Material handling, warehouse profession
gives back
Here’s our monthly roundup of some of the logistics and material handling
industry’s charitable contributions and activities:
▪ Under the company’s “Giving Veterans a Lift” program, Toyota
Industrial Equipment dealer Toyota Lift of Minnesota trained 10 Marines
from Unit MWSS471 to become certified forklift operators. The new operators are applying their skills to their jobs as well as to helping handle
donated items at the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation’s Minneapolis distribution center.
▪ Hytrol Conveyor Co. Inc. Medical Clinic hosted its first annual St. Jude
Children’s Research Hospital Donation Drive. Hytrol employees and members of the Jonesboro, Ark., community donated enough gifts and funds to
provide 581 items for patients at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, a
research hospital that treats pediatric cancer and rare catastrophic diseases.
▪ NACCO Materials Handling Group Inc.
(NMHG) presented the United Way of Pitt County,
N.C., with a $39,000 check during East Carolina
University’s (ECU) final regular-season home football game on Nov. 23. NMHG made the donation
based on the total number of ECU touchdowns
during the 2012 season.
▪ Through its Raising Hope Pallet Jack Giveaway
Project, Clark Material Handling Co. has awarded one pallet jack to each
of eight nonprofit organizations in the greater Kentucky Bluegrass area to
further their community service and/or charity work.
▪ The Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) and 10 of
its local councils raised money to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy. The
group donated both cash and warehousing services to the American
Logistics Aid Network (ALAN), of which WERC is a member. ALAN
matches donors of logistics expertise and services with disaster-response
organizations in need of those services. ;
Do you know a Rainmaker?
Know someone who is making a difference in the world of logistics? Then
consider nominating him or her as one of DC VELOCITY’S “Rainmakers”—
professionals from all facets of the business whose achievements set them
apart from the crowd. In the past, our Rainmakers have included practitioners, consultants, academics, vendors, professional association directors,
and even military commanders.
To identify these Rainmakers, the DC VELOCITY editorial team works in
collaboration with members of the magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board.
The process begins in January, when the nominating committee starts
developing a list of candidates, and concludes in April with a vote to determine which nominees will be invited to become Rainmakers. The 2013
Rainmakers will be unveiled in our July issue.
If you’d like to nominate someone, please send an e-mail outlining your
nominee’s accomplishments by Feb. 15 to Editorial Director Peter Bradley
at peter@dcvelocity.com. ;
inbound
Fun with pallets
In the logistics industry, we tend to
take the humble pallet for granted.
But every once in a while, something comes along to remind us
that pallets are not quite as humdrum as we might think. Here are
two items that tickled our fancy:
▪ The New York Times reports that
a team of graduate students at The
Ohio State University has come up
with three new designs for aluminum pallets. Their assignment
was to develop platforms that could
have an environmental impact but
were not too expensive for the market. That they did: The lightweight,
reusable pallets cut fuel expenses
during shipping, and the designs
are simple enough that they do not
require welding by hand, which
drives up the cost of aluminum pallets. They solved another problem,
too. Since improper welding can
diminish aluminum’s strength, the
team used “conformal interference
joining technology,” a method of
joining metals through a process
involving electromagnetism instead
of heat, the Times reported.
▪ In England, it’s traditional to set
bonfires on Nov. 5 each year to
commemorate Guy Fawkes’
attempt to burn down Parliament
in 1605. For more than 20 years,
Edward Heath of Staffordshire has
used pallets to build bonfire effigies
in the shape of famous landmarks
(including the White House, the
Tower of London, and Wembley
Stadium) to raise money for charity. In honor of Queen Elizabeth II’s
Diamond Jubilee, the retired scrap
metal dealer built a 93-foot-wide,
26-foot-tall replica of Buckingham
Palace from 1,000 wooden pallets.
The structure took Heath five
months to build and just a couple
of hours to burn. ;
