Standard Record Storage Boxes
Sometimes we get asked, “How come you don’t charge by the box” or “How come you don’t charge by weight”.  First, we don’t charge by the box because boxes come in many different sizes… more on that later.  We also don’t charge by weight because we are a “MOBILE” shredding company and that means we need a really “neat” truck to do that.  By “neat” I’m referring to a truck that cost about a quarter million dollars.  Yeah, I know… I know! So, if I was going to charge you by weight, I would need scales on our trucks.  Now as these trucks go rolling down the highway, they naturally bounce around.  If our truck had a scale on it, we would be constantly calibrating it all day as we go from customer to customer, due to the jostling that it would take from the road. You may find that some shredding companies do charge by weight… Not us.  We only charge you for what we can fit in our secure containers.  In other words, we only charge you for what we shred! So this begs the question… “How many boxes fit in your secure shredding containers”? That’s easy… If they are full shoeboxes… I can fit lots of them!  But if they’re full big refrigerator boxes, I can only a fit part of one. I constantly get asked this question and my canned answer is… ready drum roll please… About 10 “Standard Size Record Storage Boxes”… assuming they are full. You see a standard size record storage box measures 15″ x 12″ x 10″.  If you multiply all those measurements together (that’s what that little “x” means) you get a total volume of 1,800 cubic inches (in³).  That’s pretty straight forward. The problem is that there are a few different box sizes commonly used to store documents and hence the confusion. Here is a list of some of the more common box sizes and types: Record Storage Boxes Letter/Legal: 15″ (length) x 12″ (width) x 10″ (height); 1,800 in³ Letter: 24″ (length) x 12″ (width) x 10″ (height); 2,880 in³ Legal: 24″ (length) x 15″ (width) x 10″ (heigth); 3,600 in³ Check: 14 1/4″ (length) x 9″ (width) x 4″ (heigth); 513 in³ Number 1 is what the Shredding Industry considers the “Standard Size Record Storage Box”. Box number 2 is approximately one and a half times as big as box number 1. Let’s check the math -  2,880 divided by 1,800 equals 1.6. Now let’s look at box number 3. This box has exactly double the volume of box number 1. When we do the math and divide 3,600 by 1,800 we get exactly 2. Finally, if we look at box number 4, we see that this box has about one third the volume of box number 1. The math again shows that if we divide 513 by 1,800 we get 0.285. Not quite 0.333, but close enough that we would consider three box number 4’s to be equal to one box number 1. If your eyes still haven’t rolled back into your head at this point… I’ve got a couple more boxes to talk about! Record Storage Drawers Letter: 23 ½” (length) x 12 ¼” (width) x 10 ¼” (height); 2,951 in³ Legal: 24 ½” (length) x 15 ¼” (width) x 10 ¼” (heigth); 3,830 in³ Now, since these boxes basically have one box that rides in another, the volume is just a little bit bigger than the Record Storage Boxes. But for shredding purposes, we still consider these two sizes to be  “One And A Halves” and “Doubles.” The point of all this (finally I get to the point) is that we price our paper shredding service based on the number of times “Tip” our container.  What’s a “Tip”?  We fill our 95 gallon security container to the brim with your stuff and the truck lifts it up, dumps the contents, and shreds everything right then and there! And the most common size file box (The Standard Record Storage Box) is the box we base most all our pricing estimates on – 10 boxes per “Tip”. So any prices we quote are based on the number of “Tips”, which again is based on 10 Standard Record Storage Boxes per “Tip”. Consequently, if you have any of these other larger size boxes and they’re full, you won’t be able to fit as many in our security containers. And finally, “Bankers Box®” is a BRAND NAME. If you tell me you have “Bankers Boxes” you are telling me absolutely nothing about what size file box you have. Again, I think I’ve rambled on way too long. We look forward to hearing from you!
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