Horizontally supported planar surfaces – Industrial platform – Formed from folded semirigid material
Reexamination Certificate
2000-07-31
2002-09-24
Chen, Jose V. (Department: 3636)
Horizontally supported planar surfaces
Industrial platform
Formed from folded semirigid material
Reexamination Certificate
active
06453827
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a runner and pallet constructed therefrom for use in the storage and/or transport of goods and, more particularly, to a recyclable reinforced pallet and runner design.
For many years, various types of objects have been used to separate and support loads that are stored and transported generally in a stacked arrangement. The equipment that is primarily used for performing this stacking arrangement is a front end loader, lift truck or forklift truck which raises the individual loads so that they can be stacked one on top of the other or on a rack. To separate the loads from each other, off of the rack or off of the floor, a pallet or one or more spacers, risers or runners are positioned beneath the load so as to allow space for the insertion of the forks of the lift truck or the like for moving and positioning the loads for storage or transportation.
Generally, the load supporting pallets, runners and the like are used in large manufacturing and industrial plants, warehouses, wholesale and retail establishments and wherever merchandise, food products and other articles are to be lifted and carried from one location to another. Typically, these pallets or the like are mainly made from wood and consist of platforms having parallel runners longitudinally and/or transversely secured to their undersides by means of nails, staples, strappings or other suitable fasteners.
Such wooden pallets in the past have been found to be quite satisfactory in many regards for their intended use in the shifting, transportation and storage of materials and articles from one location to another. There are many advantages of wooden pallets. Wood is extremely strong on a weight basis, and machinable with standard cutting, ripping and other forming techniques. Furthermore, wood will not lose its strength in conditions of high heat, moisture and humidity.
Wood, however, has several major disadvantages. Increasing environmental awareness has become a significant factor in the packaging, transportation and shipping industries. Wood is difficult to readily recycle and, hence, many wood packaging or pallet components are finally disposed in landfills. Available landfill sites, however, are becoming full and are being closed. If landfill disposal is even available, significant fees for dumping such bulky materials are becoming prohibitive. As a result, many customers of manufacturers of heavy durable goods are prohibiting the use of wood pallets.
Wood pallets also are very cumbersome, are unwieldly and take up unnecessary and valuable space in conveyances, warehouses and other places of storage. As transportation costs have risen, the concept of moving wood pallets back and forth for reuse, which has always been a burden on the industry, has become economically prohibitive.
In international shipment of goods, wooden pallets present additional environmental problems because they tend to serve as hosts for germs and bugs. As a result, pallets are often quarantined or burned upon arrival in another country according to governmental regulations or general precautionary practices to avoid the spread of undesirable insects, bugs or germs. This has proven to be very costly and a significant economic drawback to wood pallets.
The
Wall Street Journal
recently recognized the many significant problems associated with wooden pallets in an article entitled “
As Old Pallets Pile Up, Critics Hammer Them as a New EcoMenace
” and published Apr. 1, 1998. According to that article, there are purportedly 1.5 billion pallets in the U.S. and about 40 percent of domestic hardwood lumber goes into pallets. However, a third of U.S. landfills won't take pallets. Purportedly, more than 1 million forest acres are chopped every year for pallets, skids or the like. Cost for the wood to make the pallets is increasing and the available supply of wood is decreasing.
Loads on a pallet are often transported within a warehouse or other facility on a conveyor or rollers. Commonly, wooden pallets splinter and jam the rollers of the conveyor and thereby damage the conveyor and interrupt the movement of the goods in the warehouse. The use of wood pallets on such conveyors has become so problematic that many facilities prohibit their use on roller conveyors and mandate that the load be transferred to another type of pallet for use on the conveyor or the conveyor not be used at all. Quite evidently, this is very inefficient and time consuming and a significant disadvantage for the continued use of wood pallets.
Wood pallets offer excellent strength and durability, but even these desirable qualitites have proven to be, at best, questionable justification for the continued use of wooden pallets.
To avoid some of these objections to the use of wood pallets, alternative pallet designs have been made from materials such as corrugated paperboard, scrapped paperboard, plastics, aluminum and other materials. While solving certain problems associated with wood pallets, use of alternative materials to date has only provided additional problems. Known corrugated paperboard pallets provide lightweight, inexpensive alternatives to conventional wooden pallets for some applications, but their strength and rigidity under static and dynamic loading is insufficient to permit wide spread general usage for all types and distribution of goods. Such pallets often have excessive deflection and lack beam strength, which causes their sagging under loads, thereby making the handling, stacking and racking of the pallets impractical and even dangerous. Commonly, loads are mounted upon spaced beams of a rack and the weight of the load is concentrated on the pallet at the beam. Many so called improved pallet designs do not offer the strength necessary to withstand buckling, crushing or compression when placed upon a rack under a load. A suitable pallet for use on a rack must provide minimal compression at the beams of the rack and zero to minimal deflection between the beams of the rack. Known paperboard pallets do not meet these compression and beam strength criteria for rackability.
Strength requirements for known paperboard pallets and runners have generally been inadequate. Moreover, when the pallet or runner approaches and exceeds the failure criteria, no warning or indication of the impending failure is typically evident. In other words, as a load is transported, moved or stored on a pallet or runner and exceeds the strength limit for the pallet or runner, occurs without a warning or opportunity to replace the various components.
Additionally, known paperboard pallet designs typically become compressed, crushed, milled off or damaged when used under a load being transported on a roller conveyor. Moreover, corrugated paperboard, for instance, may lose up to 50 percent of its stacking strength during conditions of high humidity and moisture when the paperboard absorbs atmospheric moisture and the like.
As loads are transported on the tines of a forklift or lift truck, the ability to insert the tines under the load from any direction is a significant convenience for the forklift operator. A so called four-way entry to the pallet by the tines of the lift truck or the like is common in the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) type of pallets. To provide four-way entry, some runners include notches which are open to the bottom face of the runner to provide entry of the tines on the lift truck into the runner for lifting the pallet as is shown in the present inventor's prior application, Ser. No. 09/182,263 which matured into U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,061.
However, if the tines of the forklift or lift truck are not properly positioned in the notches to lift and transport the load or the load is unbalanced, the load could potentially tilt and fall off of the tines. As such, many manufacturers and/or operators often add stringers along the bottom open face of the notches in an effort to stabilize such loads supported on the tines and inhibit the load from tipping or falling off. Nevertheless, stringers of this type typic
Chen José V.
Wood Herron & Evans L.L.P.
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