Shipping Packages: Which Company Is Most Careful?

Nov. 26, 2010— -- Once you wrap your holiday packages for pick-up or drop them off at the post office, you might think that your gift-giving duties for the season are done. But a gift is only as good as the shape it's in when it arrives.

You may have bundled up your bounty with tender loving care, but there's no telling whether the shipping company will treat your packages with the kindness they deserve.

The tech-savvy editors at Popular Mechanics wondered the same thing. So they worked with a team of engineers to rig up a sensor that can tell when a box is dropped, flipped over, heated or cooled.

Then they sent it on an "epic" adventure (actually many mini-adventures) across the country with FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service, disguised inside an ordinary brown box, to test which service was best at handling a package with care.

"It's a little weird idea I had," said Glenn Derene, senior editor for Popular Mechanics and the mastermind behind the shipping experiment. "I've actually been sitting on this idea for years."

He first thought an accelerometer-equipped iPhone could handle the travel. But after talking with a few engineers, he learned that the phone's battery and GPS technology wouldn't be up for the job.

But the same engineers at National Instruments, an Austin, Texas, manufacturer of industrial control equipment and software, told him they would be able to custom-make a device that would indeed be up for the challenge.

So they worked with Popular Mechanics to build a hand-sized device that can monitor temperature, acceleration and orientation and constantly relay the information in real-time.

Derene said they carefully packed the device in a box, stuffed with foam core cut to cushion it, and then sent it on about 12 trips with the three different shipping companies.

They tested overnight shipping, three-day shipping and, on the last runs, marked the boxes "Fragile: Handle With Care" to see if it made a difference.

"We weren't doing a scientific style test," he said. "We were just sort of having fun, seeing what we could find out from a couple of trips.

"But the data logger on this thing was a pretty sophisticated piece of equipment.