Custom Cardboard Carriers
Custom cardboard carriers from 100 — gable-top carry boxes with a handle folded from the same board, for small pets, bottles, take-home meals and retail goods, with air holes, windows and full-color print.
A box that is meant to be carried by its own handle
- Board
- E flute corrugated for heavy loads and pets; cardstock (SBS) 18–24 pt for light retail carriers
- Style
- Gable top with folded handle, crash-lock or glued bottom
- Options
- Air holes, die-cut windows with film, bottle dividers, food-safe inner face
Order online
Order cardboard carriers
Starting from $2.50 per unit
Printed to your artwork or plain, sold in runs of 100 up to 5,000 units per product online. Freight to the US, UK, Canada and Australia is inside the price.
How an online order runs
- Add the units you needThen check out with your delivery address. Add other products to the same order on the way.
- A digital proof comes backLaid on the dieline, before anything prints. Change it as often as you need.
- Pay once you approve itPay by PayPal invoice or bank transfer after you approve your digital proof, or cash on delivery in the US and Canada.
- We make it and ship it deliveredYour delivery date is confirmed with the proof, against the spec and your fill date. Freight and customs are handled on the way to you.
Another size, board or finish, or more than 5,000 units? Send the spec for a price instead. Freight by market and our terms cover delivery and remakes.
Get a price for Cardboard Carriers
Send the size and quantity — we reply the same working day with a price, a dieline and a date. Artwork optional at this stage.
- Free dielineThe flat drawing comes with the quote, before you commit.
- Proof before pressNothing is printed until you have seen it laid on the dieline.
- Die kept for reordersTooling is paid once. Every reorder skips straight to press.
- Quoted in four marketsUS, UK, Canada and Australia, in the delivery currency.
Where the weight actually goes
When a carrier is lifted, the load runs up the side walls into the two handle panels that meet at the top. The handle cut-out is reinforced by doubling the board there, and the bottom is a crash-lock or a full glued base rather than tuck flaps, which can open under a swinging load.
Board grade follows the weight. A carrier for a light retail item can be cardstock; anything heavier, or anything alive, is built in E flute corrugated.
What people carry in them
| Small pets | Hamsters, birds, fish bags and reptiles from a pet shop; air holes on every panel |
|---|---|
| Bottles and jars | Two to six bottles with a divider insert so they do not knock together |
| Take-home meals | Kids’ meals, bakery items and party food; grease-resistant inside |
| Retail goods | Toys, gifts and plants carried out of the shop instead of bagged |
| Event packs | Sample kits and goodie packs handed out at the door |
Air holes, windows and inserts
- Pet carriers get rows of punched air holes on all four sides and a locking top that a pet cannot push open.
- A die-cut window with clear film lets a customer see the product or animal without opening the box.
- Bottle carriers take a folded divider so glass never touches glass.
- Food carriers use a grease-resistant board face and can include a tray insert.
Tell us what goes inside and its weight. For live animals we always build in corrugated with holes on every side.
Shipping flat and folding at the counter
Carriers arrive flat and glued, ready to fold. A crash-lock bottom pops into place as the box is opened, so staff can set one up in a few seconds at the counter. If you need sheets of board for your own inserts or pads, we also cut flat cardboard to any size.
Print that people see walking down the street
A carrier is carried through a mall, a parking lot and onto a bus with the print facing outward, so it works as a small billboard. Full-color print covers every panel, including the handle, and a pet shop can put care instructions on the inside. For boxes made for animals and their supplies see our pet packaging for shops and brands.
Cardboard Carriers — specification
The rows that are specific to this build first, then what applies to every job we run. Anything not listed is a question, not a limit — send the brief.
This build
- Board
- E flute corrugated for heavy loads and pets; cardstock (SBS) 18–24 pt for light retail carriers
- Style
- Gable top with folded handle, crash-lock or glued bottom
- Options
- Air holes, die-cut windows with film, bottle dividers, food-safe inner face
- Full color on all panels and handle; inside print available
- Delivery
- Flat and glued, folded by hand at the counter
- Minimum
- 100 carriers per size
On every job
- Print process
- Flexo in one to four colors straight onto the liner; litho-lamination where the box needs full color or a photograph.
