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Whitewood Under Siege: The front lines of the pallet wars (2013)

72 points by firloop 6y ago

underseacables 6y ago
This might be a coincidence but if you replaced pallets with GMO plants, it almost fits. An open market, one company tries to corner the market, uses strong arm tactics, lawsuits, and spies, but in the end convinces large corporations to follow suit which cuts out smaller competition.
ggm 6y ago
There's a lot in logistics. Chep is big. It's no coincidence the containerisation story has a strong Australian element as well. Marc Levinson "the box" is fascinating.
tvb12 6y ago
This was interesting. I've had some limited experience with pallets. I've found the "whitewood" pallets to be surprisingly fragile, and the blue pallets to be ridiculously heavy.
leafmeal 6y ago
I found this fascinating. The writing is excellent.
pjc50 6y ago
Analogies to us are obvious: the blue "pallets as a service", that come with aggressive property enforcement for its own sake. The downside of a platform you have to rent.
mro_name 6y ago
one of the most enlightening "uninteresting" articles for years. It's so far out of scope – a glimpse into a before totally unknown slice of reality. Thank you!
tsjq 6y ago
that was a good read. very well written.
5555624 6y ago
At the time, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800752
- firloop 6y ago
  Submitter here, I missed that thread. Thanks!
bluedino 6y ago
Then there's the used pallet black market... If you have a business, you learn the hard way not to keep your pallets outside, and if you do, keep them fenced up. People will come by during the night or weekend, help themselves to a trailer load of them, and take them right to the local pallet recycler. At a buck or two each, that adds up quick.
- Andrex 6y ago
  > At a buck or two each, that adds up quick. Does it? That honestly seems like a waste of time unless you're doing 500+ a "job", and the time/energy needed to steal 500+ pallets seems like a negative return on investment. And who has 500+ pallets sitting around unguarded in one place? Enough to make pallet stealing profitable? I'm unsure. If recycling a pallet was more in the $10-15 range each, I could maybe see the argument.
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    One could easily make more than minimum wage.
  - misthop 6y ago
    For people who have no other options of making money to those who (less charitably) have an addiction to satiate there is no calculation of the investment. It's also a crime that has fairly small likelihood of meaningful prosecution. Most of us here think about ROI. People who are stealing pallets are either doing the calculation of "some money is more than no money" or as part of a more organized crime undertaking It falls into a similar bucket as stealing copper from the wiring of abandoned/in construction buildings
  - bluedino 6y ago
    You know people steal scrap metal, bottle returns, catalytic converters (way more valuable) for money, right? Even the trash pickers that drive around all day picking up scrap and might make $100 if they are lucky
- freehunter 6y ago
cafard 6y ago
Once, many years ago, I took a turn a little too fast, and a heavily loaded pallet with no bottom deck boards failed--the two stringers just folded. When I got to the plant, my boss said "Way to go, Stirling Moss." In my defense, you probably shouldn't put a big stack of boxes full of paper on a pallet with two stringers and no bottom deck boards.
russnewcomer 6y ago
One of the most interesting things about stories of this vintage re-appearing is that you can feel like you are research the future! I know I read this story around the time that it was published, and so it was fairly familiar to me. But that gives us the chance to see what has happened. For example, in the article, it mentions Bob Moore, and his idea for resin coated pallets and PalletWorks. Does not appear to have worked (sorry, couldn't resist) and instead, Moore has a new company called GoTo Pallets (https://gotopallets.com/corporate-leadership/ https://gotopallets.com/corporate-leadership/) that seems to be planning on/is actually (hard to tell) building another version of the CHEP/9Bloc Pallets and leasing them out. Ricky Mock and his Mock Pallet company seems to still be operating.

72 points by firloop 6y ago

This might be a coincidence but if you replaced pallets with GMO plants, it almost fits. An open market, one company tries to corner the market, uses strong arm tactics, lawsuits, and spies, but in the end convinces large corporations to follow suit which cuts out smaller competition.

ggm 6y ago

There's a lot in logistics. Chep is big. It's no coincidence the containerisation story has a strong Australian element as well. Marc Levinson "the box" is fascinating.

tvb12 6y ago

This was interesting. I've had some limited experience with pallets. I've found the "whitewood" pallets to be surprisingly fragile, and the blue pallets to be ridiculously heavy.

leafmeal 6y ago

I found this fascinating. The writing is excellent.

pjc50 6y ago

Analogies to us are obvious: the blue "pallets as a service", that come with aggressive property enforcement for its own sake. The downside of a platform you have to rent.

mro_name 6y ago

one of the most enlightening "uninteresting" articles for years. It's so far out of scope – a glimpse into a before totally unknown slice of reality. Thank you!

tsjq 6y ago

that was a good read. very well written.

5555624 6y ago

At the time, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7800752

firloop 6y ago
Submitter here, I missed that thread. Thanks!

bluedino 6y ago

Then there's the used pallet black market... If you have a business, you learn the hard way not to keep your pallets outside, and if you do, keep them fenced up. People will come by during the night or weekend, help themselves to a trailer load of them, and take them right to the local pallet recycler. At a buck or two each, that adds up quick.

Andrex 6y ago
> At a buck or two each, that adds up quick. Does it? That honestly seems like a waste of time unless you're doing 500+ a "job", and the time/energy needed to steal 500+ pallets seems like a negative return on investment. And who has 500+ pallets sitting around unguarded in one place? Enough to make pallet stealing profitable? I'm unsure. If recycling a pallet was more in the $10-15 range each, I could maybe see the argument.
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  One could easily make more than minimum wage.
- misthop 6y ago
  For people who have no other options of making money to those who (less charitably) have an addiction to satiate there is no calculation of the investment. It's also a crime that has fairly small likelihood of meaningful prosecution. Most of us here think about ROI. People who are stealing pallets are either doing the calculation of "some money is more than no money" or as part of a more organized crime undertaking It falls into a similar bucket as stealing copper from the wiring of abandoned/in construction buildings
- bluedino 6y ago
  You know people steal scrap metal, bottle returns, catalytic converters (way more valuable) for money, right? Even the trash pickers that drive around all day picking up scrap and might make $100 if they are lucky
freehunter 6y ago

cafard 6y ago

Once, many years ago, I took a turn a little too fast, and a heavily loaded pallet with no bottom deck boards failed--the two stringers just folded. When I got to the plant, my boss said "Way to go, Stirling Moss." In my defense, you probably shouldn't put a big stack of boxes full of paper on a pallet with two stringers and no bottom deck boards.

russnewcomer 6y ago

One of the most interesting things about stories of this vintage re-appearing is that you can feel like you are research the future! I know I read this story around the time that it was published, and so it was fairly familiar to me. But that gives us the chance to see what has happened. For example, in the article, it mentions Bob Moore, and his idea for resin coated pallets and PalletWorks. Does not appear to have worked (sorry, couldn't resist) and instead, Moore has a new company called GoTo Pallets (https://gotopallets.com/corporate-leadership/ https://gotopallets.com/corporate-leadership/) that seems to be planning on/is actually (hard to tell) building another version of the CHEP/9Bloc Pallets and leasing them out. Ricky Mock and his Mock Pallet company seems to still be operating.