Before
cardboard amazon boxes, there were simple hand-made shipping crates.
This is finer and more carefully planed and constructed than was typical, but the idea is there.
We have dozens of these shipping crates stacked in the hay-loft of our barn.
Goods were recieved in them, and my great-grandpa would re-make them into snake and ground-hog traps and cages which he would use to ship these "exotic" midwestern species world-wide.
Many old outbuildings have been shored up with materials from disassembled shiipping crates, including this partition wall for our
root cellar, made from shipping crates from their large, coal-burning
chicken brooders.