Packaging: Load transfer station prevents product damage wasted labor

McDougall & Sons, a fruit distributor in Wenatchee, Wash., handles more than 2 million cases of apples and 600,000 cases of cherries annually. In 2011, the company looked to change the way they transferred their pallet loads from an in-house processing pallet to an outbound 40 x 48-inch four-way pallet for shipping.

The pallet used inside the facility has a slightly larger footprint to permit the use of corner boards for additional support in stacking pallet loads three-high without damaging the fruit. Although this method saves both cost and space in terms of racking, it did pose a challenge when it came time to ship the fruit to customers.

“Previously, we would use three workers to manually shift the load off of the in-house pallet and onto the outbound pallet,” explains Don Bellinger, shipping manager at McDougall & Sons.

The labor-intensive process also resulted in repeated physical impacts of the forklift and the load against the pallet, occasionally causing the pallet to damage the bottom layer of product. Because the product damage was not noticeable until receipt, the trucking company was often held liable, resulting in unhappy customers and truck drivers.

To eliminate product damage and cut the number of workers required for load transfer from three to one, the company installed a load transfer station that dramatically boosted productivity. The system automatically extracts the in-house pallet from beneath the load before lowering the load onto an empty outbound pallet.

“We’ve seen a huge increase in efficiency within the transferring process,” says Bellinger. “Now, we are able to easily transfer up to 300 pallets per day during peak season.”

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