Unfortunately it appears that those involved still do not understand the problem. There is *not* a problem with the strength of the boxes. As was mentioned in my message, the boxes themselves are fine. The problem is that the boxes are approximately two inches larger than the cups inside, and the cups are able to move around freely inside the boxes. There is no packing material of any kind in the boxes that would restrain that movement. When the boxes are tossed during shipment, as they inevitably are, it is possible that the forces of impact will be felt in the mug handle alone causing it to fracture. If there is proper packing material in the boxes, impact forces are most likely to be distributed to the entire mug which would be able to absorb them. Putting labels on the outside of shipped packages with the words “Fragile” and “Glass” has not been a historically effective way to insure safe delivery of poorly packed contents. There is a reason that is a large packing materials industry exists. Put the words "packing" and "peanuts" into a search engine and you will find many products designed for this purpose. My inspection shows that one and a half sheets of properly crumpled newspaper would likely be very adequate to protect each mug. As an aside, the purpose of sending the message to ODV was not related to the mugs but to try to draw attention to something else that would save the League a couple hundred dollars a year with no apparent downside. 73, Dick Norton, N6AA On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 6:05 AM, Kramer, Harold, WJ1B <wj1b@arrl.org> wrote:

Just to close the loop, here is a brief explanation the SS mugs situation. As of right now, there are apparently reports of about 10 broken mugs out of over 300 shipped, about 3%. While this is not a terrible breakage rate, we should be able to do better. We have and will continue to replace the broken mugs as soon as we learn about them. No problem.

Here’s what happened. This year, as always, Sean Kutzko, Contest Branch Manager, ordered the mugs through Barker Specialty. Apparently, because of a slight change in the color of this year’s mug, Barker went to a different supplier. That supplier provided the mugs in a different shipping box than the one used in prior years. Indeed, the 2009 version of the shipping box was sturdier and included the words “Fragile” and “Glass” on the outside of the box, the 2010 did not. However, the 2010 version of the shipping box was rated “UPS approved” by the vendor so we assumed that it would be fine shipped via FedEx, our shipping contractor. As they do every year, the mailroom created and applied the shipping labels and mailed them out

Sean has addressed this issue with Barker Specialty and made them aware that we were dissatisfied with the packaging. Both our internal folks and Barker will certainly pay more attention to the shipping boxes when we order next year’s SS mugs.