Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:00 — 8.8MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty, and I had pallets on my mind this week, thought we’d talk about that for a minute today! Back in March we looked into the history of the skid or pallet and talked about how it came to be, why there’s so many different sizes and its importance in the industry. That episode was called The Pallet, check it out if you’ve ever wondered why they are used as they are today! Anyway, so this week has been a week about pallets for me. It feels like every conversation I’ve had this week was about pallets. You know, as an unloader, receiver, pallet runner and put away lift driver we have the immense responsibility of checking and verifying that every pallet we touch or deals with our task at hand is, if not in tip top shape, that its safe to be stored in our racks. And then as replenishment lift drivers, order selectors and loaders it’s our jobs to make sure all that empty wood is then separated at the end of our shifts into, the good or reusable stacks, and the broken, salvaged or just plain broken to pieces stacks. I work with several large distribution centers that employ 1 or 2 pallet sorters or even 2 shifts of people that their sole responsibility is to separate the good and bad wood. The good pallets will of course be used next shift for the unloading process all over again and the bad wood, well, I guess it’ll depend what your facilities programs are as to what happens with those! I’ve been to buildings before that’ll haul all their bad wood out to an area in the truck yard where a utility man or general labor associate will tear them all apart and the wood is sold for scrap. Some places take it a step further and have table saws, nail guns and a little new wood out there to replace the slats or runners, maybe add those hated double runners down the sides of our pallets even. Oh, and those little metal plates, has anyone ever seen those plates be effective? You know, they usually place’em over a cracked runner, nail them in place, and there suppose to keep the crack from growing!
As I mentioned, in all our positions we carry the responsibility of making sure the pallets we’re using is fit to be stored in the racks. The product we’re hauling and moving can weigh several thousand pounds. I had a supervisor tell a great story about a pallet runner that had caught a bad pallet on his front docks. An over the road driver was working his load, almost a straight roll off and he even stated in the driver’s defense that the right outside runner couldn’t really be seen due to a slip sheet being folded down against the board. The runner, being cautious with any hanging plastic or cardboard hanging over the surface area had gone over to cut the excess or overhang off the slip sheet and noticed the cracked runner! The driver gladly restacked the item onto another pallet and stacked the bad board to the side to carry back with him. That brings us another thing about pallets we probably talk about. In many instances our carriers will require that we replace the pallet counts for them. All that means is that, like this guy, let’s say he rolled off 24 pallets for us to receive, we’d give him 24 comparable pallets to take back with him. Pallets are expensive. Now not all drivers or loads will want to take back any pallets. They could be on there way to pick up another load and won’t have the room for them. That’s a win for our facility. Or it is if his or her pallets were in good condition in the first place. I’ve seen companies make a driver take back their wood or charge them a little disposal fee for leaving them. That’s one of the ways one of those pick up and deliver pallet companies I mentioned earlier comes in handy. I don’t think we talked about how that actually worked. Its simple really, I think that’s why we’re seeing so many companies useing’em. Typically, they will leave us an empty trailer on the yard, and we’ll fill them up with all our bad wood. They come by and pick it up, some of them work off of a schedule each week or we’ll just give them a call when we get it filled up. Anyway, they’ll take our bad wood, rework what they can or rebuild what they have too and sell them back to us at a contracted price. Pallets can be a nuisance, anyway you look at them, but one of those necessary evils. That’s one of the tools we use to perform our task, right?
Another supervisor was telling me how he’d ran out of pallets on the inbound side. It’s happened to all of us. Come on, your shaking your head up and down. Best laid plans. He had to send everyone down the aisles to pull all the empty pallets from the pick slots just to get his trucks unloaded. I laugh about it but its not all that unusual. The bad thing is that a good number of those pallets aren’t of quality to use again. Think about it, let’s say the pallet started out as barely even a “B” grade. The unloader’s tossed it around, a pallet runner has drove under it, what, at least once or twice and probably at least one fork driver’s driven into it. What’s the odds we all performed our task properly? I hope we have; I mean that is each of our responsibility.
I hated hearing this one, and it come up all too often. An employee was caught selling pallets off the dock. Now he wasn’t actually selling his companies wood but that was a bit of a fine hair to split. All the wood drivers didn’t want to haul back he’d gather up right outside the doors and he had a buddy that’d come by in a pickup truck and load them up. They had a pallet company that would pay them by the pallet. Of course, he was let go, I mean come on, at the very least he was conducting other business while he was on the company’s clock. I felt bad for him but, well, it was just a bad decision.
I don’t want to get into the Chep pallet program or Peco programs but there’s a lot of responsibility there in keeping up with those commissioned pallets too. Great programs, but our companies have to have a very solid accounting system in place for it not to be a headache. But again, its our responsibility to follow all those programs and make them work! Don’t get me wrong, I love their wood. A very sturdy product, heavier pallets but we as stockers don’t have to worry about them giving way on us!
As a forklift driver I always worried about what I was staging up in the racks. If I was going up to the 6th or 7th level with some weight I’d always do a double take on the pallet as I was lifting it. I didn’t want any of my loads falling. I’ve taken more than one load back up to the docks and had’em restacked. I don’t take any chances!
I mentioned the different grades of pallets earlier. I wont go through all of them but I’ve always used https://nazpallet.com/pallets/grades-of-gma-pallets/ to help explain the different grades. I’ll add that link to todays show notes, I know I have it around here somewhere.
According to them a great or premium grade A pallet will have 7 boards on top
5 boards on bottom
6” lead boards top and bottom
Avg. top deck spacing 2.5” to 3.5”
3 stringers (1-1/2” x 3-1/2”ea)
4 way entry
And a regular grade A
7 boards on top
5 boards on bottom
Average top deck spacing 2.5” to 3.5”
3 stringers (1-1/2” x 3-1/2”ea)
4 way entry
No block repairs to stringers
Each stringer can have one repair plate to strengthen any split
Of course B graded pallets can be much cheaper and are generally used for shipping. There graded on much the same way. Between 6 to 7 boards on top, depending on board width which can be 3.5 to 5.5 wide)
No less than 4 boards on bottom
Avg. top deck spacing 2-1/2” to 3-1/2” but can be up to 4” – that’s more than enough to twist an ankle on! Of course, we’ve learned to never walk on a pallet anyway right!
3 stringers (1-1/2” x 3-1/2”ea)
4 way entry
They’ll typically have plugs (repairs) on stringers – you’ve seen those added blocks of wood nailed over any split or broken runners or stringers before.
No more than two boards (stringers) thick at any one point
Chips or partial split boards may even be acceptable
I keep mentioning the responsibility word again today. As you’ve probably picked up on by now, what we do can be dangerous and its so important we all take care of each other. Every position touches another. Check out that March episode, you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about pallets.
Well, I veered off track again this week. Think about your pallets though, everyone has a good pallet story to tell and I bet we can all learn something new about’em. Or maybe at least what not to do with them.
Until next week, be safe everybody, put to practice what we know is right. Lets all punch out and go home every day!