60 seconds with ... Don Frazier
Don Frazier on the early days of Modern Materials Handling.
By Staff -- Modern Materials Handling, 5/1/2006
I started with Norman Cahners and his Materials Handling Laboratories just a month before the first issue of the magazine was published. It was originally called The Palletizer. The idea was to transfer the materials handling practices that Norman and others had developed in the Navy to U.S. industry. By November of 1946, the name of the magazine was changed to Modern Materials Handling.
Although Norman was a publisher, he didn't call himself that at first. He was more interested in pallets and unit load handling. He had a patent on a four-way pallet and some other pallet products too. And these were the days before widespread pallet use.
I was hired as the office boy so you can imagine what went with that. I also helped out maintaining the lists of advertisers and prospective advertisers.
By the summer of 1947, I was out trying to sell one of Norman's products, the Chuckaway. This was an expendable paper pallet dipped in sulfur so it was water proof. The trouble was, lift trucks just destroyed them.
We worked with companies like Procter & Gamble, Criterion Paper and Sonoco. But this paper pallet never made it. We only sold it in sample quantities.
I left the company in July of 1949 to start my own company—Frazier Industrial. And while I've been retired for many years, my company is still a leading supplier of industrial racks and related equipment.
FACT BOX
Don Frazier
COMPANY: Materials Handling Laboratories
START DATE: April 1946
RESPONSIBILITIES: Office boy, salesman, pallet consultant
GENERAL ENVIRONMENT: With World War II just completed, U.S. industry was ready to return to peacetime. Meanwhile, materials handling was just beginning to become its own industry, and managers everywhere were interested in the latest developments and opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiencies.
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