Did Pallets Help Win the War?

You wouldn't know it to look at them but the lowly wooden pallet is John Wayne and Audie Murphy rolled into one. A true unsung hero of World War II. How else would you describe the one piece of equipment that almost single-handedly got our troops the equipment and supplies where they needed them and when they needed them, time after time after time?

Even though there were versions of the wooden shipping pallet around since the 1800's, the real push came with the war in the Pacific when the U.S. military bought more than 50 million wooden pallets and skids to move supplies.

Imagine being 3,000 miles from the Mainland and 6,000 miles from our other allied supply depots in Australia and having to get tons of supplies in and out because our troop's lives literally depended on it? Now you can quickly understand the important role wooden pallets and the forklift played in the success of our war efforts.

The modern four-way pallet was developed by Norman Cahners, an officer in the Navy Supply Corps to allow for a speedier turn around in especially tight, crowded work spaces like the Quonset hut that was a fixture of military operations. His invention allowed the average number of tons handled per man to double -- vastly improving the loading and unloading turn-around time urgently needed by freight cars and cargo ships.

In one account, David L. Manuel described the wonders of palletized material handling in Sydney, Australia in 1943 with the arrival of a U.S. ship at Glebe Island.

"This attracted widespread attention, especially amongst the services, stevedores and shipping companies. It was a completely amazed and somewhat goggle-eyed collection of Australians who watched the Americans unbatten their hatches, land forklift trucks with ship's gear and, with the most amazing speed, bring off their palletized cargo in slings. To the Australians, this was a revolutionary first. There before them were marvels of mechanized muscle operating with trend-setting speed and efficiency. Compared to this, Australian waterside unloading methods had been restricted to primitive man-handling assisted mainly by hand trucks."

Heat, weather and impossibly long supply lines were an everyday reality to the Quartermaster Corps. According to Dr. Steven Anders, Quartermaster Corps Historian, loss rates on food shipments were as high as 40%. Over 100,000 unusable cans of food in a single supply dump were reported by eyewitnesses. The result of the scorching temperatures and merciless tropical sun.

Pallets changed the face of wartime distribution forever.

In setting out the history of the pallet, Anders wrote, "Faced with unusual circumstances and finding that they often lacked even basic items or equipment for carrying out their mission, Quartermasters in the Pacific routinely became masters of improvisation -- 'QM Imps' as they were sometimes called. For example, in an effort to speed up movement of supplies over contested beaches, Quartermasters pioneered the development of 'palletized unit loading.' Combat rations, petroleum products, and other supplies were strapped onto rectangular-shaped, wooden pallets or 'sleds' which could be quickly discharged from landing craft, dragged over beaches, and even moved inland for great distances to establish instant dumps. At the start of the war, this efficient technique of cargo handling had barely been known even among commercial enterprises."

Anders noted that Brigadier General William F. Campbell, Chief Quartermaster in the Southwest Pacific, sent a memo to all Quartermasters in his command at the end of the war. Despite the many difficulties, "Not once," he asserted, "did our attack falter because of a lack of Quartermaster supplies!" Campbell continued, "Never before in any war had supply lines been so long. Never before has so much been supplied over such distances."

Since its introduction in World War II, the wooden shipping pallet has moved nearly everything that moves here and around the globe. It truly deserves a salute from all of us.

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Michael Smith is the C.O.O. of PALNET, a national, environmentally-friendly pallet manufacturer. He can be reached at 877-PALNET-1.