By the time a hairline crack shows up in an egg during the grading process, the damage is hours old. Everything looked fine coming off the transport. The egg passed visual checks at the house, then turned up as a loss once volume was already moving through the line.
By the time you’ve spotted a loss, the egg has been through every link in the chain. There's nothing to do except absorb the shrinkage and try to work out where the damage happened.
Usually, the honest answer is that it happened in pieces. Hairline cracks are cumulative. A single small impact during loading doesn't fracture a shell on its own. Add in vibration on the road, a bump at unloading, and pressure from an uneven stack, and the shell eventually gives way.
When trays or dividers flex under load (from material fatigue, moisture absorption, or simple design inconsistency), the stack shifts. Load that should distribute evenly across the tray surface migrates toward corners and contact edges, which are the parts of the shell with the least tolerance for point pressure. A stack that's slightly out of square at the bottom amplifies the error with every layer above.
Every additional touch on a leaning stack is another chance for an impact or a pressure point, and the corrective handling meant to protect the eggs adds more stress to the shell.
Material consistency matters because it keeps stacks sitting the same way all the time. When trays and dividers respond differently under weight, pressure can concentrate in corners and edges instead of staying spread out, and that’s when “invisible” damage starts.
It also matters because handling speed changes throughout a shift. Forklift starts and stops, tighter turns at the dock, a faster load-out to make a pickup window, or a quicker unload when trucks are queued, all create little jolts. If carriers flex differently from one pallet to the next, small shifts happen that crews don’t always catch.
Humidity adds another variable over time. Materials that take on moisture or soften can change shape, and then the layers stop sitting flat. That makes a pallet easier to push out of the square and increases the chances of eggs seeing uneven pressure on the ride to grading.
The DuraPlas Egg Transport System (pallets, dividers, and 30-cell trays) is built from virgin impact- and wear-resistant plastics, with reinforced stress points at the contact areas most likely to take hits during fast handling.
The lightweight, rigid design keeps each component stable under load, so the stack geometry doesn't drift during a run. The 30-cell trays stack six high and are sized to handle jumbo eggs without creating the shell-to-tray contact pressure that looser cell geometry can produce. The dividers hold a flat profile even in high-humidity environments, so the layers of a loaded pallet seat correctly. That keeps load off shell edges and corners.
Equipment won't solve every handling issue on the floor. Taking it off the list of possible causes is one of the more straightforward fixes when you're trying to trace hairline cracks back to their origin.
If your shrink numbers at grading are running higher than they should be, the transport system is worth evaluating before looking elsewhere. We’d love to send you a catalog or the chance to talk with your team about your operation's specific requirements.