I also worked in the grocery industry for most of a decade.
My sister worked for local fast food and general retail chains (Taco Time & Target) and I was always amazed at the lack of palletization they used. Target especially.
Target sends several trucks a day to each store. Each truck is half-full, and half of that freight is simply "stevedoered" into the truck, not put on pallets. So emptying a truck is a several-hour process of moving individual boxes of merchandise out of a truck by hand. What pallets they do use are often poorly stacked (by retail grocery standards), not well wrapped, and often fall over in transport.
Wal-Mart, by comparison, looks to have embraced the same "CHEP-only" policy as Costco.
My sister worked for local fast food and general retail chains (Taco Time & Target) and I was always amazed at the lack of palletization they used. Target especially.
Target sends several trucks a day to each store. Each truck is half-full, and half of that freight is simply "stevedoered" into the truck, not put on pallets. So emptying a truck is a several-hour process of moving individual boxes of merchandise out of a truck by hand. What pallets they do use are often poorly stacked (by retail grocery standards), not well wrapped, and often fall over in transport.
Wal-Mart, by comparison, looks to have embraced the same "CHEP-only" policy as Costco.