The United States Postal Service processes and delivers over 421 million pieces of mail every day, and it’s not always smooth sailing. Envelopes and parcels can endure rough handling, shifting, and exposure to moisture and environmental contaminants while in transit or in storage. Additionally, bulky, oversized packaging can drive up your dimensional weight expenses, or the costs derived from the volumetric size of your shipment. With shipping risks and high costs abound, what can you do to ensure damage-free, low-cost deliveries?

The answer is quite simple, in fact: get yourself a batch of poly mailers! These durable plastic mailers not only protect your goods from the rough conditions of shipping and storage, but they also keep your shipping costs low with their lightweight, flexible design. If you want to learn more about this reliable and versatile packaging, keep reading below.

What Are Poly Mailers?

Poly mailers are plastic mailing envelopes that are made from polyethylene. A lightweight alternative to corrugated boxes, these shipping envelopes are resistant to moisture and common contaminants and feature a tamper-evident seal on the flap. Poly mailers lie flat and are typically purchased in bulk, further reducing your costs. These mailers are available in a wide variety of types and sizes to meet the demands of the job at hand.

1. Cost Effective

Poly mailers are perfect for shipping lightweight, non-fragile products across the United States. These mailers are flexible and lay flat, so they take up less space than regular shipping materials. They also weigh much less on average than conventional corrugated boxes. This makes them an ideal solution to save on packaging costs.

And for those of you that are wondering, poly mailers are accepted by the USPS, UPS, and FedEx, so shipping just got a whole lot easier and cheaper!

When it comes to reducing shipping costs, poly mailers are the superior choice to standard boxes. To learn more about why poly mailers may be a better shipping option, take a look at our article comparing poly mailers and boxes.

2. Reduce Shipping Damages

The polyethylene material of these mailers is flexible, durable, and resistant to tears and punctures. The material shields items from common contaminants like dust, dirt, and moisture, and their flexibility keeps items safe through rough shipping conditions. Poly mailers are ideal for packing small-boxed items, clothing, and jewelry.

For additional shipping protection, poly bubble mailers feature an inner lining of bubble wrap. These mailers provide extra cushioning during shipment to absorb shock and safeguard items in transport and storage.

3. Great for Branding

Do you regularly send out catalogs, newsletters, and print advertisements? Package them in a clear view poly mailer! Featuring a transparent window on the front, these mailing envelopes are perfect for small businesses that need to keep their reading materials safe and visible through a variety of harsh weather conditions.

Glamour bubble mailers are also great for branding. These specialty mailers have a bright and colorful aluminum foil exterior and an inner lining of bubble wrap. Go the extra mile and order a set of glamour mailers with your store colors; they come in red, gold, green, blue, purple, silver, and black for your company’s shipping needs.

4. Reusable & Recyclable

Polyethylene is one of the easiest and most commonly recycled materials out there. An eco-friendly poly mailer can be used and reused multiple times before it needs to be recycled. And recycling poly mailers is as easy as emptying them, then throwing them into the bin. This both saves you time and reduces your environmental impact.

Poly mailers are much easier to recycle than cardboard boxes, which need to be broken down and flattened, and kraft mailers, which require the kraft material and any plastic material inside to be separated from each other before recycling.

5. Extra Room with Expansion Mailers

Not all loads are easy to deal with. Sometimes you find yourself needing to pack several items, large items, or oddly-shaped items; loads like these can make it difficult to determine the right size of poly mailer to use. If you think you’re going to need additional room in your poly mailers for your items, consider stocking up on expansion poly mailers.

Expansion poly mailers feature a gusseted bottom on the envelope to accommodate large and irregularly shaped loads. The added room these mailers provide will give you the peace of mind and assurance that your products will be properly packaged and ready for delivery.

Final Thoughts

Overall, poly mailers are great for shipping apparel and other non-fragile items across the country. Just make sure that a poly mailer is the right packaging for your product. While semi-fragile items can be placed in bubble mailers or mailers containing lots of cushioning, highly fragile items are probably better off being shipped in a well-cushioned box.

Be sure you check out our selection of poly mailers, kraft mailers, and other packaging materials at PackagingSuppliesByMail.com. We offer free shipping for all bulk orders of mailing envelopes. We hope you “seal” the deal by getting an order of poly mailers for now and for the future.