Writing from Aguadilla, PR.
I spent years selling pallets. Managing programs for companies with 1, 50, 100, 200+ locations. Running vendor networks, fielding service issues, building scorecards, explaining cost swings to finance teams.
I was good at it.
And I stopped.
Because I burnt out. Selling the same product to the same people the same way as everyone else. And it hit me - anyone could sell you a pallet. That wasn't the hard part. The hard part was getting anyone to listen when you sound exactly like every other vendor in their inbox. Everyone's pitching the same thing. Nobody wants to deal with it until something breaks. And by then, the damage is already done.
Here's what I mean.
Every pallet company is selling you their product. Their wood, their capacity, their expertise. That's fine - we literally need them to move about 85% of goods.
But there are so many layers between the sale and the service that the customer rarely wins.
Now - this doesn't apply to everyone. I've worked with vendors who genuinely care about their customers. When I see that, I'll praise it and walk away. I'm not going after business that's already working. That's not worth my reputation, and from where I sit, reputation carries a lot of weight.
But when the sale and the service don't match - when a vendor gets replaced, or someone comes in with lower pricing, or the delivery shows up late and nobody answers the phone - the customer is the one who pays for it. Whether that's time, headaches, or in some cases even more money in the long run.
Nobody was asking a different question: what does it actually cost you to manage all of this?
Not the price per pallet. The real cost. The time your ops team spends chasing deliveries. The invoice that shows up four months later for a load nobody remembers approving. The spreadsheet tracking 12 vendors across 40 facilities that nobody trusts. The pricing that looks different every time because you don't always know if you're buying direct or going through someone who's marking it up before it gets to you. The core program you set up three years ago that nobody's audited since.
That's not a pallet problem. That's a logistics problem. And nobody was treating it like one.
So I stopped selling pallets and started managing them.
I built Pallet Solutions as a 3PL for pallets - same concept as a freight 3PL, but for the thing sitting under every load in your warehouse. I don't own yards. I don't manufacture. I coordinate a vetted vendor network. My margin is based on what it costs to manage your account - it's not tied to the pallet price.
That's it.
And technology certainly helps in an industry that's still running on phone calls and spreadsheets. I look at every account from a cost-per-transaction perspective - what does it actually cost to manage each delivery, each pickup, each vendor relationship. When you can see that, the decisions get a lot simpler.
This newsletter is where I'm going to write about what I see from this seat. Not vendor pitches. Not product specs. Just what's actually happening in pallet procurement and the patterns I keep running into.
Things like:
Why the lowest quote often costs you the most.
How companies with 50+ facilities are still managing pallets like it's 2015.
Why you might not actually know who's supplying your pallets.
Why the best person to run your pallet program probably works at a company you'd never recruit from.
I've sat in the ops chair, the sales chair, the account management chair, and the customer experience chair. I don't know everything - but I know how every decision in this space hits the customer, because I've been the one on the other end of that call.
If you manage pallets, buy pallets, sell pallets, or just want to understand why this corner of the supply chain is still running in the dark - this is for you.
Welcome to the first issue.
Between the Pallets drops every other Tuesday
- Rob