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Customer Testimonials: Premium Standard Farms...

Rough And Ready

Premium Standard Farms switches to a tougher brand of pallets to endure the abuse of the processing floor

All pallets employed at Premium Standard Foods are happy and healthy, despite a constant bout with labor-related stress.

The brawny pallets work long, tedious hours in the rough-and-tough environment at Premium Standard Foods, a Milan, Mo.-based pork processor. They get knocked around and beat up everyday. But the pallets report to work every morning, ready for action.

The mighty pallets in this case are manufactured by PDQ Plastics Inc., a Bayonne, N.J.-based company. These pallets have an attitude. They would be willing to go head to head with the defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers to prove their durability.

And to think it was less than a year ago that the pallets at Premium Standard Foods were having such a difficult time of it. These weren't pallets from PDQ Plastics, though.

They were different plastic pallets and they couldn't handle the constant abuse on the processing floor. After two months on the job, their legs had weakened. They had had enough.

Premium Standard Foods also had had enough. So, last November, the company made the switch to the tougher bunch, the pallets from PDQ Plastics.

"We have not torn up one of them yet," says Rick Fox, vice president of operation support services for Premium Standard Foods. "We have gone through most of the [pallet] brands out here. But [the PDQ Plastics] pallets are head-and-shoulders above the rest.

Premium Standard Foods uses about 400 of PDQ Plastics' Super D pallets in its production area. The 40 inch by 48 inch Super D is molded of solid, high-density, polyethylene material. It is non-expanded, non-foamed and non-cellular for durability and longevity.

"At some point they are going to wear out, but the pallets are outlasting everything else that we've tried at this point," Fox says.

The 50-pound pallets can withstand a temperature range of minus 40 degrees F to 200 degrees F. The pallets are equipped with four-way entry and have nine legs, and are USDA-approved, with a life expectancy of three to 10 years. PDQ offers a three-year guarantee.

"You can bang these pallets around," says Barry S. Nathans, president of PDQ Plastics.

The tough factor includes a static or stored load of up to 25,000 pounds a pallet. Dynamic load or driving load is equal to lift-truck capacity.

PDQ Plastics began developing plastic pallets for General Motors in 1969. The company also sells plenty of pallets to newspaper publishers, such as the New York Times.

But Nathans says he has received numerous calls from food processors, inquiring about the pallets.

More food companies want to utilize plastic pallets because of export regulations handed down by the European Union. The EU prohibits the use of wooden pallets in production areas to offset cross-contamination.

Premium Standard Foods is approved to export product to the EU. It's another reason why Fox is smiling about his deal with PDQ Plastics.

"Most people picture pallets as stacks of wood often seen behind a factory," Nathans says, "They don't realize the cost savings that can be gained from using something that can last a long time."

PDQ Plastics' pallets are tough, but they are a pushover when it comes to cleaning. At Premium Standard Foods, old pallets had to be scrubbed by hand to eliminate bacteria caught in crevices, Fox says. The PDQ Plastics' pallets are simply foamed and hosed down.

But above all, it's the durability factor that PDQ Plastics offers with its pallets that will attract processors such as Premium Standard Foods.

Fox talks of the processing floor at Premium Standard Foods, which has an abrasive finish. Old pallets would get torn to pieces and worn away when dragged across that floor, Fox says.

But the pallets from PDQ Plastics have not succumbed to that abrasive floor. It's going to take more than that to weaken their legs.

It's all in a day's work.