- Color
- Flat colors on kraft. Full color needs a white top liner or a laminated sheet, because brown shifts every color warm.
- Tolerance
- Cutting plus or minus 1.5 mm. The flute compresses, so corrugated runs wider than folding board.
- Tooling
- No die on a regular slotted box, which is cut on a slotter. Die-cut mailers and trays need one, made once and kept.
- Food contact
- Food-grade liners and a vented build where the box carries hot food.
- Sustainability
- High recycled content through liners and flute as standard, and the box recycles whole if it is sealed with paper tape.
- Artwork
- Vector PDF or AI, 3 mm bleed, 4 mm safe area, fonts outlined. We check every file and send a proof before press.
- Dieline
- Supplied free with the quote, before you commit. Yours whether or not you order.
- Sample
- A plain unprinted sample at the finished size on request, for fit and construction.
- Reorders
- Skip the tooling and go straight to press at a lower unit price.
- Lead time
- Quoted with the price against your fill date rather than promised before we have seen the spec.
- Markets
- United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia — priced in the delivery currency, freight included.
Boards and films we build cardboard carriers on
Corrugated is a fluted sheet glued between two liners, and the flute decides nearly everything: how it prints, how it dents, how high it stacks. These are the grades we run.
E flute
About 1.5 mm. Prints well and folds crisply; dents under a stack. Retail boxes, mailers and light shippers.
1.5 mm, single wallB flute
About 3 mm. The working default for parcels — takes print reasonably and stacks reasonably. Most shipping boxes are B.
3 mm, single wallC flute
About 4 mm. More cushioning than B, slightly less stacking strength per weight. Common on grocery and produce cases.
4 mm, single wallBC double wall
B and C glued together, about 7 mm. Heavy or fragile goods, pallet stacking, anything over roughly 15 kg.
7 mm, double wallKraft liner
Brown, strong, absorbent. One or two flat colors flexo print well on it; photographs drink into the brown and go muddy.
Outer and inner linerWhite top liner
A bleached outer liner for full-color print on corrugated. Costs more and marks more easily than kraft.
Outer liner onlyRecycled-content corrugated
High post-consumer fiber through liners and flute. The default for shippers; a slightly grayer brown and no loss of strength at grade.
All flutesCoated and water-resistant
A coating or a wax-free barrier liner for damp stores and cold chains. Check the recycling stream before printing a claim on it.
B and C fluteNot sure which? Say what goes in it and where it is sold — the material follows from that. Our notes on recycled, recyclable and compostable cover which claims each stock can honestly carry.
- 01
Send what you have
A dimension, a photograph beside a ruler, or the product itself. No technical drawing needed — that part is ours.
- 02
We quote and draw
A price, a dieline and a date come back together. If a different build would suit the product better, that is in the reply too.
- 03
Approve the dieline
The flat drawing is yours to check: which panel is the front, where the folds fall, how deep the cavity really is.
- 04
Artwork on the dieline
You place your design on the flat we sent, or we place it for you, and you see a proof before anything goes to press.
- 05
A sample if you want one
A plain unprinted sample at the finished size shows fit and construction — the things a drawing cannot.
- 06
Cut, printed, shipped
The die is cut once and kept, so every reorder skips the tooling and goes straight to press at a lower unit price.
Format
Vector PDF or AI where possible. Raster artwork at 300dpi at final size, in CMYK.
Bleed
3 mm past every trim line, so a fraction of drift on the cutter never leaves a white edge.
Safe area
Keep type and anything important 4 mm inside the cut and away from every fold.
Color
Convert to CMYK before sending. Uncoated stock prints lighter; a spot color is the only exact match.
Fonts
Outline them or supply the files. A missing font substitutes silently and the proof will not match.
