CO-OPERATION
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Catches the Market
By Alan Smith
Mechanical Handling and Efficient Use of Road Vehicles Enable Fruit and Vegetables to be Collected, Graded and Dispatched in the Most Profitable Manner
IN 1949, East Kent Packers, Ltd., Faversham, Kent, began constructing a fruit-packing station. In June last year it bought a number
of vehicles and is now dealing with produce at the rate of 8.000 tons a year—collecting, grading, packing and delivering it to markets all over
the countt y.
The company is a co-operative organization owned by 25 local growers, who sought means for marketing their produce most economically and profitably — a means which would at once afford quicker transport from farm to buyer and enable deliveries to be made with dispatch to places where the immediate demand lay.
The packing station, which stands on a six-acre site in the heart of the Garden of England, is claimed to be the largest in the Empire and a fleet of 16 road vehicles is run in conjunction with the enterprise.
Practically all movement of produce, except, of course, through the grading process, is on pallets, and two Ransomes fork-lift trucks are employed.
These are battery-electrics, chosen mainly because of their economy and because the risk of contamination of food by exhaust fumes is absent. One of the models provides a 14-ft. lift, so that loads can be taken into an upper bank of cold-storage chambers, in the company's plant. Four Lansing Bagnall stillage trucks are also employed.
On the transport side, work commences at 7 a.m., when the lorries, all 5-tonners, leave the station and collect produce from the 25 farms. All these lie within a 20-mile radius. The growers stack their produce in boxes and these are loaded by hand on to the wooden pallets.
The pallets are made by the company itself and measure 3 ft. bv 3 ft. 6 ins. Each of the drop-sided lorries can take eight pallets on its platform and each pallet is stacked with 25 boxes. The box-load is the unit upon which the company works. Each box contains 40 lb. of fruit, the woodwork adding 10 lb.. so that a pallet-load comes to a little over half a ton and a full lorry-load almost to the rated capacity of the vehicles employed.
Careful thought in planning the dimensions of the pallets, of which 2.000 are in circulation, and those of the boxes, has avoided the bugbear of palleted transport—overlapping or incomplete coverage of the pallet by the boxes, which leads to instability of the load itself and the possibility of collapse.
On each pallet, three boxes are laid side by side, room being left for two boxes placed end to end. Five tiers of boxes, each arranged to bond with the others, much like brickwork, make up a pallet-load about 6 ft. high.
Upon arrival at the packing station, the lorries are unloaded by the fork-lift trucks, about 5 minutes being taken for each operation. This quick turn-round promotes the fullest use of the fleet. In the collection bay there is room for 20 vehicles and 10 can be passed through in an hour. In a day, about 60 loads are taken off during the peak season.
After grading, which takes place luring and after the morning's loads Ire brought in, over 100 tons of moduce packed for market await lispatch. The Lansing Bagnalls are ;mployed on internal transport from he storage bays to the beginning of he grading lines and from the end )f the lines to the dispatch bays, and lne fork-lift truck is used to bring lown loads from the upper cold4orage chambers. The height of hese chambers above the inside floor )f the station is, however, not as ;Teat as it is above the ground outale, so that the standard Ransomes Tuck may be employed.
Roller Conveyors
The palletted system has not yet )een fully exploited in loading the vehicles for delivery. Stillage trucks ving the boxes on pallets to the loadng bays and the boxes are taken off Ind run down roller conveyers into he lorries.
Three or four men can load a vehicle in half an hour and there is
space at the bay for five vehicles. When another fork-lift truck has Deen delivered, all vehicles will be oaded mechanically. Thus, time and Labour will be saved and only one Loading bay will have to be used.
It is in the dispatch of the produce that the company finds the greatest value in running its own fleet. When the drivers, of whom 20 are !..mployed, report for the delivery cuns, they have no idea where they :Ire likely to go. Conditions in the lade vary so much from day to day that the demand for produce at each market cannot be foreseen. A shipload of oranges at Avonmouth will lower the demand for apples in the West Country, for instance.
During the peak season, extra transport has to be hired from British Road Services. Mr. G. W. Stewart, manager of East Kent Packers, Ltd., told me that although he had obtained the fullest satisfaction from the local B.R.S. depot (incidentally, next door to the packing station), when vehicles had to be obtained from other depots there were sometimes delays.
In hiring transport, fair notice of destination had always to be given to the contractor and this was not always compatible with ever-changing market requirements. It was for this reason, and because hired haulage was dearer, that the company hoped to increase its own fleet, the only barrier at present being the Government's limitation of company capital expenditure.
Teleprinter Check A check on vehicle movements throughout the country is kept by teleprinter. Within the regulations governing drivers' hours, all Midlands markets, and even Liverpool, can be reached in an 11-hour run. Thus, a Liverpool housewife may be able to buy apples that were picked off Kentish trees only two days before—an indication of how efficiently run road transport can improve the Nation's domestic conditions.
Even if the fleet be expanded so that the company is independent of hired transport during the peak season, vehicles are not likely to be standing idle at other times of the year. There is cold-storage space for 4,000 tons of produce, which enables the autumn yield of apples to be carried into April and May.
Broccoli and then soft fruits complete the year's round until the apple harvest is picked again. Since the n3 war there has been a great increase in the total yield of the area and new orchards have been, and are to be, laid down.
The vehicles run are of Austin, Bedford and Commer manufacture, all petrol-engined, and there are five Morris -Commercial oilers. The lorries were bought last June. No delay was experienced in obtaining them, because many would-be buyers in the district cancelled their orders when purchase tax was imposed and distributors were therefore able to give prompt delivery.
Mr. T. Davis, transport manager, favoured the use of oil-engined machines," which, he considered, amortized their higher cost in a year and gave less mechanical trouble than petrol vehicles. Each machine in the fleet covers nearly 1,000 miles a week. The oilers average 16 mpg. and the petrol-engined lorries 9-10 m.p.g.
Preventive Maintenance Two fitters are employed to carry out a preventive maintenance scheme, drivers reporting defects in their lorries as they occur. At the time of my visit, the vehicles were due for stripping down by the fitters; specialized jobs were to be done outside.
Mr. Stewart pointed out that the vehicles were worked "flat out" and this was possible because of the spirit of co-operation among his staff. There had been no labour troubles. Wages paid were a little above the basic rates and certain drivers received a 2d.-an-hour bonus for "loyalty to the company."
Mr. Stewart estimates that transport represents 5-6 per cent. of the cost to the retailer of a consignment. The slickness of modern mechanical methods, which perhaps engenders the esprit de corps that the company enjoys, has made the attainment of such a satisfactory figure possible.