What goes wrong

The label came off

Updated October 2026

On this page9

What it looks like Why fluid gets behind it Three suppliers, three possible causes HDPE is a difficult surface The rule asks for two things at once Direct marking sidesteps all of it Run the test before the print order It is a packaging defect, not a print defect References

This is the failure S6.14 was written to catch, and it is the easiest one to prevent.

What it looks like

A corner lifted, a print run gone translucent, ink smeared where a thumb wiped it, or a whole label slid round the bottle. On a brake fluid container that is a non-conforming package, not a cosmetic complaint.

Why fluid gets behind it

A scuff in handling or a nick in the die cut gives the liquid a path, and once it is under the facestock the adhesive is working wet. The standard reproduces this deliberately by cutting the label before immersion.

Three suppliers, three possible causes

The ink, the facestock and the adhesive each fail differently and are each bought from someone else. Swapping one without knowing which failed usually reproduces the problem a few months later.

HDPE is a difficult surface

It is low in surface energy, so adhesion is harder to achieve on it than on glass or on coated board. Every container on this shelf is HDPE, which makes this a shelf-wide consideration rather than a one-off.

The rule asks for two things at once

Legible after immersion, and not removable without being destroyed or defaced. A label can survive the fluid and still peel off cleanly, which fails the second half.

Direct marking sidesteps all of it

Information marked directly on the container surface has nothing to lift. For a long-running line that is often the cheaper answer once the tooling is amortized, and the rule allows it explicitly.

Run the test before the print order

Fifteen minutes, one filled bottle, a slit label and a measurement at 305 mm. It is the smallest piece of work in this property and it decides whether a pallet of labels is usable.

It is a packaging defect, not a print defect

Treating it as the printer's problem sends the question to the party least able to answer it, because the facestock, the adhesive, the container surface and the fluid all contribute. The immersion test is what turns an argument between suppliers into a result.

References

49 CFR 571.116 S6.14, Container information: cut the label vertically all the way through, immerse the container in the fluid it holds for 15 minutes at 23 plus or minus 5 C, wipe it dry, and the required information must remain legible to an observer with 20/40 vision at 305 mm. law.cornell.edu

49 CFR 571.116 S5.2.2, on certification, marking and labeling: seven required items on the container or a permanently affixed label, never on a removable part such as a lid, including the DOT grade, the minimum wet boiling point in Fahrenheit, a packaged-lot serial number and four verbatim safety warnings. S5.2.2.4 moves the labeling to an outer carton where the container is not normally visible. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal regulation and from measured catalog data, not from a blending bench. We sell containers and closures; whether a particular closure satisfies a particular clause is a question about that closure and its supplier’s testing, and nothing here certifies a package as compliant. Anything on these pages is a starting point.