History
of Pallets
Pallet
Evolved Along with Forklift
By Rick LeBlanc
Date Posted: 12/2/2002
After a company
golf tournament in the early 1980s, a keen young pallet coordinator
for a distribution center cornered a long retired grocery distribution
manager at the 19th hole, eager to hear about the early days of
pallets. The retired manager thought for a long while and finally
offered some fleeting recollections, dating back to the late 1940s
and 1950s. The veteran's career had begun in an urban multi-storied
warehouse with low ceilings, freight elevators, hand trucks and
single-faced skids that were narrow enough to go through an ordinary
door. His company constructed a new, single story warehouse in
the 1950s that paved the way for much greater use of forklifts
and pallets.
The young pallet
coordinator had a lot of questions about the history of pallets
and pallet handling and fired them off quickly. What were the
early pallet sizes and styles? Were they made of hardwood or softwood?
How about handling and forklifts? When did product first start
arriving palletized from suppliers versus being palletized at
the loading dock?
"It was
a mix, really," the veteran said absent-mindedly, combining
a summary, conclusion and polite brush-off. Without further comment
he slipped back to his table of other retirees and dove into an
animated conversation -- undoubtedly about a topic other than
pallets.
Pallet
History Overview
Still often
unappreciated yet indispensable, the pallet has become fundamental
to the world of modern material handling since the 1940s. Today
even the most veteran front line employees of industries, such
as grocery distribution and automotive assembly, have worked their
entire lives with the benefit of palletized material handling.
Grocery industry
veterans may have experienced changes evolving from counterbalanced
lift trucks to reach trucks or automated storage and retrieval
systems (and sometimes back again when new technology fails to
meet expectations), but the practice of palletized load handling
has been employed for many years. While many of them would be
hard pressed to remember material handling before the spread of
palletization, industry veterans who retired only a few decades
ago, like the one mentioned above, likely would remember handling
systems that were substantially different than the current generation.
Palletization has evolved over the last 105 years or so, spurred
into prominence since World War II.
While other
forms of unitization predated the development of the palletized
unit load, it was the pallet, in conjunction with the lift truck,
that was destined to have the most dramatic impact on material
handling. The development of the pallet, so pervasive in today's
distribution environment, is integrally related to the introduction
and evolution of the lift truck, which began in the late 19th
century. While unitization technology emerged during the 1920s-30s,
its adoption was not a priority during the Great Depression due
to high unemployment, lack of investment capital and a number
of other factors.
With the entry
of the U.S. into World War II, however, the urgency for material
handling reform changed almost overnight. Palletization was regarded
an enormous opportunity to help the U.S. armed forces do more
with less. Palletized loads could handle more goods with fewer
people, freeing up men for military duty; it also could increase
warehouse storage capacity and throughput, reducing the need for
additional warehouse capacity. Pallets were used somewhat in the
European theater, but they were put to work extensively in the
Pacific. By the end of the war, the benefits of material handling
with pallets had been clearly demonstrated on the world stage.
Transport
Packaging
While pallets
have been an important component of the material handling world
for roughly only the last 50 years, the business of material handling
is as old as the history of commercial trade itself. The use of
packaging in general became much more prevalent after the start
of the industrial revolution. Skids and pallets were ever so slowly
introduced throughout the early decades of the 20th century; wooden
boxes, crates, barrels and kegs were much more commonly used to
unitize, protect, store and transport goods. Barrels had the unique
advantage of being both container and conveyance: they could be
tipped onto the side and rolled from cart to dock or from wagon
to store room. In the decades after the invention of the sewing
machine in 1846, textile sacks became favored for packaging granular
products such as flour, sugar and feed. The transition of wooden
packaging to corrugated packaging was another important shift
during the first half of the 20th century. Corrugated paper was
invented in the 1850s, and corrugated shipping containers first
started to replace wood around 1900. There was a growing recognition
by industry that it could reduce packaging and transport costs
by shifting to more inexpensive and lighter paper-based packaging
materials.
This trend
was aided by the gradual acceptance of corrugated packaging by
rail and road freight authorities. The railroads, the dominant
transport mode of the era, authorized the use of solid fiberboard
and corrugated packaging for many types of products in 1914. In
1935 the motor carriers adopted packaging rules, which often called
for fiberboard boxes for many products. The trend toward corrugated
and fibreboard containers began in earnest before palletization
became a significant factor, although the pallet would over time
come to provide superior protection to unitized corrugated containers.
It is probably a safe assumption that the introduction of pallets
into industry from the 1940s onward allowed new opportunities
for corrugated to spread to distribution channels facing harsher
handling environments.
Beginnings
of Palletization
Within the
broader context of transport packaging, the predecessor of the
wooden pallet was the wooden skid, which consisted of stringers
fastened to a top deck. It first appeared in American factories
in conjunction with the low lift truck. A crude low lift hand
truck was invented in 1887 that could elevate a skid a few inches
by manual means. A more durable, all-steel low lift truck design
was introduced in 1909.
According to
the late Emil Holzwart, a consultant well known to the pallet
industry in his time, skids were often constructed with a solid
deck, typically with 2-inch deck lumber and high stringers (7
inches) by today's standards. The design would allow adequate
entry clearance for manually operated trucks. Forks were raised
by the operator pumping the handle, and the mechanism typically
was of ratchet or pneumatic design. Normal pallet widths ranged
from 30 inches to 42 inches in order to facilitate easy carriage
around the plant. The skid was used for moving materials within
manufacturing plants and shops.
