Which shipping company is the kindest to packages?

One premise of consumer escapes is that time is precious. Therefore shipping services, including overnighting plays an important role in business and in sending holiday gifts around the country. Leave it to Popular Mechanics to test the carriers:

"A few years ago, Popular Mechanics shipped a custom-built gaming PC—a rather heavy and cumbersome beast—to a New Hampshire woman who'd won it in a sweepstakes. The computer arrived in pieces, delivering a crushing blow, so to speak, to the nice lady as well as to the PM staffers who'd built the computer. Even though we made good by reconstructing the PC and driving it to her doorstep, I still shudder at the memory of the gory photos she sent us of the shattered machine.

The overnight-shipping industry is a modern technological and logistical wonder, but it still can inflict medieval damage on parcels. Everyone has at one time or another received a dented, torn or otherwise mutilated package. And after our PC-shipping incident, I felt a sense of professional duty to find a way to get inside a package, as it were, and quantify the abuse it endures. Since my life insurance would become null and void if I attempted to ship myself, I needed a technological solution."

From the article: 'One disheartening result was that our package received MORE abuse when marked "Fragile" or "This Side Up." 

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