The Mheda Journal

It’s a Summer Friday, so I thought I’d take a cue from my colleague Dan Vest and post something a little more fun today. Pallets have been in the news for many of the wrong reasons in recent weeks, but I ran across something that may help the wooden shipping pallet restore its image a bit.

Apparently, it’s common practice in Austin, Texas, to build houses out of shipping pallets. (See the photo, below left.) According to the website apartmentthearpy.com (that’s where the photos are from, too), these shipping-pallet houses were created by the architecture firm I-Beam, and “designed as temporary homes for refugees.” Advantages are they can be easily assembled and taken down and can be built with a wide array of features (see flower box in the second photo). I’m guessing price is also a huge advantage. Disadvantages include, well, living in a house made of shipping pallets. As the site says, “While a bit drafty in this incarnation, the houses can be made into more permanent dwellings using local materials like mud and adobe.” Good to know. 

Have a great weekend, everyone. Don’t forget to visit the new online home of The MHEDA Journal Online!

A while back, I posted an update on the state of the pending lawsuit regarding anti-dumping duties on imported Chinese wire decking.

More than a year ago, a group of wire decking manufacturers that included AWP Industries, ITC Manufacturing, J&L  Wire Cloth, Nashville Wire Products and Wireway Husky Corporation filed a petition with the International Trade Commission to institute antidumping duties because Chinese imports were priced so low that it was difficult for these U.S. manufacturers to compete. Last July 20, the Trade Commission made a preliminary ruling that there was “a reasonable indication of material injury to the U.S. industry producing wire decking caused by unfairly traded imports from China.”

Late last week, however, the Trade Commission did an about-face on this ruling, denying the Commerce Department the opportunity to enforce any duties at all. In its ruling on July 1, 2010, the ITC said manufacturers were “neither materially injured nor threatened with material injury” because of the imports. I don’t know enough about this to know what caused the difference in opinion and why this ruling was reversed, but I do know that it is a setback for the five suppliers. If anyone out there has more info, please let me know about it. What happens next?

As I have mentioned before in this space, the next issue of The MHEDA Journal (set to publish on July 15) recognizes Top MHEDA Dealers—those distributors who were honored by their manufacturers as a top-performing partner.

Earlier this week, I spoke with Mary Lou Jacoby, owner of warehouse1 (Kansas City, MO), a distributor of storage & handling products who earned Top Dealer honors from Tri-Boro Shelving & Partition Corp. Mary Lou had an interesting thing to say about how the poor economy impacted the market for allied products.

“Everything that we sell is made out of steel. As the market went down, so did the price of steel and, in turn, the price of new products. Therefore, revenue went down. If the price of new product was off 20%, then you could certainly expect sales volume to go down 20%. That was something about the year before that most people don’t take into account. In 2008, the steel market increased in price, so our equipment increased in cost. When you say your sales volume in 2008 was up 20%, really you were just breaking even because steel was up 20%. So for us, 2009 was down, but a part of that difference in revenue is based on the cost of the material.”

Most people, myself included, have thought about the economy in terms of a lack of customers with capital to spend and that’s why sales are down. Or, prices have been reduced by the seller in an attempt to spur sales. I hadn’t given too much thought to the actual cost of the item itself. Obviously, if that goes down, the retial price goes down, which impacts a distributor’s revenue. Thanks, Mary Lou, for the perspective!

An op-ed piece in Thursday’s The New York Times provided an interesting perspective on green buildings and LEED certification, a topic we’ve covered in this space and in The MHEDA Journal before.

The Times article, titled “Don’t LEED Us Astray,” talks about how LEED certification (a U.S. Green Building Council certification given for incorporating eco-friendly design) has become a bit misguided. “While the standard is well-intentioned, it is also greatly misunderstood. Put simply, a building’s LEED rating is more like a snapshot taken at its opening, not a promise of performance.”

The article suggests that because once a building is built, it’s so difficult to predict what it’s actual green impact will be—after all, a bike rack doesn’t make people ride bikes—follow-up requirements should be implemented. “A number of local, state and federal agencies require LEED certification for their new buildings — so why not have them institute follow-up requirements as well? Buildings that efficiently generate on-site power should be able to claim tax credits. Tenants who reuse paper or install efficient lighting could claim rebates. At the same time, agencies should conduct regular energy-use checkups to ensure that landlords and tenants live up to the promise of their LEED certification—and those that don’t should lose their subsidy.”

I don’t really know enough about LEED to have an opinion, but I did find the argument compelling. I’ll throw it out to all of you: what do you think?

Today is Earth Day; it’s the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, in fact. I learned yesterday that the impetus for Earth Day was the day when my hometown Cuyahoga River notoriously caught on fire near Cleveland, Ohio. Can’t say I was proud to learn that fact, but at least something positive came out of that debacle. (Well, two things, if you count the song “Burn On” by Randy Newman.)

Earth Day seems like as good a time as any to talk about the continuing efforts of our industry to go green and help end-users of material handling equipment (which is virtually everyone) do the same.

The material handling industry is at the forefront of the sustainability movement, whether it’s:

• Reducing forklift emissions
• Warehouses that go up instead of out and preserve more green space
• Turning off power to certain parts of a customer’s warehouse when not in use
• Encouraging adherence to green building codes
• Embracing alternative fuels
• Increasing remanufacturing opportunities.

And just today, I read about a study finding that logistics companies made commitments to sustainability during the recession.

