To move a large collection of paintings and sculpture by my late husband, a highly respected artist, from North Carolina to Washington state, I chose the company his gallery believed to be the safest for handling it. Craters and Freighters advertises that it specializes in packing and moving fragile and valuable objects.
The Greensboro representative of this company, Jeff McCann, contracted with me to build crates for the nearly 300 works of figurative sculpture. These works were of plaster, terra cotta, and clay and clearly fragile. Mr. McCann assured me that each object would be carefully packed in these crates at a local Craters and Freighters workshop before being loaded onto a Craters and Freighters van, which he described as having advanced hydraulic suspension and loading systems. The shipment required an entire large van, which was to move the crated art the entire 3,000 miles to my new location. Mr. McCann emphasized that the art would remain in the same Craters and Freighters truck from start to finish and would never be reloaded.
At the artist's studio (and at a local gallery then holding an exhibition of his work), the bubble-wrapped sculptures were packed in single-ply open cardboard cartons along with styrofoam pellets and placed carefully in small loads on the bed of a small truck. These cartons were of a size and weakness appropriate for carrying toilet tissue.in response to the anxiety I expressed, Mr. McCann said that the sculptures would be carried in this manner just the two miles to the worksite at which the crates for them would be built. This crating was never done.
Instead, except for two works that unaccountably were properly packed in solid wooden containers, all the sculptures were sent across the country in the flimsy temporary boxes. The packing consisted of a strip of tape to close them.in some cases, the flaps of the cardboard box had been pulled up and taped over the heads of plaster figures taller than the box.
There was no indication on these boxes of their contents. They were not labeled "fragile, " and their correct orientation was not marked. They had been stacked to the ceiling of the truck. Many had fallen, the lower ones were crushed, almost all had split open. Some of their contents, such as plaster heads, were rolling loose on the floor of the truck.
As I had been told, the same truck carried the shipment from North Carolina (its door was sealed). However, it was not a Craters and Freighters truck. It belonged to Roadway, a hauler of common freight, and it had no springs, no liftgate, no side door, and no ramp. The Roadway driver had not known that he was carrying art, since the bill of lading identified the contents only as "dry goods." He told me that he could hear the load crashing around in the back. (He also said that any load packed as this one was would have collapsed, that any professional mover would have packed the load "in steps" and braced it at the bottom.)
Three of the twelve works that had been picked up from the gallery were never delivered (probably lost amid the styrofoam debris on the floor of the truck). Some of the most beautiful plaster casts were pulverized, and the others cannot be restored to anything like their original state.
It has been eight months since Craters and Freighters was notified of the misrepresentations made by their franchisee and the losses I sustained as a result. I am not likely to receive even an apology from them. They deny any wrongdoing, and their insurance company argues that the art had no value because it had not been purchased.
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