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Automated Case Picking: Using Automation to Create Mixed-Case Pallets
When the financial crisis hit in 2008, I took advantage of my G.I. Bill and student aid to go back to school. But I still had to make payments and was often forced to do day labor in order to make ends meet. One of the most commonly available jobs was in the warehouse of…
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Will There Be a Truck Driver Shortage in 2019?
Transportation costs are rising–and have been for some time–across all industries. The economy is growing, and as business picks up, more freight has to be carried on the same number of trailers and trains. It’s a cycle that the country has seen many times before. In recent years, however, other factors have also come into…
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Deadhead Trucking: Avoiding Empty Miles
No one in logistics likes deadhead trucking. The term refers to driving a big rig without a load, and when trucks are driven empty no one is making money from the trip. In fact, since the truck is burning fuel without transporting product, a deadhead trip actually loses money. If the driver is an hourly…
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How to Use Warehouse Picking Best Practices
Warehouse picking is the simple act of pulling product loads out of inventory. However, picking the right loads and doing so speedily without wasting time double-checking manifests can be complicated. The difficulty of the task scales up with the size of the warehouse, the density of the product it contains, and the number of different…
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How Does Pallet Pooling Work?
ARTICLE UPDATED ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2023 How Does Pallet Pooling Work? If you’re a stakeholder in the consumer packaged goods industry, chances are that your products are traveling from the manufacturing facility to a retail location for sale on a daily basis. Finding a cost-effective method to return them to the beginning of the supply…
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Finding Cost-Effective Pallet Management Strategies
If you’ve spent any amount of time around a grocery store or other packaged goods retailer, you know that abandoned pallets are a common sight. Orphaned pallets can often be found propped against the back walls of retail stores where drivers abandoned them after delivery. To dispose of the pallets, the retailer will generally end…
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How to Sanitize Plastic Pallets: Keeping Your Supply Chain Hygienic
Across this great land, piled behind millions of grocery and department stores, are millions of reusable wood block pallets. At many of those stores, teenagers working their first jobs have been ordered to add another pallet to the stack out back, and are thinking, “Ew, I have to touch that?” Wood pallets easily collect grime…
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Dealing with and Preventing Rejected Loads
Having worked in the supply chain, I can vouch for the fact that rejected loads are one of the things that truckers hate most. After a journey across the state or even the country, it’s a blow to arrive at your destination only to find that the receiver won’t accept a portion or the entirety…