16 
BULLETIN 579, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTUEE. 
counts were made of the broken crates in the storage house, and it 
was found that at least 25 per cent needed to be repaired or remade 
before being shipped from the storage house to the market ; in fact, 
in one instance a carload of 168 crates had to be repacked before 
being shipped to market, and 125 new crates were required. The 
condition of these crates when they reached the storage house is indi- 
cated in figure 6. It can readily be understood that these crates 
would be in a much worse condition after being handled three or four 
times at the storage house and at least twice more en route to market. 
They did not, however, survive the handling at the storage house. 
P2487HP 
Fig. 6. — Celery in a refrigerator car as it reached the storage house. Note the broken 
crates and poor method of loading. This celery was repacked before being shipped to 
market and 125 new crates were used. 
The partition crate gave nearly as good results as the 11 and 16 
inch crates as far as the keeping quality of the celery was concerned, 
but there is the same objection to it as to the standard crate in that 
it is heavy and unwieldy to handle. A crate which is nearly square 
and weighs 125 pounds or more when full is hard to handle, and this 
is one reason why so many slats are broken in loading and unloading 
the filled crates. One crate is often dropped with considerable force 
on another crate, which results in the breaking of the top slats of the 
one or the bottom slats of the other. In lifting the large crates by 
their top slats the slats are often broken or pulled off. A broken 
crate does not stack well in a car or in the storage house, often tipping 
