When an Airplane Production company sells their entire company to someone overseas there is the small matter of transferring all of the assets to the purchaser in the other country. That's where Gateway Crate and Freight comes in.
Our task was to take 8 airplane hangers worth of materials from Aircraft part molds to already produced fuselages and all the way down to each nut and bolt used for the assembly of the aircraft and get them into ocean containers and ship them to their new owner.
We started with packing of the smaller parts: nuts, bolts, screws into bags and boxes, along with blueprints, manuals and documentation, as well as electrical components, all bagged, boxed and palletized to get compact as possible in the container.
There are 100s of parts numbers on these boxes (Picture on the right --->)
It took a 5 man team 2 days just to get all of these small components bagged, boxed and palletized for loading. There were a few rooms of parts to start off with.
Along with large molds that are used to fabricate the wings, fuselage and tail were all the specialized tooling needed. Tool boxes full of tools that are used during the manufacturing process of these plane needed to be packed for loading into the container.
VCI wrap (Vapor Corrosion Inhibitor) was used on pretty much everything that was metal to ensure protection against rust and the effects of moisture on these items. The blue tinted wrap contains a chemical property that works as a desiccant.
We utilized a number of different VCI wrapping products on these materials including paper VCI on smaller components. Great care was taken to ensure the safe arrival of these materials to their new home.
There was also an active craft that was flown one last time before it was grounded so that we could crate it up. The wings and landing gear were disassembled and we slat crated it to protect it in the container.
This next picture is us moving the crate with the plane on it, we kept the engine in the mount and wrapped it again with a VCI wrap, loaded this into the container and blocked and braced it before loading other material, the wings and landing gear in with it.
Of course the fully active plane was a very valuable part of the purchase, we packed, blocked and braced this plane and all its parts securely into the container. Creating a full protection build out up and around the slat crate to ensure the other parts did not shift move or come in contact with this plane during ocean and land transport.
By building up in each container we were able to maximize the density of the items in each container while also protecting the items from each other. The use of strapping, blocking and bracing and wrapping these items in each container made it a successful transfer of these valuable materials to the purchaser overseas.
This project took a 5 man crew a little under 2 weeks to complete from start to finish. The Gateway crew was able to take 8 airplane hangers of materials and fit them into 5 40' High Cube Ocean Containers.
Gateway Crate and Freight has been involved in many projects that required packing and stuffing ocean containers for shipping. This project in Toledo, WA required our Washington facility to coordinate the important steps of having the containers arrive and pickup on time as these containers were finished.
We specialize in large projects like this one.
Give us a call for a free estimate if you have multiple containers needing to be professionally packed and economically shipped.
TOLL FREE 855-474-4685.
LOCAL WA STATE 206-618-4284
