Costing smalls traffic by Volume Gauge
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• A relatively inexpensive device claimed drastically to reduce freight handling revenue losses, in addition to speeding up the reception and costing of smalls and parcels traffic, has been developed by Software Engineering Ltd of Salisbury.
The Volume Gauge offers a convenient low-cost method of obtaining the linear dimensions of a package, and hence the volume. Hitherto, reliance has been placed on the consignor's figures for volume, or charges raised on a weight basis only, which has led to an estimated 10 per cent loss of revenue to shipping companies and freight agents.
The real requirement is apparent when it is realized that it is not the true volume that is usually needed by the carrier, but rather the space that the item will occupy in a container or an aircraft. (For a box or crate the two values are identical, whereas for an irregularly contoured item they will not be.) Instead of offering a measuring instrument to the item to be dimensioned. with the Volume Gauge the item is presented to combined measuring and computing graphs. These can be mounted on a platform. a weighing machine or stand alone.
Two "walls" containing the graphs are arranged mutually at right angles, the units and layout employed being specified for any particular use. The graphs are so designed and computed to provide both measuring and multiplying functions in one operation. Thus the result is obtained entirely graphically and there are no timeconsuming calculations or inconvenient measurements involved.
Items to be measured are placed in the common corner of the device. The handler (who normally has to wait for the indicator of a weighing machine to settle before accurately ascertaining weight), merely uses this time to look along the edges of the item to be handled. The volume, or the volume weight, can thus be read directly. These data can be manually recorded, entered on a keyboard for printing on a tally roll, or fed directly into a processing system.