Pallet exchange is not a simple process. In some cases, it can be quite a nightmare for everyone involved. But, it is quite useful. When a company uses its pallets and insists on handling the business without an exchange it complicates the matters even more.
Being responsible for your assets is all good, but in this case, it is unnecessary. In today’s shipping, there’s no need to be in charge of your pallets. This includes repairing them, storing, cleaning, and of course, getting them back from the spot of the goods delivery.
Doing things the old-fashioned way requires a lot of time and money. It requires you to waste your resources. It has become abundant. In today’s financial markets, losing both time and money is not a sign of good business.
The money and time spent on pallets could be directed to some other department of your business, moving it forward, instead of staying tied to your pallets, which is a backward way of thinking.
We are sure you think the same way, as it is the only way of thinking if you want efficient shipping. Because many people think the same way, we concluded that pallet exchange needs to exist.
The programs that revolve around exchanging pallets have been around for a while now. It is not a novelty in the world of shipping, and if you haven’t embraced it yet, this is the right moment.
As we said, it is a straightforward process, which makes a lot of sense in the world of shipment. Companies such as TopIndustriesInc have been in the business of pallet exchange for years now.
It is based on the simple formula where for every cargo of goods delivered on a pallet you receive an empty one in exchange. It makes the delivery process happens at a faster rate, which is in the best interests of all parties involved, both those on the receiving and the giving end.
While it was a great addition to the world of shipping back in the day, some voices in the industry are more often than not speaking that the process itself could be updated, or even replaced.
This is something that you should have in mind when you start doing business this way. Time flies and technology advances each day. Because of it, something modern today could be outdated soon enough.
The world of supply and demand changes too quickly, and f you’re not prepared to adapt, you could be overrun. But for now, despite the change in volume of shipping operations, the palette exchange program still gives fine results. This is why we are going to go a little deeper into explaining what precisely is this program.
What Is Pallet Exchange?
In this paragraph, we are going to explain what is pallet exchange. First of all, it is seen as a form of a formal agreement between parties involved in the process of shipping.
In most cases organizations that work with pallets, form an agreement which is a collective in this case, ensuring that every company involved has the approximate amount of pallets in their storage.
What this creates is an equivalent exchange of pallets, and we’re not talking about the alchemy principles laid down in the Full Metal Alchemist series by Hiromu Arakawa. No, all jokes aside, the focus will remain on pallets here.
But, the principles of equivalent exchange will remain. When a shipper delivers goods on pallets, with a palette exchange program it is ensured that he will receive the same amount of empty pallets as the number he left behind loaded with merchandise. The only way to ensure that this happens each time is that the collective agreement is respected by all parties involved so that there’s no delay in the process of delivering the shipment.
All parties involved need to work hard and precisely for a program like this to function. The company on the receiving end will usually have a pallet exchange program in place with most of its suppliers.
This is the only way to keep the goods moving without a delay. The supplier will also have empty pallets and will be able to load a new shipment of goods without having to wait for the first round to be unloaded.
The number of pallets is important to all parties and because of this, all parties involved will keep track, and save documentation regarding pallets in their files. To make this process fluid and operating at a high-level keeping track of inventory is vital.
The downside of it is that it is not as flexible as one would like. Neither supplier nor receiver of goods is not able to increase the number of pallets in their inventory on short notice.
They’re not the suppliers of pallets or manufacturers. When there’s a demand for pallets on short notice, neither party can deliver them. This is what sometimes clogs the shipment process and its speed when the amount of pallets needed for a new shipment exceeds the number of pallets you delivered on the spot of the exchange.
But, despite our last notion, this program is far superior to what was in place before. Back in the day, every supplier had to wait for its goods to be unloaded before proceeding with packing a new shipment.
As we said at the beginning of our article this was not cost-effective. Time and money have been wasted for years this way. Today, things are working way smoother, but we will not pretend as there are no flaws in the process. In most cases, the parties involved with the pallet exchange program face the same difficulties.
First of all, in most cases, there are no guarantees that the pallets you received are going to be of the same quality as the ones you delivered. Common decency should guarantee this, but that’s not often the case. Furthermore, there’s a little matter of hygiene.
Some suppliers or receivers will not clean their pallets, making them contaminated in some cases. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, you understand the importance of this issue. Besides all of this, it is still a viable option for everyone involved in the process of shipping. After all, it is a program that works and still gives results.
