From 24/7 fleet availability to easy scheduling and more, see how 48forty helps retailers survive the holiday rush.
Want proof that consumers are ready to spend this holiday season? On Thanksgiving Day when folks were supposed to be eating turkey and watching football, Kohl’s was selling 60 Instant Pots per minute.
And shoppers continued to spend. According to Retail Dive, Black Friday deal seekers racked up $23 billion in purchases, with $6.2 billion of that spent online. This was followed by $7.9 billion in purchases on Cyber Monday.
The next four weeks of the holiday shopping season are going to be hectic for retailers and not just on the frontline. Loading docks are going to be crazy with merchandise coming in and empty pallets going out. The last thing anyone wants is for docks to get backed up or to lose track of the number of used cores (pallets) sold back to pallet companies, an important revenue stream.
Here’s how 48forty helps our retail customers survive the holiday rush:
Round-the-clock fleet availability even during peak demand.
All of 48forty’s owned and operated locations have tractors, trailers, and drivers available 24/7 for pallet retrieval. Because we’re the only national asset-based recycled pallet company, each local facility is backed up by nearby sister facilities and their fleets. So regardless of how many trailers you need and when you need them, 48forty has you covered. This is not always the case with local or regional pallet companies or brokers that rely on third party carriers.
Ease of scheduling.
48forty gives retailers three ways to keep core retrievals running smoothly. If you know when your peak delivery volumes are, preschedule trailers and we’ll be there on the appointed day and time to swap trailers. If volumes are less predictable, simply call your local 48forty facility to schedule as needed. And if pallets start to stack up after hours or on weekends or you prefer the convenience of online scheduling, use our customer portal PalTrax® to set up retrievals. PalTrax is accessible from any device, so you can reach us anytime, anywhere.
Accurate core counts.
It can be easy to lose track of the number of cores going out the back door and into trailers. To ensure accurate counts, 48forty’s drivers use tablets to document the number of cores retrieved in each load and generate an electronic bill of lading. The data from each trailer is immediately uploaded into PalTrax.
When a trailer arrives back at a 48forty facility, pallets are unloaded and counted within 24 hours and the data entered into PalTrax. If there are discrepancies between the original quantity on the bill of lading and the final count, we proactively investigate to ensure an accurate core count. This ensures customers are properly compensated for each load.
Instant, transparent core sales transactions.
It’s not uncommon for weeks or even months to go by before a retailer knows just how many cores were sold to a broker or pallet company. That’s not the case with 48forty. Within 24 hours, our customers can go online with PalTrax and see the number of cores and purchase price. Even better, you can drill down by location, trailer number and date. Our customers who use PalTrax love this unprecedented visibility into their supply chains and always feeling in control of core sales even when focusing on holiday shoppers.
Banner year for sales, banner year for cores. If the holiday shopping season continues as strong as the opening weekend, it should be a banner year for retail core sales. Thanks to our sophisticated systems and data that support accurate core counts, tracking and financial reporting, 48forty not only helps you survive the holiday rush, we help you maximize your income. Now that’s something to smile about!
Would you like to learn more about 48forty’s pallet retrieval programs? Contact us online or give us a call at 1-877-779-8577.