Litco Offers Half-Size Pallet
Litco offers a 24 x 40 pallet for smaller loads. The design adds efficiency and reduce costs according to Litco International Inc., North America's major supplier of Inca presswood pallets.
By MaterialsHandling.Net Staff
Date Posted: 12/1/2006
Litco International Inc., North America's leading source of Inca presswood pallets, offers a "half-size" pallet for the domestic market, a 24 x 40 product that is ideal for small loads.
The new pallet – half the size of a standard 48-by-40-in. GMA pallet – will fill a large void in the market for less-than-full-pallet loads (LPL), said Gary Sharon, Litco vice president.
"We're providing a badly needed solution for shippers of small loads," Sharon said. "Many shippers simply use full-size pallets for their smaller loads, and just accept the higher cost of pallets relative to the total load. Others try to reduce pallet costs by using recycled full-size pallets for smaller loads, but they are still burdening themselves with more pallet space and weight than necessary, and managing less stable loads.
"The only true solution is a half-size pallet that has all the advantages of the full-size product, but takes up half the space, weighs half as much, costs much less per unit and is brand new."
Using half-sized pallets in place of full-size pallets for small loads will save money on small loads because they will eliminate over 21,000 pounds of weight for every 1,000 pallets. With a weight of less than 22 pounds, a half-size pallet can be easily picked up manually. The space-saving nestable design will allow the economical shipment of 2,000 half-size pallets in a 48-foot trailer.
Litco projected that the half-size pallet to be popular among export and domestic shippers of paper products, printers, electronic appliances, small motors, point-of-purchase retail products and many other items frequently shipped LPL.
Many packaging lines are set to detect only loads that are at least 4 feet tall, and cannot detect shorter loads that are evened out over a full-size pallet. On Litco's half-size product, the loads will be tall enough to be detected by packaging line readers. "This will eliminate the packaging line downtime associated with inefficiently stacked loads," Sharon said.
As with all Litco presswood products, the new half-size pallet is approved, as is, for exports under ISPM-15, the new international wood packaging regulation.
Made from pre- and post-consumer wood chips in a patented molding process, presswood pallets offer shippers a number of advantages over traditional wood pallets, including lower cost and lower weight. Litco
For more information, visit. www.litco.com or call 330/ 539-5433 or 877/284-5043.