Another important
benchmark in the development of the pallet was the introduction
of the high lift fork truck. With its first appearance in 1915,
lifting capability was limited. With further modification in 1919,
the truck could lift loads several feet high while other improvements
included cantilever design and forks. Cantilevered trucks did
not require clearance under the load for protruding front tires.
The emergence of forks as well during the same period enabled
lift trucks to handle a much greater range of materials.
There were
other notable improvements from 1919-1925. By moving the motor
of the truck behind the operator, the counterbalanced lift truck
was developed. This innovation not only provided a shorter wheelbase,
but it afforded more protection to the operator with the fulcrum
of the truck now over the front wheels. The weight of the load
carried in front of the wheels was counterbalanced by the weight
of the motor in the rear of the truck.
Another development
was the new capability of the mast to tilt both forward and back,
independent of the lifting mechanism. These developments, along
with the emergence of the double-faced pallet during the same
time period, allowed for tiering of unit loads. As early as 1926,
the essence of the modern lift truck had been developed. Now,
pallets no longer were simply a means of moving materials within
the plant. High lift trucks made possible vertical stacking of
unit loads and a resulting dramatic improvement of warehouse and
plant storage efficiencies.
Pallet
Evolved
The pallet
evolved in stages. Spacers were used between loads to allow fork
entry, progressing to the placement of boards atop stringers to
make skids. Eventually boards were fastened to the bottom to create
the pallet. The use of pallets was not necessarily critical to
the stacking of all loads, however. The major requirement of stacking
was the availability of spacing for fork entry. Loads such as
lumber had adequate bridging strength so as not to require the
support of a skid deck. For this type of load, entry spacing was
often accomplished by the placement of spacers or 2x4s under or
between unit loads. This process, however, involved the potentially
unsafe and time consuming practice of the operator frequently
climbing out on the front of the lift truck to place the 2x4s
or having them placed by another worker. The driver might also
have had to frequently dismount to hunt for 2x4s to replenish
his supply.
Not all loads
lent themselves to flat stacking. The 2x4s did not always rest
on a solid base. Spillage and precariously stacked loads were
said to be a common sight, according to Holzwart. While better
stacking practices were initiated at the machines, it was not
always possible to avoid crowning or overlapping at the top of
the load. The use of spacers allowed double and triple stacking,
but the dangers soon called for better solutions.
By attaching
the 2x4 stringer to the top deck boards to form a single faced
skid, the forklift operator no longer had to place 2x4s or replenish
his supply; as a result, he became more productive and activity
was less hazardous. The skid bottom deck allowed for stacking
a wider range of products and for higher stacking heights.
The addition
of bottom boards on the skid, which appeared by 1925, resulted
in the pallet. With the bottom deck, several problems common to
the single faced skid were addressed. For example, the bottom
boards provided better weight distribution and reduced product
damage; they also provided better stacking strength and rigidity.
Lift truck manufacturers promoted the idea of using more vertical
area of a plant for stock storage. The telescopic lift and pneumatic
tires of the lift truck, coupled with a short turning radius,
now allowed them to be used in close quarters, on wooden floors
in buildings with low ceilings. Materials could be double stacked
even in a building with a 10-foot ceiling. The lift truck, therefore,
became a mechanical and mobile means for lifting stock into a
storage area.
Impact
on Rail Cars
Pallets and
forklifts also provided much quicker turnaround of rail cars and
ships. According to an article in a 1931 railway trade magazine,
three days were required to unload a boxcar containing 13,000
cases of unpalletized canned goods. When the same amount of goods
was loaded into the boxcar on pallets or skids, the identical
task took only four hours. Pictures in trade magazine images of
the 1930s show pallets used for handling materials such as bags
of flour and pulp sheets for veneer. An account of a Filipino
immigrant working in the Alaska fishing industry described palletization
and stacking of skids of canned salmon around 1939. With loads
now stacked up to three tiers high, early unit load stock tagging
systems started to emerge as a means to better control inventory.
At this point
in time, however, skids were expendable and often were poorly
constructed. They were made from locally available lumber and
manufactured in small lots.
The earliest
record of large scale pallet production was NEPA Pallet of Snohomish,
Wash. According to Bill Sardo, first director of the National
Wooden Pallet and Container Association, NEPA was the first pallet
manufacturing business. It was formed by Walter Crook along with
three partners in 1937 to fill a cost-plus government contract
to supply ‘dock boards’ or stevedore pallets to the
U.S. government. Many of the company’s pallets were shipped
to docks in Long Beach, Calif. via rail car, according to Walter's
son-in-law, Gene Shrier, who eventually took over NEPA.
The cargo boards
had a 4-foot-by-6-foot footprint. They were a 6-inch double-wing
design with trimmed corners. Deck boards were made of 2-inch Douglas
fir and stringers were 4x4 Douglas fir. They were assembled with
3/8-inch carriage bolts; each cargo board required 32 carriage
bolts. NEPA had work stations with automatic drill jigs to bore
holes in deck boards and stringers. Four or five people worked
at each station, and the company ran two shifts. After the U.S.
entered World War II, many of the men working at NEPA went into
the military, and the production jobs were filled by women.
While many
accounts of the pallet industry point to World War II as the era
when it began, the foundation for pallets and palletized material
handling had been set prior to the war. Because of abundant labor,
lack of suitable warehouses and facilities, and a shortage of
capital to invest in the latest technology, however, it remained
in infancy. With the advent of World War II and U. S. involvement,
the emerging technologies of palletization were viewed as an important
advantage in the war effort and truly become a force in the materials
handling world.
