BY SUSAN K. LACEFIELD, ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR
PALLETS, CONTAINERS, AND PACKAGING materialhandlingupdate
Companies are
losing millions
of dollars’ worth
of pallets each
year to pilferage
or simple lack of
accountability.
Here are some
tips on stemming
the losses.
It’s 11 p.m.
Do you know where
your pallets are?
IT IS FAR TOO EASY FOR PALLETS TO “LEAK” OUT OF A SUPPLY CHAIN. A PALlet misplaced in the distribution center here. One never returned from a customer there.
Another used for an in-store display. Yet another stuck “temporarily” in an offsite warehouse and then forgotten. A few more picked up by thieves in back of a retail store.
Taken individually, these losses might seem minor, but the problem of a few missing
pallets can quickly add up to considerable cost. In fact, according to Mark Baum, chief collaboration officer and senior vice president of industry relations for the Food Marketing
Institute, lost reusable packaging assets (which include not just pallets but also such
things as dairy crates, beverage containers, rolling carts, and bread trays) end up costing
American business $750 million to $1 billion each year.
And it’s not just the pallet owners that feel the financial pain—inevitably those costs will
be spread throughout the entire supply chain, according to Dan Gormley, vice president of
asset control and retail services at CHEP, the largest rental pallet pooler in North America.
THE PALLET BLACK MARKET
A not insignificant source of that pallet loss is theft.
While numbers are not definitive, Jerry Welcome,
president of the Reusable Packaging Association,
estimates that tens of millions of dollars’ worth of reusable
packaging and containers are stolen
every year.
