Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I\u2019m Marty, and I had pallets on my mind this week, thought we\u2019d 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\u2019s so many different sizes and its importance in the industry. That episode was called The Pallet, check it out if you\u2019ve 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\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll depend what your facilities programs are as to what happens with those! I\u2019ve been to buildings before that\u2019ll 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\u2019em over a cracked runner, nail them in place, and there suppose to keep the crack from growing!
\nAs I mentioned, in all our positions we carry the responsibility of making sure the pallets we\u2019re using is fit to be stored in the racks. The product we\u2019re 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\u2019s defense that the right outside runner couldn\u2019t 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\u2019s say he rolled off 24 pallets for us to receive, we\u2019d 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\u2019t have the room for them. That\u2019s a win for our facility. Or it is if his or her pallets were in good condition in the first place. I\u2019ve seen companies make a driver take back their wood or charge them a little disposal fee for leaving them. That\u2019s one of the ways one of those pick up and deliver pallet companies I mentioned earlier comes in handy. I don\u2019t think we talked about how that actually worked. Its simple really, I think that\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing so many companies useing\u2019em. Typically, they will leave us an empty trailer on the yard, and we\u2019ll fill them up with all our bad wood.