dunnage

plural dunnages

1. uncountableusuallytransportScrap material, often wood, used to fill spaces to prevent the shifting of more valuable items during transport, or underneath large or heavy items to raise them slightly above the ground, in order to protect from chafing and wet.

   The robot cameras and software direct the robots to unload the 40-pound parts from pallets (called "dunnage") and place them on brackets fixed to a conveyor.

   2005 August, “Eyes on the Line”, in Mechanical Engineering

   2 more examples

   When you have got your junks wormed and laid up, take each two pieces, and stop them together; double the middle pieces, and stop them also, and clap a good stop on, to form the eye: then bring them all together upon some dunnage, to keep them up from the deck, to enable you to pass your round-about lashings:

   1833, “Directions For Making A Rope-rudder, as proposed by Mr. Thomas Unwin, Boatswain in the Royal Navy”, in The Nautical magazine: a journal of papers on subjects connected with maritime affairs, volume 3

   consortium of companies dedicated to finding a faster and less expensive way to produce dunnages. Dunnages are material handling parts used to hold bumpers and fenders in place when they are shipped or used in Ford's production

   2003, Chee Kai Chua with Kah Fai Leong and Chu Sing Lim, Rapid prototyping: principles and applications, page 133

2. uncountableusuallyA charge levied for materials or equipment left on site.

   The fact that the bakery was paying dunnage on the loaded car until May 25th and that it was not unloaded until after May 21, 1959, is proof that […]

   1957, Burrhus Frederic Skinner, Verbal Behavior, page 19

3. uncountableusuallyPersonal effects; baggage.

   The place had the empty and musty feel and smell usual to a dwelling no longer inhabited. Everywhere was a thick litter of discarded and ragged garments, old sea-boots, leaky oilskins -- all the worthless forecastle dunnage of a long voyage.

   1904, Jack London, chapter 32, in The Sea-Wolf (Macmillan’s Standard Library), New York, N.Y.: Grosset & Dunlap, →OCLC