No Stealing Plastic Pallets

The U.S. Postal Service is cracking down on printers that use their orange plastic pallets for other than sending mail through the USPS system. Normally USPS has between 500,000 and 700,000 pallets in use. Then in 2006, USPS discovered its inventory was down to 60,000 to 100,000. At the latest purchase price of $22.75/pallet, they had to spend about $7 million to add just 300,000 more pallets to inventory.

USPS provides its pallets to bulk mailers such as magazine and catalog printers. Those firms ship the loads of printed product to bulk mail facilities. All of those loads are coded for mailing so that the USPS can get those products into the mail and to their customers faster. USPS, therefore, has the incentive to re-supply the printers with sufficient pallets.

But where have all the pallets gone? Like plastic milk crates and that other popular USPS mainstay, the plastic tub, they have undoubtedly found many users. Large mailers, such as publication, catalog and insert printers, often hoard pallets for peak monthly and seasonal mailings. Newspaper insert printers often use USPS pallets to ship inserts to their customers, and those pallets get diverted from the printer-postal facility closed-loop pallet circulation system.

Paul Vogel, former USPS VP network operations (he now is in charge of global operations) suspects many are going overseas to bypass compliance with regulations limiting importing of wood pallets. Also, recyclers are grinding them into plastic resins now that those resins are over $0.60/lb.—a trailer load of USPS pallets can fetch up to $10,000 in the salvage market! Another loss is from outright theft. Postal installations often store empty pallets on their docks for carriers to pick up and return to USPS warehouses. Those pick-ups are usually after working hours and, with no surveillance, pallets are easy pickings for enterprising thieves. Disappearance also occurs when pallet resellers that contract with large distribution centers to remove used pallets, don't bother to sort out the plastic pallets.

I often see USPS pallets in unauthorized use in all type and size of printers. Since they are “free” pallets, printers often use them for storing finished goods, leftovers and supplies in their warehouses.

This isn't always a good idea. The nine-posts on the USPS pallets do not fit on the normal 42´´ deep pallet storage racks. Without those posts resting squarely on the rack beams, it is very easy for the pallet to tip over, causing damaged products, lost time to clean up and possible injury. So it is much better to use properly sized wood or plastic pallets for rack storage. Another use of USPS pallets that leads to the shortage is the use of a pallet as a “cap” on a banded or shrink-wrapped load ready to ship to a USPS mailing center. Wood, corrugated or roll wraps can be used as a satisfactory pallet cap.

Publication, catalog and insert printers of mailed products are the largest users of the USPS pallets, and all those authorized users have been sent letters asking them to review their use. If any printer is using those pallets for non-USPS usage (instead of purchased wood or plastic pallets), hoarding them for upcoming mailings, selling or destroying them, they are in technical violation of a federal law. The problem of pallets “leaking” from the system is so serious, Vogel states that they have called in the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to investigate. The pallets are clearly marked “Property of USPS.” It is a federal offense to abuse these assets.

Newspaper insert printers should consider using plastic returnable Perfect Pallets (see sidebar) and not USPS pallets. Perfect Pallets rents its plastic pallets on a per-use basis and coordinates the shipping delivery and returns of empty pallets to printers and from newspapers. They service the vast majority of retail insert printing plants nationally, and retrieve their returnable pallets from over 1,500 newspaper mailrooms. Tom Meisel, VP manufacturing for Parade magazine, has been specifying the returnable plastic pallets for over 15 years for weekly shipping to 400 newspapers. He says the pallets “have virtually eliminated reported load failures and all the headaches and cost associated with packaging failures caused by low grade wooden skids.

As high-speed sheetfed presses integrate automated materials handling and non-stop delivery systems, precision pallets have become enabling factors in reliable performance. Splinters, loose nails and inconsistent dimensions found in rough wooden pallets won't suffice in today's pressroom. Sources for the plastic pallets include Craemer, based in Germany and represented by Granville in the U.S.; Stratis, in Indianapolis; and Jeco Plastic Products, Plainfield, IN.

Craemer offers the C5C-Non-Stop: The C5C-Non-Stop is specially developed for use on such equipment as Heidelberg presses. The C5C-Non-Stop can be used for the transport of all popular sheet sizes, and is also suitable for closed circuit materials handling. For non-stop processes it features a deep-drawn pallet surface, enabling rake intake devices on presses and diecutters. Find Craemer through www.granville.cc

Jeco Plastic Products specializes in standard and custom plastic molded products of all types and sizes. Jeco Plastic Products designed a pallet specifically for the Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 102 and XL 105 presses. Developed in conjunction with Heidelberg, the Jeco Model 3B pallet is internally reinforced with steel for added strength, and meets the precise dimensional standards necessary for use with high speed presses. The pallet is rated for 3,086 lb. for up to 48 hours. Stratis, based in Indianapolis, offers a wide range of plastic pallets, pallet boards, caps and stacking boards for materials handling applications in web and sheetfed printing operations. The company also has pallets compatible with bindery operations.