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Does this sound like you? Every day you're packaging product and moving it on pallets. Nothing has changed in your system for years, decades even. It works, but as the cycle repeats (and repeats, and repeats) you keep wondering if you're leaking profits. We have all heard the definition of insanity, "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." This is Bill Murray's character, Phil in the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. It takes Phil most of the movie to understand this.  Break out of the endless Groundhog Day loop. Ask the right questions to get a better pallet and better results.
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Raw material pricing has everyone cringing. How can you save money on your shipping materials while still ensuring your product arrives safely? In today’s marketplace, businesses are hampered by inflation while still trying to offer products that are advantageous for customers to purchase. How do you accomplish this when material costs are going up from the time you place the order to delivery? Two words... smart packaging.  Smart design starts with understanding your product attributes and shipping environment. It has been a tough but successful year and you have decided to take the wife and kids to Disneyland. Yes, the original one in California. You're packing the kids into the hotel and you see this big sign next to the door that says something about the premises containing chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects. WHAT???? Gloria! Grab the kids! We are outta here!  According to a recent announcement by Governor Andrew Cuomo, Looking to California, New York will consider its Own Prop 65. The most popular standard pallet size in US inches is 48L x 40W. How popular? The 48x40 accounts for approximately 30% of all wooden pallets produced each year. The 48x40 standard was set by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) more than forty years ago. For this reason, you may hear it called a GMA pallet. But, not all 48x40 pallets are designed to GMA specs nor are they all used in the grocery industry. Interestingly, that's true of most any "industry standard" pallet. Even though a pallet may have originally been standardized for a specific trade, its use is often not exclusive to that industry alone.  Wooden pallet sizes are expressed in order of stringer length x deckboard length. For example, GMA pallets are 48x40 (not 40x48). Sizes for non-wood pallets are usually listed by the longest length first. In previous discussions about pallets, I touched on the nature of the load that a pallet might be expected to handle. If you are a pallet geek like me, the term “unit load” is often used to describe the goods that are configured in such a way as to be easily handled by that pallet. So, I guess the unit load is and has always been associated with pallets, right? Well, not exactly. Although we can trace the use of pallets all the way back to ancient times, the common use of pallets to handle the unit load did not get going until World War II.  Labor intensive material handling in New York City (1877) Have you ever consider how packaging can affect the simplest thing? Let’s take the example of the ketchup bottle. Remember glass ketchup bottles? How did you get the ketchup out? Did you have to hit the bottle on the #57 imprinted on the glass? How about earlier plastic ketchup squeeze bottles? Did the top get crusty from the extra ketchup on the lid? How about the plastic ketchup bottle that sits upside down with the silicon valve that does not leak and does not need to be wiped down after each use?  Over time with the change in demand and technology plastic bottles have evolved to cost less than glass bottles. |
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