STRETCH WRAP ….. PALLET WRAP

Stretch wrap is a thin, stretchy plastic film resembling saran wrap®. Stretch wrap is used to hold things together. You wrap the film round and round a bundle, maintaining tension by stretching the film about 15 — 30%.

The wrap has no adhesive. It leaves no residue when it is removed.

Stretch Wrap:

5″ wide x 1000′ long:       $ 17.25 ea.
12″ wide x 1500′ long:     $34.50 ea.
18″ wide x 1500′ long:     $38.00 ea.
20″ wide x 1000′ long:     $34.00 ea.
10% off when you buy by the box.

We also offer discounts for case-size purchases.

At left, we show a roll of pallet wrap and a stack of boxes bundled up with moving wrap. We use shipping wrap to bundle our flat boxes into stacks which can then be carried in a pickup truck without blowing away. Packing tape would do the same job, but it couldn’t be removed without doing damage to the boxes. String would do the job, but it would cut into the boxes.

You can use stretch wrap to secure all sorts of loose items. Bundle up scrap lumber from your shop or stacks of magazines so you can move them easily. You can use it to secure power cords or attachments to appliances you need to pack. (Most of our customers love this stuff once they see what it can do.) A major use of stretchwrap is to hold together piles of boxes on a pallet. (You sometimes see such pallets sitting around a supermarket.)

Movers frequently recommend customers stretch wrap light colored couches and chairs to keep them from being soiled by dirty hands.

We have used stretch wrap to hold paper moving pads in place around furniture. Stretch wrap, pulled tight over paper pads, produces a more rugged protective coating.

Movers sometimes use stretch wrap to secure drawers or doors in furniture. We don’t recommend allowing stretch wrap to remain in contact with wood surfaces. Moisture (from the wood) can become trapped between the wood and the stretch wrap.

Stretch wrap can be used to hold in place wraps of bubble pack, movers wrap, paper pads — all sorts of wraps put around fragile items. A double or triple wrapping of bubble topped by a coating of stretchwrap produces an amazing soft, leathery coating.

After wrapping something in stretch wrap, it is necessary to secure the loose end of the wrap with a piece of packing tape.

Stretch is extremely notch sensitive i.e. little nicks or holes will make the whole sheet tear easily. Don’t abuse the unused roll by letting it roll around with sharp items. Don’t pull stretch wrap tight over sharp corners. If you have to cover a sharp corner, wrap a layer or two of stretch wrap over the corner at low tension. Then wrap at the correct tension. This usually works.

Do not confuse stretch wrap with shrink wrap. Shrink wrap is a material which shrinks when it is heated by a hot air gun. Shrink wrap yields a bright, professional looking commercial bubble pack.

Technical Stuff

Thickness of stretchwrap is usually described by a “gauge” number. The gauge is the thickness in 1/100,000’s of an inch. So, 80 gauge stretch wrap is 0.80 thousandths of an inch thick. (Notice that 80 gauge sounds much thicker than 0.80 thousands of an inch.) Not only is thicker stretchwrap stronger, it’s easier to apply. It’s usually a good idea to purchase at least 80 or 90 gauge material. The 100+ gauges work even better but they are usually priced unreasonably high. Don’t buy the 60 gauge stuff. It’s annoying to use and it takes a lot of extra wraps to get the job done.

Some stretch wrap thicknesses are stated in microns — an obsolete metric dimension. There are 25,400 microns in an inch. So, 80 gauge stretch wrap would be about 20.3 microns. We see manufacturers trying to offer 16 micron gauge stretch wrap at about the same price as 80 gauge stretch wrap.