I've read a lot of King's work...The Stand, Pet Sematary, It, Needful Things, Night Shift, The Talisman, Christine, Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew...he really is a great writer, a little long-winded like Bradbury, but still a fantastic storyteller.
What intrigues me about The Crate is its obscurity. I really only remember it from King's film Creepshow. I had to do a little hunting to discover it was first published in Gallery magazine in 1979. I find the tale very creative, and an easy one-sitting read...if you can look past Stephen King's limited knowledge of American history.
I guess I'm a stickler for doing your homework and making sure you get the historical facts correct. The markings on the crate make no sense. In the story the crate was shipped back to the United States in the 1830's. The U.S. did not stretch from sea to shining sea at this time as the American Southwest, including California, was Mexico, and you wouldn't have shipped any cargo destined for the Eastern Seaboard to San Francisco. Horlicks University, a mythical college created by King, is on the American east coast. There would be no reason to send cargo bound for the East in a westerly direction...considering there was no railroad across the continent at the time (that wouldn't occur until 1866) and given Mexican California wouldn't have had anything close to a steam locomotive in the 1830's, it being a distant outlying backwater, inherited from Spain...
Chances are you will not find a facsimile of the original first edition story in Gallery on the web....but you can still read the story in digital format here:
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