Scale pallet trucks lift burden of recycling

A California-based maker of business machines, attempting to comply with a stiff recycling law, discovered that scale pallet trucks saved it time and money.

"If you generate three quarters of a million pounds of recyclable material every month, you can well imagine the cost of collecting, handling, weighing and bundling the material," says the project manager for the company that provides total building maintenance for the business machine manufacturer. 

"We discovered we could significantly reduce the time pallet truck operators spend moving pallet loads of material just by switching to scale pallet trucks," he says.

The facility is enormous: an administration and manufacturing campus consisting of six buildings with approximately 1.6 million sq. ft. under roof. Throughout the facility there are over 75 work stations that generate recyclable material.

The recycling program initiated at the facility includes cardboard, shrink wrap, polyolefin, polypropylene, styrofoam, pallets and a few other items. Recycling centers are strategically located throughout the plant that collect, sort, bale and hold the recycled material for shipment to brokers.
During a normal day, pallet truck operators travel throughout the plant collecting either mixed material pallet loads or sorted recycled items at the work stations. For cardboard, the primary material collected, a weight limit of between 800 lbs. and 1,000 lbs. was established to ease handling.

"In the past, operators collected the cardboard and shuttled the loaded pallet to the nearest floor scale, perhaps up to five minutes away from the recycling center," says the maintenance manager. "Now, using the scale truck, operators know instantly the total weight of the pallet, and they proceed directly to the recycling area."

This "weigh-on-the-fly" capability increases the efficiency of truck use. Operators can either make more trips per day, or they can use the time to perform other tasks. Congestion around the floor scales, which used to be a problem, is greatly reduced.

The SPT44-model scale trucks are supplied by CANDELL EQUIPMENT., Houston, TX. The truck's four strategically-positioned 350-ohm, full-bridge circuit load cells - two in each fork - provide precise measurement of loads. This four-point system ensures accurate measurement even when loads are not properly centered.

The truck is programmable to weigh in either pounds or kilograms, with an accuracy of 1% of full scale. It can also be programmed to calculate percentages or determine an over/under count per load. All measurements are clearly visible on a large, digital LED display screen mounted on the apron of the truck.

The 4,400-lb. capacity truck uses an airless hydraulic pump to provide a 5-in. lift height. Two large diameter steering wheels and two single load rollers make pallet load movement easy.
"The ultimate goal of all building maintenance managers is to improve operating efficiency by implementing subtle changes that require little, if any, operating training or reassignining of personnel," says the project manager. "Being able to weigh on the fly - using accurate scales built into our hand pallet trucks - provides a welcome time and labor cost reduction that contributes to a better bottom line."