Post office’s plastic gear lost to offices, recyclers
Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008
For years, the U. S. Postal Service has waged a costly and losing battle to round up millions of plastic tubs that end up as office organizers, dorm room ottomans or perhaps a porchside planter.
Now it faces a bigger dilemma. Millions of plastic shipping pallets, which are more than five times as expensive as tubs, are unaccounted for as well.
Despite postal markings on each side, these orange and black platforms are often seen bearing other carriers’ cargo. Many sit idle on loading docks. A few end up in oddball places. Others are illegally shredded for recycling — an activity that postal officials and other industries say is on the rise.
“We would like them back,” said Jim Hardie, manager of mail transport equipment for the Postal Service. “Because ultimately, it costs us all. That’s a lot of stamps to buy to replace just one.” The Postal Service adopted plastic pallets more than 20 years ago and is the nation’s largest user. More costly than traditional wooden pallets, they are lighter, more durable and easier to store, postal officials say.
Over the past two years, Hardie has spent $ 74 million for 3. 7 million plastic pallets. That’s $ 20 a pallet and about 37 percent of the typical annual budget for buying processing and transport equipment, he said.
Yet 2006 ended with the same number of pallets in his national warehouse and distribution center inventory as at the start of the year — about 120, 000.
By the end of 2007, that inventory had shrunk, Hardie said.
Tub retrieval remains a challenge as well. Despite annual recovery drives — last year’s drive liberated about $ 1 million worth — Hardie buys 5 million to 7 million tubs a year to keep inventories around 700, 000.
Since 2006, Hardie has spent $ 33. 4 million for 8. 8 million plastic tubs. That’s about $ 3. 80 each. Exhausting $ 207. 4 million on plastic containers since 2004 — nearly two-thirds of that on pallets — may sound exorbitant. Or it could be downright minuscule given the Postal Service’s $ 75 billion-a-year business. But “if every household in America emptied their garage and every business got rid of stuff they didn’t need, I wouldn’t buy anything next year,” he said.
HIDING PLACES When tubs and pallets pile up instead of returning to the post office, they become subject to office workers’ whimsy. Neither snow, rain, heat nor gloom of night dulls their ingenuity. Nor do labels that threaten a $ 1, 000 fine and three years in prison for “theft or misuse” of postal gear.
“I don’t think it’s anything malicious that people do,” said Hardie, noting that the Postal Service gladly accepts returns. “Somehow they get hold of a [tub or pallet ] and don’t know what to do with it.” Instead, pallets have turned up at paint-ball battlefields, a roadside golf ball stand and under haystacks at a farm. Some have surfaced in South America and some European airports, though the Postal Service does not send pallets out of the country, spokesman Mark Saunders said.
“One of our employees was on vacation in St. Maarten and brought back a picture of one that literally washed up on the beach,” Hardie said.
Perhaps the most brazen incident involved a pharmacy across from Postal Service headquarters in Washington. An employee on lunch break noticed a postal pallet loaded with water bottles and summoned the manager.
“He said, ‘ Hey, that’s not supposed to be used for anything but mail, ’” Hardie said. “Then he picked it up and brought it back to the office.” But when a pallet turned up in a primate exhibit at a Midwest zoo, Hardie said, “I gave them that one. I wasn’t going to go in and get it.” Officials at the Milwaukee County Zoo said several orange and black pallets are used in its primate exhibits, but were donated and lack postal markings.
Tubs have become bookcases, footrests, TV stands and toolboxes. More eclectic uses have included drums or donation bins for street musicians, ballot sorting in elections and a numbers box in a cruise-ship bingo match.
In 2002, an Indiana man was reportedly arrested for growing marijuana in mail tubs.
“The strangest use I’ve seen is for fishing gear in a boat,” said Daniel Medrano, a postal inspector based in Little Rock.
Tubs were popular with television stations, particularly for tape storage, when the Postal Service issued its first return request in 2002, Saunders said.
Newspapers are not to be outdone. An informal sweep of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Little Rock newsroom revealed 86 postal tubs in plain sight — only four of which contained mail.
