Road case

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A road case is a box specifically built to protect musical instruments, properties, or other sensitive equipment when it must be moved between locations, or frequently thrown around by airport baggage handling personnel. A large number of varying-sized road cases can be built to outfit the needs of an entire touring production company, or custom designed individually for a specific industry or product. Most road cases are constructed of three main layers. An outer layer of laminate known as ABS acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, which is adhered to a middle layer of lightweight 3/16" to 1/2" cabinet grade plywood such as Russian Baltic Birch, Poplar, or Maple. Inside the case, an internal shock absorbing layer such as polyurethane or polyethylene foam is adhered to the walls of the middle layer with negative space removed that corresponds to the exact shape of the component which it is preserving. The edges and corners of road cases are further reinforced with aluminium angle bar or extrusions, and form fitting metal case corners which are cast and often coated in zinc or nickel. Caster wheels are often built into, or attached to the case for ease of transit. Road cases can also be made of molded plastic.

The history of the road case design is based on an airplane parts packaging specification, designed by airline packaging engineers. The specification is ATA 300 Category 1. ATA is Airline Transport Association located in Washington DC. Jan Alejandro of Jan-Al Cases sits on the revision board along with members of Boeing Airlines, Airbus, Fed-Ex, American Airlines, United Airlines, Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines. ATA 300 Cat 1 cases are designed to withstand 100 trips and Cat 2 containers are rated for 10 trips. The original design required the cases to be white, so they would not be left on the airport runway, when loading cases at night time. The first ATA 300 Cat 1 spec was published circa 1960. There are many plastic molded cases that are ATA cases and are now being used as "Road Cases," for example Jan Alejandro used a "Pelican Case" for Mick Jagger’s personal road stereo system.

Rackmount Cases are widely used on the road for pro audio, lighting, sound recording and video. Typical uses for “Road Cases” on tour are used for wardrobe, hair and make-up, catering, rigging, backline, sound, lights, video, production and carpentry. Road cases are usually used by Roadies. Other applications include military, sports, medical,rental and staging

Road cases are also called Reusable Shipping Containers, Anvil Cases, Jan-Al Cases, Rhino Cases, Pelican Cases,Nelson Cases, and Flight Cases.