Barcodes
On a light, matte, unvarnished patch with the quiet zone clear — a code on gloss fails the scanner.
Not set up that way? Send it anyway — fixing a file is a short conversation, and we check every one before press. Our guide to preparing print files covers each point.
Corrugated takes fewer finishes than folding board, and the ones it takes it takes well.
Flexo on kraft
One or two flat colors straight onto brown. Cheap, fast, honest.
Litho-lamination
An offset sheet glued to the flute: full color and photographs on a shipper.
Aqueous varnish
Scuff resistance with no film, so the box still recycles whole.
White top print
Full color flexo on a bleached liner; brighter, and it marks more easily.
Inside print
A second pass on the inner liner — the panel a customer sees first.
Printed tape seal
The brand applied at the last moment, on paper tape that recycles with the box.
Not sure which suits the shelf it sells from? Say where the product is sold and we suggest one — our notes on specialty finishes show them on real boxes.
Sizing a corrugated box against the carrier, not the catalog: cardboard carriers
Corrugated is cut to your internal size, so the box goes round the product rather than the product going into a stock size. That is where the money is: a box 20 mm smaller each way is often a whole postage band cheaper.
- Internal dimensions
- Length, width and depth of the space you need. Board thickness is added outside that, and the flute is thicker than people expect.
- Clearance and void fill
- 5–10 mm a side for a rigid product. Size it properly and you need no void fill at all, which is cheaper and better received.
- Stacking
- Tell us how high the boxes stack on a pallet or a shelf. Edge crush grade is specified from that, not guessed.
- Weight
- The contents weight sets the flute and the liner grade. Over about 15 kg we move to double wall.
- Score allowance
- Corrugated needs more room at the folds than boxboard. The dieline accounts for it; a box drawn from flat dimensions comes out tight.
- Cutting tolerance
- Plus or minus 1.5 mm on corrugated, wider than folding board because the flute compresses.
Not sure your numbers are right? Send the product dimensions rather than the box dimensions and we work the box out — the full method is in our guide to measuring for a box.
Interactive · five steps · no sign-up
Build your Cardboard Carriers in 3D
Pick a shape, type a size, choose a board and a finish. The preview on the left redraws as you go, and the spec lands with us exactly as you set it.
Frequently asked questions
Got a question about cardboard carriers? The answers below cover what we get asked most. If yours is not here, send it with a brief, message us on WhatsApp, or call +1 503-461-4788 — we reply the same working day.
How much weight can a cardboard carrier hold?
It depends on the board. Corrugated carriers with a reinforced handle and crash-lock bottom carry several pounds; cardstock carriers suit lighter items.
Are cardboard carriers safe for small pets?
Yes, when built in corrugated with air holes on every side and a locking top, which is how we make every pet carrier.
Can a cardboard carrier have a window?
Yes. A die-cut window with clear film shows the product or animal inside without opening the box.
Can cardboard carriers hold bottles?
Yes. A folded divider insert keeps two to six bottles apart so they do not knock together while carried.
Do cardboard carriers ship flat?
Yes. They arrive flat and glued, and the crash-lock bottom pops into place when the carrier is opened.
Is the handle on a cardboard carrier strong enough?
The handle area is doubled board, and the load runs up the side walls into it, so it holds the rated weight without tearing.
Can cardboard carriers be used for food?
Yes. Food carriers use a grease-resistant inner face and can take a tray insert for meals or bakery items.
Can a cardboard carrier be printed on the handle?
Yes. Print covers every panel, including the handle, and the inside can carry instructions or a message.
What sizes do cardboard carriers come in?
Any size. Send the product dimensions and weight and we size the carrier and handle to it.
What bottom is best for a cardboard carrier?
A crash-lock or fully glued bottom. Tuck flaps can open under a swinging load, so we do not use them on carriers.
Can I order cardboard carriers for an event?
Yes. Event and sample-kit carriers start at 100, printed with the event or brand on every side.
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