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Pallets & Bourbon barrel storage


acano

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I work at a distillery in California, we currently store our barrels on their heads on custom made pallets. All fine and dandy, they are 5'x5' pallets and they work just fine. The two problems I have with them:

1) They take a lot of time to construct where I could be doing more important things around the distillery.
2) Being larger than standard size, they take up more space and pose challenges to moving logistics and destroy our storage efficiency.

Having seen other distilleries and rickhouses where they also store their barrels on their heads, I noticed that not only do they use pallets that are standard size, but they were bought in bulk. Taking care of both of my issues.

The question I have is if anyone is familiar with a pallet supplier for these purposes? Is there a well-known/industry standard company that I am unaware of?
Any help would be great and I thank you in advance!

EDIT: Sorry for the duplicate, moderators feel free to delete this thread.

Edited by acano
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There is a big one in willits, I'm not sure what the name of it is but their parent company is in Livermore. Also, most feed stores have really heavy duty ones laying on the side of the building, for 3.00 people will pick them up by the trailer full and return them to logistics companies and you could probably sort out some good ones by finding out who those guys are. I'd say you could really try hard to beat 3.00 but it would be tough. I usually keep my heavy pallets since they are less likely to break a board and become a bitch to get the forks inside. I have some phosphoric acid that is on a light pallet and if it didn't break my back to roll that sucker onto another pallet I'd for sure move it onto the heavier one. The other option is to get a 7000.00 forklift attachment that grabs the barrels and moves them left to right or up and down and can set them on top of each other like in france and then no pallets are necessary, just floor space. Its what I'm going to use so I never have to hurt myself moving the damned things.

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I appreciate the responses and the help. It seems like there is no "go-to" company for this. The answer I suppose would be whoever could:

  • Custom build without crazy-high minimum purchase order
  • Local or close enough where cost of shipping is not outrageous.
  • Decent price per pallet

I will do more searching, at this point in time all we need is 7 pallets so it's really just worth it to stick with what works. But at $200/pallet that is certainly not sustainable for a business model and will need to be addressed as we expand and grow.

Thank you again for your help

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