U.S. parcel volume is expected to reach roughly 24.6 billion packages by the end of 2026, nearly 5% higher than in 2025. If you’re moving products through an e-commerce distribution network, higher volume means more packages passing through automated sortation, carrier handoffs, and different transportation environments. Each stage can introduce impacts, compression, drops, vibration, or other handling conditions that your packaging needs to withstand.

And since packages have to move through these stages quickly, your packaging has less time to recover from the handling it encounters.

As e-commerce evolves, packaging designed for conventional distribution is starting to feel the strain. Damage rates now run between 3% and 11%, depending on the network. Coupled with rising e-commerce volume, a nationwide survey estimates that around 860 million packages arrive damaged in the U.S. each year.

If you've been processing more returns, sending replacement shipments, or dealing with damaged deliveries, it may be time to revisit how your packaging handles the journey.

Has Your Distribution Network Outgrown Your Packaging?

To design corrugated packaging that can withstand the distribution process, you need to account for how the box will be handled, stacked, transported, and delivered. If your packaging was designed around an e-commerce network with 10 handling points and that network now exposes the same box to 20 or 30, the packaging has to withstand two to three times as many handling events. Those additional touch points can introduce more drops, impacts, compression, vibration, and transfers than the original design accounted for, which can affect how well the box protects your product.

If you encounter any of these signs, your distribution network may have already outgrown how your packaging was originally designed:

  • Damage is increasing. You’re seeing more crushed corners, punctures, tears, open boxes, or damaged products after sortation, transfers, or transportation.
  • Your packages go through more handling points. Your products now pass through additional sortation systems, distribution centers, carrier handoffs, or transportation modes before delivery.
  • Boxes are failing in automated sortation. Packages catch, tip, shift, jam, or lose their orientation as they move through conveyors and sortation equipment.
  • Products are shifting inside the box. Space, changes in product configuration, or insufficient interior protection allow the product to move during handling.
  • Your boxes no longer hold their shape through the network. Compression, stacking, vibration, or repeated handling causes boxes to buckle, collapse, deform, or open.
  • The distribution route has changed. Products may now spend more time in storage, travel farther, move between transportation modes, or encounter conditions that the original packaging design did not account for.

At York Container, we have a specialized Strategic Packaging Optimization Team (SPOT) that can help you understand more about your corrugated packaging, from its materials and design to how it performs within your distribution process.

  • Structural integrity. The packaging’s ability to maintain its shape and protect the product under current handling, storage, and shipping conditions.
  • Product weight and case configuration. The weight, contents, and configuration of each case and how they affect the packaging.
  • Storage conditions. The length of time packages are stored and the conditions they encounter before shipment.
  • Palletization. How boxes are arranged, stacked, and loaded, and how those factors affect packaging performance.
  • Shipping requirements. The ways products move through the distribution network and the conditions the packaging encounters along the way.
  • Automation needs. The way packaging interacts with automated equipment and handling systems.

Your team can work through these factors internally, or you can bring in a packaging partner to evaluate your packaging against the handling, storage, shipping, and equipment conditions it now needs to withstand.

How to Design Your Packaging Around New Distribution and Intermodal Requirements

A change in your distribution network does not automatically mean you need a stronger box. Start by identifying what has changed in the way your products move, then determine whether the existing packaging specifications still address those conditions.

Review your packaging design based on:

  • Distribution and Handling Conditions
    Review how often your corrugated packaging is handled, how far it travels, where transfers occur, and how loading or sortation has changed. Consider temperature and humidity when they may affect packaging performance.
  • Your Packaging as a Complete System
    Review product fit, box dimensions, board construction, closures, joints, and interior protection together. Look for excessive product movement, poor fit, or dimensions that create problems during handling.
  • Automated Sortation Requirements
    Check whether your box dimensions, shape, rigidity, and closures suit the equipment handling your packages. Use testing that reflects the actual package journey when needed.
  • The Cause of the Damage
    Do not assume higher damage rates mean you need a heavier board grade. Identify where and how the packaging is failing first. The right change may involve the board construction, box style, dimensions, closure, product fit, or interior protection.

Are you seeing more impacts, drops, or redirects as packages move through high-speed sortation? Are longer intermodal journeys exposing your packaging to more vibration, transfers, or changes in temperature and humidity? If so, it may be time to take a closer look at how your packaging is performing under those conditions.

Once you understand what has changed in your distribution process, you can see what your packaging needs to do differently. From there, you can decide whether the change belongs in the box construction, dimensions, closure, interior protection, or somewhere else in the design.

Author Bio:

Georgie Ornelas is the Marketing Director at York Container Company, part of the Atlantic Packaging group of companies, which together provide packaging solutions in Pennsylvania, Illinois, other parts of the US, and Canada. Georgie has authored content for York Container and Skybox Packaging and frequently contributes industry insights on corrugated packaging, packaging supplies, warehouse efficiency, and the circular economy.