COMMENT
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WHOSE PALLET IS IT ANYWAY?
he subject of today's talk is...er....pallets. Hardly the stuff to whip Joe Soap Haulier into an emotional lather—until you consider that people selling pallets which don't belong to them could, according to one expert, be costing the haulage industry up to E100m a year. And while we're into statistics, GKN Chep, which knows a thing or two about pallets, reckons that out of the 30 million manufactured every year, 50% are to cover losses. That's an awful lot of breakages, or else...Keeping track of the little wooden wonders can be a full-time job for a traffic office, but who's got the time to do it? The swapping of pallets back and forth between hauliers and suppliers has always been an extremely vague business, If your driver says: "They didn't have any pallets to give me back," do you query it? How many operators keep a tally of who owes what? Given that "vagueness" it's small wonder that many drivers have developed a lucrative sideline flogging off their bosses' property. But now some operators are prepared to pay private detectives to find out what they're up to. And a driver who steals pallets probably won't stop there. He's just as likely to put your diesel in his car or "borrow" your valuable workshop tools. So do you know where all your pallets are? Or are you forever "top ping up" your pallet pool? Choose your supplier unwisely and you could even end up buying back your own property. If you don't control your drivers don't be surprised if they go out of control. Dealing with staff pilfering was covered in the January edition of CM's Employment Bulletin. Go back and look at it. Pallet control is nothing more, or less, than good housekeeping. So how good is yours?