Why are egg cartons 2×6 instead of 1×12 or 3×4?
In: 2
Other sizes do exist, including 3×4, and where I live, 10-egg (5×2) cartons are more common than 12-egg ones. So it’s not as black-and-white as you’re assuming in your question.
It’s true that 1×12 doesn’t really exist, because that wouldn’t be strong or stable enough – the carton would tip over very easily, and buckle/snap under its own weight if you didn’t hold it carefully.
As for 3×4, as I said this does exist but it’s probably less convenient for stacking, since dozen-egg cartons are often stocked and sold side-by-side with half-dozen cartons which are 3×2. If you use a two-row design for both, the cartons have the same width, and a dozen-egg carton will be pretty much exactly twice the length of a half-dozen carton (sometimes a two-dozen package will actually just be two half-dozen cartons stuck together). And if you sell 24-egg packages too, they’re nearly always 6×4 so again a nice multiple of the smaller sizes. But again, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, and it’s not like 3×4 cartons are impossible to work with. Besides, as I said, there are many other possible sizes that aren’t even multiples of a (half-)dozen, like 10 (2×5), or 15 (3×5) or 18 (3×6) or 20 (4×5) and so on.
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