, has the reinforcement fibers. That way you can make sure that your boxes don’t pop open during shipping. That’s really important. Especially if you have a very expensive product that you’re trying to get to your customer. For more information on our boxes, tape or anything in between,

make sure to visit our website at www.chuspkg.com.

---

Shop Water Activated Tapes