Come take a tour with us! Our Director of Retail Operations Mike Steen is excited to take you on a journey inside our Reusable Asset Depot (RAD) located in Houston, Texas that shows the latest in automation from Relogistics. See how our RADs efficiently process millions of pallets, crates, and corrugate each year, delivering time and cost savings to our customers.
Watch the video to learn more. Transcript follows below.
Welcome to the Relogistics RAD, located in Houston, Texas. My name is Mike Steen, and I'm the Director of Operations. Today, I'll be walking you through this facility, showing you how we process millions of reusable pallets, crates, and corrugate each year for our customers.
Unloading Station
Here's our unload station, where our loader will unload the trailers of items ranging from corrugate, plastic crates, and pallets. Our unloader will take these things out, save them here, and then designate what station they need to be processed at.
Robotic Sort System
Here we're standing at the robotic sort system, or the RSS. This machine takes unsorted pallets that come in from our inbound trailers and sorts them by pallet type and sort quality. The robot on the left will pick up the pallets and send them through this laser system that scans the criteria and sets them on the appropriate outbound stacker lane. From there, a forklift driver picks them back up and then loads them back out.
SMETCO Pallet Sort Machine
Behind me is our SMETCO sort machine. This is where our forklift drivers will set the pallets to be sorted on the infeed station. Then, the pallets are sent down the conveyor to our inspection station.
Here is a stacker portion of the SMETCO machine, where an operator identifies either the pallet type or quality and sends it to the appropriate stacker. These pallets will either end up back at the pooled pallet repair depots or for reuse back into the supply chain.
Robotic Pallet Dismantler
This is our robotic pallet dismantler, where our inbound whitewood pallets are identified by size. Whether it be an odd size pallet or a 48 X 40 pallet that isn't repairable, this machine cuts it down, tears out the boards, and sends it to our trim back saw.
Cutdown Station
Here is our cutdown station, where the boards come off the dismantler. Our operators will identify whether the boards are already 40 inches or a different size, and set them in their appropriate sections.
For boards that are not 40 inches, we place them in our TRIM-TRAC saw and cut them down to the correct size so they can be used in remanufactured pallets. We also have a section here for scrap wood, which will be repurposed into anything from mulch, pet bedding, and other things of that nature.
TRIM-TRAC Saw
As the boards come off the dismantler and turntable, they are set here at our TRIM-TRAC saw. This is where we cut the boards down to the appropriate size to be reused and repurposed for remanufactured pallets.
Break Pack Sorter
At our corrugate sorting station, we sort boxes to the criteria that is provided to us by our customer. If the boxes meet the criteria, they are sent right back into the supply chain. If the boxes do not meet the criteria, we bail them for recycle.
RPC Sorter
Here is our RPC sort station, or reusable plastic crates. This is where our team members sort crates by type and send them to a wash station. From there, the crates will be sent back to our customers for reuse.
Loading Station
Here is our loading station, where our forklift operators, as loaders, can load anything from pallets, corrugate, plastic crates, or any other recyclable materials. The forklift driver is not only responsible for the shipment quantities and accuracy, but also for the specific requirements of our customer in loading parameters.
If you're looking to improve your efficiency, get in touch with our team.