Stackable container for bottles and the like

Claim 1

An improved container for holding and transporting bottles and the like comprising a unitarily formed parallelepiped container having pairs of rectangular side and end walls, a bottom wall and a plurality of longitudinally and transversely extending inner walls, said inner walls intersecting to divide said container into a plurality of cells adapted to receive bottles; means at the corner junctions of said side and end walls forming a double wall structure including spaced, parallel wall portions; said end walls including means extending between the upper portions of said corner junctions defining a handle; means in said inner and end walls defining spaced apart openings extending upwardly from said bottom wall, at least some of said openings being located at the intersections of said inner walls; means in said bottom wall defining a first plurality of generally circular holes, at least some of which are located below said openings; means in said bottom wall defining a second plurality of holes, each of the holes of said second plurality being substantially centrally located in said cells and being of a smaller diameter than the tops of bottles to be received in said cells; rib means integrally formed on said bottom wall for improving the rigidity thereof, said rib means including a first plurality of ribs extending across the inner surface of said bottom wall between the holes of said first plurality of holes; a plurality of annular flanges extending upwardly from the inner surface of said bottom wall surrounding each of said first plurality of holes and connected to said first plurality of ribs; a second plurality of ribs extending radially across and outwardly from the holes of said second plurality of holes, pairs of said second ribs extending diagonally across said cells perpendicular to each other and intersecting at the centers of said second plurality of holes, said second plurality of ribs being connected to said first plurality of ribs, said first plurality of ribs forming, in each cell, a square rotated 45° from the peripheral edges of the cell; and each of said second plurality of ribs being thicker at the center thereof than at either end, the upper surfaces thereof being tapered to engage a generally concave bottle bottom.