I cannot tell you how heartsick I feel over this, for several reasons. First, the obvious reason, the damage from shipping, the loss of such loving hard work and anticipation of success.
I am loath to make this post. By no means is it intended to impune.
It never occurred to me to ask the basic question "How are you going to ship it?" I
assumed it would be taken to somewhere like The UPS Store and let professionals be responsible for packaging.
I have been a Packaging Design Engineer for 28 years, with a collection of design awards on my wall, yada, yada...
If my interpretation of the pictures are correct, the item was packed in a single wall carton with loose fill. Had I seen this package before it had shipped, I would have advised with near certainty that it would not survive. It appears that the corner of the package took a hit. Single wall corrugated will crush without ******** support. Loose fill migrates away during a drop, exposing the packed item to the full, or near full impact. Corner drops are the most dangerous.
A heavy, relatively fragile item such as this should be packed in a tight fitting carton with foam. This carton should then be packed in another carton with corner supports such as corner blocks.
This method is shown and described on the UPS site through the Packaging Advisor:
http://www.ups.com/packaging/?loc=en_US
This style of pack is called a "chassis pack" and looks like this (grabbed from the UPS site)
I hate this post.
I let you down for not bringing this up sooner. I could have contributed.
Seeing the packaging method and nature of the packaged item, UPS may very well reply with "Unsuitable Packaging by Shipper" along with a "hate it for you" sympathy letter.
I almost did not post this, I hate it, but I had to.
I am so very sorry. Perhaps I can be of service for the re-build.
