Using stretch film by hand can be extremely tough if you are doing it over and over throughout the day. It stresses the back and if your unlucky enough not to be equipped with a wrap dispenser or a pair of gloves, it burns your hands as well. First the wrap is secured to a stationary pallet by wrapping it once around the pallet edge or sandwiched in between boxes. It’s then wrapped by walking around the pallet while unwinding and stretching the film by arm strength as you go. Continuing to raise and lower the roll as you walk around it will asure the load is secured and adequately covered.
The upside to hand wrapping is quite obvious. The stretch film can be easily grabbed and used anywhere in the facility allowing you to wrap a pallet in any location. It’s a very quick and simple process.
The downside is the quality of the job. It’s not a knock towards the individual assigned to the task. After wrapping many pallets the packer, as the position is commonly referred to as, will wear down or get distracted with other duties involved. During this time the arm strength, hand strength, and as mentioned previously, the back strength starts to fade. The result is an inconsistency in the manual wrapping of each load as the day draws on. Combined with the weight and irregularity of the load thats being wrapped can also be factored in as well. An uneven or irregular load needs to be wrapped especially well so pieces can’t move during transit.
For many businesses that ship out only so many loads a week this may be your only option, but for the companies that ship out so many loads a day it will be cost effective to look into a stretch wrap machine.