Pallets in Frayser and Raleigh, north Memphis

BOX 01The ground

Frayser is on Memphis's north side, with the Wolf River to the south, the Mississippi to the west, the Loosahatchie to the north and Illinois Central tracks on the east. I-40 runs through its southern reaches, US 51 bisects the western quadrants and SR 300 links US 51 to I-40. About 45,000 people live there (Wikipedia).

Raleigh sits on a bluff above the Wolf River, with Frayser to the west, Bartlett to the east and I-40 forming part of its southern boundary. Its commercial corridors are Covington Pike and Austin Peay Highway (Wikipedia).

BOX 02The campus

The area is known for Nike's North America Logistics Campus, 2.8 million square feet after a $276 million expansion unveiled in June 2015, per The Commercial Appeal. Raleigh's article places a Nike distribution center on New Frayser-Raleigh Road.

Old industry shaped the neighborhoods: International Harvester built a plant here in 1942 and closed it in 1985, and Firestone closed its North Memphis tire factory in 1983.

BOX 03What its docks handle

Footwear and apparel distribution generate a lot of cartons and light freight, and the pallets under it are mostly clean standard 48 x 40, many of them returning from retail. E-commerce fulfillment adds a mixed pile of its own. A returns-heavy dock produces more damaged pallets than a straight outbound one.

• Footwear and apparel: clean Grade A and B stock, usually 48 x 40.
• E-commerce: mixed inbound piles, some block pallets.
• Retail along Covington Pike: a stack in a back lot, a case for pallet removal.

BOX 04Sending a request

Name 38127 or 38128, the size, a count and whether the stock is sorted. If it is clean and 48 x 40, say so first, because that is the version with the most buyers: who buys pallets. The next district over, Bartlett, has its own mix.

BOX 05A campus and a corridor

Two kinds of pallet source sit in these neighborhoods. One is a large campus, such as the 2.8-million-square-foot logistics campus on New Frayser-Raleigh Road, where volume is high and the pile is managed by a team. The other is a corridor like Covington Pike, with smaller shops and stores along it, where piles are small and unmanaged.

The campus tends to produce a regular, large pile with consistent sizes. The corridor produces a scatter of small ones. A campus is a recurring pickup; a corridor store is a removal.