SUMMARY 



The apple industry in all areas of the United States, especially the 

 Pacific Northwest, has shown increased interest in the use of pallet boxes 

 for the handling and storage of apples. Although not a new idea, pallet boxes 

 recently were adopted for apples because of the savings which can be realized 

 and because there have been technological developments occurring in the indus- 

 try that made their adoption feasible. An especially important contributing 

 factor to the adoption of pallet boxes in the Pacific Northwest is the shift 

 away from standard wood boxes for shipping to a fiberboard shipping container. 

 This shift has necessitated the purchase of field containers of one kind or 

 another and in many instances the pallet box has been the one selected. 



Using pallet boxes requires some use of special equipment at the orchard. 

 However, at a storage and packinghouse already using pallets, the expenditures 

 may be small. For example, the same industrial forklift truck used for han- 

 dling pallet loads of standard boxes can be used for handling the pallet boxes. 

 The straddle trailer or straddle truck have found good application in trans- 

 porting the pallet boxes from the orchard to the storage and packinghouse. 



A variety of pallet boxes were studied. These boxes included variation 

 in design, materials, and dimensions. In conducting this study the cooling 

 rates were evaluated, the bruising characteristics were observed, structural 

 features were considered, and labor and equipment costs were determined. 



The cooling tests indicated that generally apples stored in pallet boxes 

 cooled as well or better than those stored in standard boxes on pallets. 

 Some pallet boxes, where the free space of the sides or bottom ranged from 

 8 to 11 percent, performed better than standard boxes on pallets. Side spacing 

 gave results comparable with bottom spacing. 



Apples in pallet boxes had fewer bruises than apples in field boxes. 

 Tests indicated that pallet boxes equipped with corrugated fiberboard liners 

 bruised fewer apples than those not so equipped. If liners are not used, 

 diagonally cut corner posts, eased edges of all inner surfaces of the boards, 

 bullnosed edges, and smooth box interior surfaces tended to reduce bruising. 



Records of 24,200 boxes used commercially in Washington during the 

 1957-58 season indicated that fewer than 1 percent of the boxes were damaged 

 beyond repair and over 70 percent of those so damaged were the result of 

 accidents; 2.7 percent incurred repairable damage, most of which was minor; 

 and 7 percent of those employing corrugated fiberboard liners showed liner 

 damage, practically all of which was caused by water. 



Comparative costs of using pallet boxes and standard boxes handled on 

 pallets show a distinct advantage for the pallet box. A grower-packinghouse 

 operator should be able to save $70 to $85 per 1,000 standard box equivalents 

 by shifting from a palletized standard box operation to one using pallet 

 boxes. On a volume of 100,000 equivalent standard boxes, an annual saving of 

 between $7,000 and $8,500 might be expected. 



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