McDougall & Sons Streamlines Operations with Columbia’s Load Transfer Station

“The machine is worth its weight in gold.” Says Dave Whaley, Assistant Supervisor, from McDougall & Sons. What machine? You might be asking yourself. It is Columbia Machine’s Load Transfer Station.

McDougall & Sons is a fruit distributor located in Wenatchee, WA – the heart of apple country. In a single year they handle over 2 million cases of apples and 600,000 cases of cherries. The challenge they faced in 2011 was the need to transfer the pallet load of fruit from their in-house pallet to a shipping pallet. The in-house pallet is slightly larger to allow for corner boards to be used so that they can stack three pallet loads of product on top of one another. This method of stacking saves them on the cost and space of racking. When a load of product needs to go out to the customer the product needs to be transferred from their in-house pallet onto a CHEP, Airway or 4-way pallet for transportation.

The current method that they used was no longer reliable. It took up to 3 people to complete a transfer of product and at times the bottom boards of the pallet would damage the bottom layer of product. When this damage took place, the trucking company was often held liable for the damaged product. This was making for an inecient process and unhappy truck drivers.

“With a Columbia Load Transfer Station, McDougall & Sons has seen a huge increase in eciency within the transferring process – now we are able to easily transfer up to 300 pallets per day during peak season.” says Don Bellinger the Shipping Manager at McDougall & Sons. “Not only is it a good machine, but we were able to easily install the LTS ourselves and have not had any need for service support.”