Hogbox Bucks Trend, Switches from Pallet Recycling to New Pallets: Turns to Baker to Develop Specialized Sawlines
Risky Business: Hogbox transforms from recycling to new pallet manufacturing and bets big that machinery from Baker Products and GBN Machine can drive down production costs. Baker develops an innovative circular center splitter saw for making deck boards.
Hogbox transforms from recycling to new pallet manufacturing and bets big that machinery from Baker Products and GBN Machine can drive down production costs.
Call him crazy, but Earl Farrell, the owner of Hogbox in Fayetteville, Arkansas thinks he can compete making new pallets with recycled ones if he can just get the lumber processing costs low enough. And that is where Farrell turned to Baker Products to make two full sawlines. One included an innovative high speed circular center splitter saw developed just for Hogbox.
Farrell, stated, “Our goal is to triple our production with the same number of people.”
Most of the time you hear about companies going from making new pallets into dabbling with recycling. But Hogbox is bucking the trend by switching from pallet recycling to new pallet manufacturing. Farrell explained, “The availability and quality of cores got to the point that I realized I didn’t want to be in the recycled pallet business any more.”
But by making new pallets, he can produce quality pallets that hold up the load. Farrell suggested that there is just so much junk out there in the recycled market that it can be difficult to find quality cores to repair.
Farrell warned, “This is an experiment. It may fail, but we have to compete with the recycled pallet. And I think we can become efficient enough to compete with recycled pallets if customers are willing to pay a little more for a much better pallet.”
Read Full ArticlePallet Enterprise
By Chaille Brindley
Date Posted: 5/1/2017
