Styro Shippers - Finally some data on their effectiveness

[P Intag]

Hard to be tell, but I'd score that a draw given the differences in ambient temperatures.

That was my reaction as well.

The higher magnitude of peaks and valleys seems to point to the pulp being a little worse at insulating.

[Alan Rath]

Paul, I think Al and I are saying that an eyeball integration seems to suggest that they are pretty similar. At least, similar enough that you can probably conclude there isn't an meaningful advantage to one over the other. If you want to send me the raw data, I could throw it into my simulation, and from that extract an approximate insulation coefficient for each case.

[Al Osterheld]

Pulp faced higher highs and higher lows until third day, at which point the temp dropped below the cardboard.

-Al

[P Intag]

Paul, I think Al and I are saying that an eyeball integration seems to suggest that they are pretty similar. At least, similar enough that you can probably conclude there isn't an meaningful advantage to one over the other. If you want to send me the raw data, I could throw it into my simulation, and from that extract an approximate insulation coefficient for each case.

PM sent.

[Alan Rath]

Paul kindly sent me his data, and I took a stab at trying to model the two different cases (pulp vs. cardboard), but don't think I can really draw much of a conclusion from the results:

I suspect the temperature calibration for the two probes (ambient and in-bottle) may be a little different, and the heat transfer model is no doubt more complex than just a simple 1st-order differential, with a range of different pathways, convection of the liquid in the bottle, etc. Maybe I could draw a small conclusion that the cardboard performed just a little better than the pulp, but that's pretty handwaving.

[Jason L Jones]

Bumping this old thread that I've always found very enlightening.

Cameron, I searched and couldn't find any results posted of your experiment with bottles in the shipping network. Do you recall any findings?

[joeduncan]

I'm also interested in seeing external bottles vs internal in the cardboard shipper, unless I missed that. Great data though!

[John Kight]

I'm sure that temps in a truck with ambient 95-degree high temp would certainly be in the 120-130 range. But how random opening/closing of the cargo area affects the temp curve I haven't a clue.

My guess is that it's unlikely the truck cargo area would ever reach 120+. Keep in mind that (i) unlike the inside of a car, the truck cargo area has no windows, so there is no rapid warming from the "greenhouse effect", and (ii) the passenger cabin is air conditioned (which may have some small effect in slowing the warming of the cargo area), and (iv) the cargo area is likely opened at least every 30 minutes during the warm parts of the day, and likely much MORE frequently than that. Every time the cargo area is opened, the interior temp should effectively "reset" to the outside shaded temperature.

Perhaps the most useful data of all would be to track the temps inside the cargo area of several FedEx trucks over the course of several very warm (70-80 degree) days (on the assumption that no one ships at temps higher than that). That's probably more important than trying to assess the insulation value of the package. If the temps really reach 115+ degrees in the truck on a 74 degree sunny day, then the effectiveness of the styro becomes much more critical. But my guess is that on a 74 degree day the temps in the truck never exceed 85.

[Frank Drew]

Brown UPS trucks can absorb a lot of heat on a sunny day, and afaik there’s no a.c. anywhere in those trucks.

[D@vid Bu3ker]

First of all, anyone who is shipping when it's 95 degrees deserves what they get.

[Jason T]

First of all, anyone who is shipping when it's 95 degrees deserves what they get.

Agreed, except maybe for those shipping next day air.

[D@vid Bu3ker]

First of all, anyone who is shipping when it's 95 degrees deserves what they get.

Agreed, except maybe for those shipping next day air.

Not unless the plane is landing in their driveway.

[John J]

Yes, interesting stuff. Alan makes good point the cardboard shipper used by Paul is a bit more well-built than most "pulp" shippers.

First of all, thanks to Paul to taking the time to do these experiments. For my own purposes, I bought a bunch of temp monitoring equipment a couple weeks ago as I want to see the real world effects of actually shipping in the middle of summer...hopefully soon I can get around to actually doing it.

First experiment: Two packages, one 12x styro and one 12x "pulp" shipper (same we use every day for our dtc shipments), will be shipped at the same time first to Texas via FedEx ground (once I get them back I'll do Florida and DC FedEx ground). Two bottles in each box will have a temp tracker (the metal plugs in pic below fit in the bottle) to get liquid temps for top and bottom of box bottle placement and each box will have a temp tracker (LogTag) at the top of the box to measure ambient air temps. Hopefully I can get it done this week, just need to go buy a styro box. Keep you posted.


Temp trackers.JPG

Just curious if the results were ever posted?

[J. Rock]

Soooo... we're thinking a few bottles in styro with cold packs will be fine during 24 hours of GSO ground shipping where the 1st day is a high of 80 and the 2nd day is a high in the low 70s? Wanting to ship some bottles from Napa on Friday for Saturday delivery via GSO. I think it should be OK... but I always come back to this thread to try to figure it out...

[Yao C]

I've done it before - GSO with cold packs overnight - and the bottles arrive still cool to the touch, even during the height of summer. Wouldn't sweat it