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The major, new equipment necessary at the packing plant is for emptying 

 pallet boxes. This past season nearly all of the commercial operators using 

 pallet boxes installed dumpers of the box-inversion type. Figures 13 and 14 

 show typical installations. This type of dumper has a capacity of over 

 400 bushels per hour and provides a fairly continuous flow of fruit to the 

 packing line. Pallet boxes are fed to the unit on a conveyor, are slowly 

 inverted in a box-inversion section where the boxes are held between two con- 

 veyor belts, and are slowly lifted away from the apples as the fruit is spread 

 into an even layer on a conveyor belt and fed into the packing line. This type 

 of dumper costs from $4,000 to $6,000, including installation. Savings possible 

 by pallet-box harvesting justify the expense. 



Handling empty pallet boxes required no new equipment. At the end of the 

 dumper, conveyor equipment carried the empty boxes to a position where lift 

 trucks could pick them up. These conveyors were part of the dumper installation, 



Equipment for the Smaller Grower and Plant Operator 



Pallet box harvesting as described necessitates investment in new 

 equipment for most growers and plants which creates an economic problem for 

 the smaller grower and plant operator. Most smaller growers already have an 

 orchard tractor, usually on the 3-point hitch type, and an orchard trailer. 

 Such as operator can manage with the addition of a low-cost, low-lift fork 

 attachment mounted on the rear of his tractor. Pallet boxes can be loaded 

 one high on the trailer using a pit or hillside loading site, and hauled to the 

 plant where forklift unloading equipment is available. 



Some smaller plants, particularly grower-packer plants, may desire to 

 convert to pallet -box harvesting, but are held back by the large investment 

 necessary for pallet box dumping equipment. Two possible methods or types of 

 pallet box-emptying equipment have been used satisfactorily which involve less 

 costly equipment. 



One such pallet-box dumper in a Yakima plant is shown in figures 15 and 

 16; 3/ this dumper is similar to equipment developed and used in the Midwest. 

 It provides interrupted rather than continuous flow of fruit, but the flow 

 can be evened out more or less by accumulating some fruit ahead of the grading 

 table. Also two units may be used side by side to effect a continuous flow 

 of fruit. 



With this type of box dumper, the pallet box is rolled into place under 

 a top cover with an emptying door in one side. A reversing, gear-reduction, 

 electric motor with a pivoting forklift brings the box into emptying position 

 at the start of the packing line. The emptying door is opened allowing the 

 apples to flow onto the conveyor (fig. 16). 



3/ Levin, J. H„ and Gaston, H. P. A Bulk Box Dumper for Handling Fruit. 

 Mich. Agr. Expt. St a. Quarterly, May 1957. 



