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Warehouse and Operations as a Career and I’m Marty T Hawkins, everyone having an outstanding week I hope! I was recently asked why I’ve mentioned planning in the last two episodes? I won’t go into Goals and Planning today but I did urge the listener to check out our episodes on just those very topics. But I will however remind everyone that if we’re not working off of a plan, a direction towards our 2019 goals that we’ll probably be making the same pay rate all year long & quite possibly next year too! So I’ve been told that I keep mentioning the Pallet Runner position in my ramblings so I thought we’d talk about that position today. If you have any topic suggestions, questions or maybe you’d like to share something with our group, simply use host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and email them too us, I’ll research it, find an answer or make sure it gets out to the group. Be sure and join our Facebook and Twitter feeds to, using @whseandops, and if its answers from our peers your looking for check out the Warehouse Equipment Operators Community group on Facebook as well!
OK, the Pallet Runner position. Many times the pallet runner task is our first opportunity working with equipment, or really working an entire shift on it. At a smaller facility we may be using a walkie jack or an electric pallet jack that we walk beside, and be placing pallets from the back of the trailer, picking it up after the unloaders have it stacked and ready for the receiver, and we’ll just be moving it to a staging area for the fork drivers to come out of the aisles and retrieve it for put away. Some of our small facilities may require us, as pallet runners, to wrap the pallets before hauling them, and for productivity reasons we may occasionally be the Unloader, Pallet Runner and the Forklift driver! The important thing about this position is we’ll be getting experience at operating a piece of powered industrial equipment. The pallet runner’s responsibility is to get the pallets placed properly, and in the correct area so as not to slow down the productivity of the other tasks around us. The unloaders need us to keep making them room to keep bringing stacked product out of the trailers and the fork drivers need to get the product racked and their aisles cleared. It’s our responsibility to keep both of the working, all the while doing it Safely. Our jobs, typically being up front on the docks, and as we’ve learned that’ll be the most congested and dangerous area in the warehouse we’ll need to be watching for both equipment and pedestrian traffic. In the larger facilities all that can be time’s 10. Imagine having 12 or more forklifts running around and maybe 80 employees on our shift. Oh, and drivers. Drivers that are unloading their own trailers are dangerous to all of us. And it’s not usually their fault. They’re not familiar with the process, it may be their first time in our building. Even if the inbound clerk or dispatcher covered the procedures with them, we’ll probably need to help them out, answer some questions maybe. Pallet Running at these larger facilities is going to require us to have some experience operating either a single or double electric rider pallet jack. It’s usually the next step in the chain, say if we’ve been an unloader as an example. We’ll have a little experience operating equipment. We’ve probably only made runs of like 50 or 60 feet at a time, but that’s a good start, we’ll know how to be safe, how the jack responds and we’ll be pros at operating in tight spots, there’s nothing trickier than getting stacked pallets out the back of a trailer, across the dock plate and staged through the maze of a full inbound dock right? So we’ve been promoted to the pallet runner. It won’t take long for us to be told by the Receiver and the Fork Operator how to do our jobs. Our Receiver will not mind telling us when we can haul a row of pallets or when he thinks we’re doing it wrong. And then we’re going to hear how we’ve placed the pallet too close to the slot, or we’ve dropped it off to far from its bay from the fork driver. And heaven forbid we misread a tag and put it in the wrong aisle. In their defense though, both the receiver and Put away Fork Driver are probably working off productivity pay or some type of incentive pay. Of course Safety is going to be our first priority. So were going to arrive to work early each day, we’ll have our PPE’s on and be at our pre-shift meeting point and ready work for the shift. At some point we’ll go pick up our pallet jack. It’s important we do our pre-trip inspection report, don’t just pencil whip it ladies and gentlemen. It’s so easy for those reports to just become a part of our day, but they honestly are important. I know one guy that writes down every chip of paint that’s missing or every label backing left on his machine each morning. He doesn’t do it to be nitpicky, he says that’s how he keeps it from being a monotonous task, it’s how he keeps it real.
As I’ve briefly mentioned we’ll need to work closely with our receivers and fork’s, besides the fact that they can make it tough for us or easy on us we need to meet our productivity numbers too. At these larger houses we may have to scan in our pick up’s and drop off’s. Meaning we’ll have either a handheld or wrist mount scanner with us. We’ll scan the pallet when we pick it up from the dock and we’ll confirm its position when we’ve dropped it off. Some systems will even instruct us where to drop it. The systems designed to verify the security of the product and it’s flow throughout the receiving process and can be used to produce metrics and productivity reports! I’ve actually seen pay systems based solely on the number of pallets moved, like a payout per pallet, but usually you’ll see a base rate with an incentive, maybe an additional amount paid over a certain number of hauls.
All that sounds simple but I assure you the Pallet Runner position can get stressful at times. You’ll have the Unloaders wanting more room, they’ll be yelling for you to get a row of pallets cleared all the while the Receiver’s holding you up, maybe there behind tagging or receiving a row and then the fork drivers upset with us because he or she has caught up to us and they don’t have any freight to move, meaning there losing money by being still. Even when everything’s going right and the dock flow is perfect we can find we’re being held up with all the traffic on the docks. People and drivers don’t seem to always care where there walking, it’s almost like they don’t know what those yellow lines are for!
So in summary we could say the Pallet Runner is a great next step. It’ll be rare, at least at our larger facilities that we’re moved right into the task unless we have some experience on the equipment. I think it’s a perfect step in our plan to learn everything about warehousing. We’ll be working closely with or next too several other tasks like Unloading, Receiving and the Putaway process, possibly even Inventory Control and maybe even the check in or clerk position. A quick story, I know a gentleman that has been running pallets for 12 years. He was moved into the returns department once, was doing a great job there but his old supervisor wanted him back, somehow convinced him to come back to his department and work for him again. A few years later he was moved to the forklift, a really good putaway position, well, another supervisor again talked him into returning and running pallets for him. I know all 3 of these supervisors and asked, jokingly of course, how come they didn’t let David move on. The answer was simply that he’d figured pallet running out. He strategically worked the dock. Planned ahead, knew the product and where everything was slotted which increased his productivity and because he worked so well with the forklift drivers their productivity improves as well. They considered him a professional pallet runner. I ran into David about 3 or 4 months ago, I’ve known him for about 15 years now, and asked him why he loved running pallets so much. His reply was, I love operating the double jack, I’m good at it and I can help the receivers, unloaders and fork’s work easier and better, it’s good for the company all the way around. David is a very good lift operator, shoot being with the same company for about 17 years now he can lend a hand with most all the positions but always goes back to running pallets. Here at WAOC we always talk about enjoying your job and how every task in operations can be that Career to retire from. David is proof of that! Well there’s a few thoughts on the Pallet Runner or Dock Runner position. Whither your plan is to use it to garner some equipment experience or make it a full time gig I think it’s a great task and is worthy of being a part of our over all plan to reach our goals! I hope to see you on our Facebook and Twitter feeds this week where we can be found using that @whseandops or be sure to shout out in the Warehouse Equipment Operators Community group in the Facebook world! Be Safe, make it your number 1 priority so we can get together again next week!