Consider this a tribute to our industry. Keep up the good, green work! (Editor’s note: See The MHEDA Edge Editor’s Blog to read another perspective on Green Material Handling.) Happy Earth Day, everyone!

At long last, the Second Quarter (April) issue of The MHEDA Journal is back from the printer and being distributed to MHEDA members. Those of you traveling to upcoming material handling equipment trade shows can also pick up a copy at NA2010 in Cleveland in two weeks or at the MHEDA Annual Convention & Exhibitors’ Showcase next month.

This issue plays off the MHEDA Convention’s theme of “The Rules Have Changed,” and is chock-full of articles from distributors about how they’re changing the rules at their companies to drive profits. See how M & G Materials Handling (East Providence, RI) President Ken MacDonald has improved productivity by implementing 5s procedures. Read how Bill Rowan, president of Sunbelt Industrial Trucks (Dallas, TX), has instituted more strict credit policies to ensure better cash flow. Learn what Ted Springer, president of Springer Equipment Company (Birmingham, AL), is doing to diversify his product mix, and many more!

This issue also features articles from speakers at the Annual Convention, on topics from marketing to sales intelligence to thinking creatively and more. So even if you can’t make it to Marco Island, you can still receive some of the benefit by taking a look at this quarter’s issue.

It’s all available online now and is being mailed to subscribers this week. I’d love to hear your feedback. Leave a comment here or send an e-mail to editor@TheMhedaJournal.org. Thanks for reading!

I was on vacation for a few days last week and spent some time cruising around Southern California. I had been there before but always had a destination and a reason in mind, and never really took any time to explore beyond my immediate destination.

This time, though, I had some free time to relax and soak it all in. Looking back on it, it’s amazing how much material handling I saw, really in every way. Traveling around Long Beach, i saw the port filled with huge barges loaded with hundreds of shipping containers. I saw cranes and hoists being used to unload those ships.

I saw forklifts in action, at every size business, from a tattoo parlor in Venice Beach using a truck to unload what looked to be large ink canisters, to the Hollywood Walk of Fame using one to haul some new granite for a new sidewalk star (I think it was Russell Crowe’s), to a shipyard in San Diego.

I saw industrial storage rack in the place where we picked up our rental car, and I saw conveyors both at the airport and at a cruise ship boarding station we rode our bikes past.

Most people don’t know it, but material handling is everywhere! Making that awareness more prevalent is the purpose of MHEDA’s Industry Advocacy committee, and the good news is, they have a lot of material to work with. Even on vacation, I can’t escape it!

Back from a long weekend! Always nice to come up for air once in a while. I hope everyone had a good weekend.

To continue my theme of material handling building codes, just wanted to make readers aware of the AP story that recounted yesterday’s earthquake in Mexico. The story indicated that damage could have been much worse:

Building construction has also improved in northern Mexico, a region with a history of quakes, said Carlos Valdes, chief of the Mexican National Seismological Service. “Construction codes prevented more serious damage,” Valdes said. “People see that it always shakes and have improved their construction capacity. Then when the construction codes are implemented, there is stricter control, especially in larger structures.”

That goes to the point I was trying to make in this blog post a couple of weeks ago. Seismic zones are under siege, and adhering to the best rack, shelving and material handling system codes and regulations in those areas would be good policy, even if it costs more in the short term.

Another earthquake…what is going on out there?! Best wishes to anyone impacted. By the way, don’t forget MHEDA’s involvement in the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) if anyone needs disaster relief assistance.

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog about the proliferation of major earthquakes and how the damage they cause is related to building codes. A recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times illustrated a similar point. The piece of the article that jumped out to me most:

“…based on the kind of damage that buildings suffered in Chile, tall structures in the earthquake zones of the United States appear to be at much higher risk than we thought. This lesson should be of obvious concern to San Francisco and Los Angeles. But it is actually the Pacific Northwest that is most vulnerable to a mega-quake like Chile’s.”

A reader of mine commented on the original post that Chile has exacting building codes, some of the most stringent in the world. Some of those buildings still were decimated. Such a quake in the U.S. may or may not be catastrophic depending on where it hits.

It’s an important issue, and one that material handling distributors, particularly those who do storage and handling systems and large rack installations. According to at least  this author, we should expect those codes to change.

The article was in the Times on Sunday, March 28, and was written by Peter Yanev, a structural engineer. It’s an interesting read. I recommend it. 

Is it just me, or has their been an inordinate number of earthquakes lately? A 7.0 in Haiti on January 12, the 8.8 monster in Chile on February 27, the what-would-normally-be-considered large 5.5 in Turkey on March 8, and then another 7.0 rocker in Chile today. The devastation and despair these have caused have been well-documented and I don’t want to go into detail about that here. (Though I would be remiss not to once again mention the American Logistics Aid Network, of which MHEDA is a major contributor. Click the link above to learn more.)

I’m thinking about it more in terms of building codes. A colleague of mine mentioned earlier today how it’s times like these when those annoying building codes that sometimes seem so frivolous don’t seem so bad after all. Hearing the stories of crumbling, cheaply made buildings in some of these places makes you glad, at least for the short-term, that we have codes and requirements in place.

Now, I don’t know what sort of building codes, if any, are in place in Chile, Haiti and Turkey. Maybe the damage would have been the same — granted, an 8.8-magnitude quake would likely do pretty severe damage even to a strong, secure building. But it does make one realize that those codes are there for a reason. Up here in usually-earthquake-free upstate New York , here’s hoping that I don’t need to ever find out.

For more info on building codes in material handling, read this archived article in The MHEDA Journal Online.