Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Alaska

Alaska, by road

Start with the map. Freight arrives by sea and air, or by road through Canada on the Alaska Highway, so every empty pallet has a long way home. Without an Interstate, haul lengths are set by sea and air schedules, and the longer the haul, the more an empty stack's height matters.

The counties with the most warehousing jobs are Anchorage Municipality (525), which is 89.4 percent of the state's 587. It has no land border with another state.

Warehousing in numbers

Alaska reports no refrigerated warehouse capacity separately in the USDA table we used, so the cold question depends on the individual customer.

Reading the numbers

• Anchorage Municipality County has 525 warehousing jobs, 89.4 percent of Alaska's 587, the most in the state.
• Food manufacturing employs 8,882 people in Alaska, 15.13 for every warehousing job.
• Grocery and related product wholesale employs 1,717 people in Alaska, 2.93 for every warehousing job.
• Alaska holds 0.03 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 3333, spread over 30 establishments averaging 20 jobs each.

Who ships pallets here

In Alaska, food manufacturing employs 8,882. Food plants want a pallet they can wash, which points at a smooth moulded deck, and they should ask the maker for resin and colourant paperwork rather than a blanket approval. It tends to lean on nestable or stackable that washes down, open or closed deck by product, usually in 48 x 40 in, and to ask about resin and colourant documentation, since FDA does not approve pallet models.

Food manufacturing is the trade where Alaska is most concentrated, at 2.6 times the national share of employment. A buyer in that trade will tend to ask the questions in the last column first.

The empty return

An illustration, not a forecast: if each of 30 warehouse establishments in Alaska sent back 1,200 empty pallets in a week, that would be 36,000 pallets. The table counts the 53 ft trailers that takes at three makers' published nestable figures, beside the 540 per trailer of a rackable.

Next door

Alaska has no neighbouring state by land, so there is no table of borders; the pages for the states and corridors show the nearest mainland routes.

Words on this page

UL

Underwriters Laboratories, a safety testing body that publishes fire test standards, including one for storage pallets.

Closed loop

A route where pallets return to the sender after delivery, so the empty trip is a standing cost.

Location quotient

A place's share of employment in a trade divided by the national share. Above 1 means the trade is more concentrated there than average.

Bulk bag

A large woven bag, often sold as a Super Sack, that holds a ton or so of powder or granules and sits on a square pallet.

Nest increment

The extra height each additional empty pallet adds to a nested stack, measured in inches. A small increment means a short stack.

Pallet pooling

A rental model where a company owns the pallets and moves them between customers, instead of each customer buying its own.

Cross-docking

Moving freight from an inbound truck to an outbound one with little or no storage between.

Euro pallet

A 1200 by 800 millimetre pallet, about 48 by 31.5 inches, widely used in Europe.

Cruciform base

A base shaped like a plus sign under the pallet, which gives a stable footprint and slides well on conveyors.