PLASTIC PROFITEERS In 2007, postal employees came across a newspaper article about an Ohio recycling yard. To their amazement, Hardie said, a photo showed an employee tossing “almost brand new” postal pallets into a shredder. “We ended up calling our inspectors. Sure enough, there had been a theft of postal pallets and this company unknowingly bought stolen property.” Intentional theft or misuse of pallets and tubs are the “vast minority” of cases that inspectors see, said Jose Obando, manager of the U. S. Postal Inspection Service’s security and loss prevention group.
When they occur, it often involves resellers, who may buy stolen pallets for $ 7 and resell them for $ 18, or plastic recyclers paid by the pound, he said.
Inspectors in Florida recently halted a pallet export operation, Hardie said. Last year, police and private eyes in Maywood, Calif., found postal pallets among truckloads of beverage crates in what may be the largest recycling seizure to date.
Obando said he knows of “two or three” incidents firsthand and a pair of ongoing criminal cases. “But most people basically forget they have all these pallets.” Hardie says the Postal Service looks into each lead it receives about missing equipment. Some recyclers and shipping firms disagree. In recent years, trade publications reported that the Postal Service has rejected some pickup requests or threatened prosecution.
A Web site for the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association reflects such concerns. One section allows users to report pallets ready for pickup to the association and the Postal Service. It also includes a check box with the message: “My company has reported these USPS pallets to our local post office which declined pickup.” The owner of Cassville, Mo.-based Marck Industries Inc. said he deals only with commercial or industrial customers and that most — along with other recycling operators — are well aware of postal regulations.
“We simply won’t accept them [postal pallets ],” said Kent Longley, whose clients include Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other Northwest Arkansas companies. “Besides, it’s hardly worth the hassle.” Hardie rejects the notion that tips get ignored, noting that a special e-mail address for lost equipment is checked daily. Inspectors sometimes get involved, he said, but usually over large amounts of equipment.
Some say the Postal Service shares part of the blame for lost equipment.
In a 2007 presentation, the head of the Canadian Pallet Council, Belinda Junkin, noted that the Postal Service — unlike some shipping groups — never put a plan in place to control its pallet inventory.
With more than 37, 000 facilities nationwide — and additional pallets and tubs moving between postal centers or waiting on customer loads — it’s impossible to track each one, Hardie said. At least for now. “We are creating a system where mailers will be required to report their inventory of [mail transport equipment ] to give us this piece of the equation.” LOST AND FOUND The Postal Service is not alone in its struggles with plastic. Each year, the dairy industry loses $ 80 million worth of milk crates to theft, misuse or landfills, said Clay Detlefsen, vice president and counsel for the International Dairy Foods Association. Lost plastic trays also cost the baking industry some $ 50 million to $ 80 million a year, he said.
Prices for plastic resin — derived from oil and natural gas — have doubled over the past two years, Longley said. Another driver is increased demand in Asia and China in particular, he said.
Such increases help fuel a growing black market, Detlefsen said.
“There is an incentive for wrongdoers to collect milk cases and sell them for scrap, which could be roughly $ 1 a case,” Detlefsen said. New crates typically cost $ 4, he said.
So far, pallet theft has not been a significant problem in Arkansas, Medrano said. As returns go, 2, 988 pallets have come back to the Postal Service’s processing and distribution center in North Little Rock — averaging about 100 a day, spokesman Leisa Tolliver-Gay said.
About 100 flat tubs a day are returned to Little Rock’s main post office at 600 E. Capitol Ave., she said.
Last year, the Postal Service recovered some 25, 000 pallets worth nearly $ 500, 000, Obando said. So far this year, individual seizures have yielded several trailer loads worth $ 20, 000 to $ 25, 000 each, he said.
Some credit goes toward “better communication” and recent efforts to educate shippers and recyclers about postal equipment, Hardie said.
Inspectors also need more postal workers and citizens to serve as “eyes and ears,” Obando said.
“Obviously we’re not going to get everything. There’s warehouses in places people can’t see them and that’s unfortunate,” he said. “But by raising awareness... I think we’re definitely a little ahead than we were before.”
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