Pallets in Marion, Arkansas

BOX 01The roads

Marion lies 11 miles west of Memphis. Interstate 55 and US 61 run through the city, and I-40 passes just south of downtown before both cross the Mississippi River. US 64 is the main east-west route. Arkansas Highway 77 is the major north-south arterial east of I-55, and Highway 118 does the same west of it (Wikipedia).

BOX 02Two intermodal yards

Union Pacific operates a 600-acre intermodal facility west of Marion, and BNSF operates an intermodal yard in the city. Crittenden County and West Memphis jointly operate a Mississippi River port as well.

An intermodal yard changes where pallets turn up. Containers lift off a train and a truck carries them to a nearby building, where the pallets inside are the first the receiver handles. A warehouse near a ramp gets a daily flow of imported pallets with mixed stamps and sizes.

BOX 03Reading the load

• Look for the heat-treatment stamp on imported pallets; heat-treated pallets explains it.
• Note whether pallets are 48 x 40, a metric size or a custom base; sizes lists the common ones.
• Count loose ones separately from stacked ones; pallets per trailer shows how a load is counted.

The cores that remain after a container unload are the bulk of the request; see pallet cores.

BOX 04Next to West Memphis

The bigger market is next door in West Memphis, so a Marion request should say plainly where the building is and which road reaches it. Give the count, the size and the stamp, and say whether the pile is stacked on a dock or loose.

BOX 05A 600-acre footprint

Union Pacific's intermodal facility west of Marion covers 600 acres, according to Wikipedia. A site that size holds thousands of containers and a large truck yard. Warehouses and trucking firms cluster near such a site because a drayage trip to it is short.

If your building is one of those, the pallets in question are the ones that came in the containers you unload. Describe the containers: their origin if you know it, whether the pallets are stamped and how many you counted in a typical unload.

BOX 06A request from Marion

"Warehouse on US 64 in Marion receiving about eight containers a week, roughly half with palletized goods; most pallets are 48 x 40, some carry the IPPC mark; the rest we would like to clear." It names the road, the volume, the share and the mark.

BOX 07Airport and highway context

West Memphis Municipal Airport serves general aviation, and Memphis International Airport, the FedEx hub, is across the river. Neither produces pallets in Marion itself, but both shape the freight that passes.