Mississippi Couple Is Growing More than Just a Pallet Recycling Business

JACKSON, Mississippi — When Charlotte Reeves first conceived of A-1 Pallet Company in 1991, she saw the company as a force for social change. The pallet supplier business has certainly lived up to her expectation, and it also has become a strong economic force and profitable enterprise in Jackson, Mississippi.

            “My wife, Charlotte, wanted to contribute something back to the community,” Carl Monte Reeves recalled.  “As a joke, I told her, ‘Why don’t you get old tires or old pallets off the streets?’”

            Monte could be a poster child for ‘Beware of the jokes you make.’ Charlotte recognized the joke but also saw factors that had caused Monte to make it. 

            “I thought her pallet idea would last about a week, and then we’d move on to another idea,” Monte said. “But this has gone from just an idea to an industry that has a lot of social benefit.”

            At the time Charlotte — who has lived in Jackson all her life — first started thinking about a company that would help Jackson’s unemployed, she owned a legal staffing service business called Brief Encounters. Monte, who is from Brookhaven, Mississippi and earned a degree in banking and finance from Mississippi State University, was a self-employed real estate investor. Today Charlotte is president of A-1 Pallet and Monte is vice president.

            Charlotte found herself focused on creating a business in Jackson’s inner city in 1991. “A lot of businesses in the area chose just to pack up and move out because of the crime, drugs and the bad elements,” she said. “But I was determined that I was going to stay in Jackson and try to make a difference there. That’s why we chose the downtown area. So many businesses had left, and therefore we were able to buy the abandoned property and restore it at a lower cost than in other locations.”

            Getting the company started was a struggle, however. The bankers they worked with to finance the start-up did not have the same vision for the company as Charlotte and Monte. In fact, the bankers strongly encouraged them to locate five or so miles outside Jackson. Charlotte, the quintessential steel magnolia, would have none of it.

            “We said, ‘Wait just a minute. That’s defeating our purpose of recycling,’” she said.  “We want to save things. That’s why we want this abandoned property.” Besides, she pointed out to the bankers, if they located the business outside the city limits, the people they hoped to employ would not be able to get to work.

            Although their commitment to revitalize old properties and serve the unemployed made the start-up of A-1 Pallet very difficult financially, the couple stuck to their guns. Eventually they were able to open the business where they were needed. They located the company in a historically depressed section of Jackson, choosing a central location so they could serve potential customers easily and also provide jobs to unemployed inner city residents.

            “We were able to get them off the streets, off welfare, and back into the work force,” Charlotte said. “We’ve tried to make a better life for them.”

            The couple has gone far beyond starting a business that provides jobs for inner city residents. They’re provided housing, transportation, loans, counseling, and other personal services for employees. Their company also provides lunch and other necessities to promote healthy attitudes for workers each day while increasing production.

            Initially the Reeveses started A-1 Pallet as a pallet retrieval and repair business. As pallet recycling became more accepted and widespread, however, competition for pallet cores increased, and the company broadened its scope.

            Today A-1 Pallet is both a pallet recycling and a manufacturing company with three locations in Jackson. One location, a site of about 2 ½ acres, is where most of the pallet recycling and manufacturing operations take place. The second location is a large industrial complex of about 5 ½ acres where the company stores its inventory of 150,000-plus pallets. At the third location, new and recycled lumber is remanufactured, and vehicles and other equipment are stored.

            “We recycle pallets, but we also have the capacity to manufacture pallets,” Charlotte said.  “We have a unique situation in that we can manufacture pallets with recycled wood. We provide stock and custom pallets on a just-in-time basis while disposing of unwanted pallets.” The main industry that A-1 Pallet serves is the food distribution industry.

            A-1 Pallet got its start by focusing on recycling standard GMA pallets. By 1998, however, it was getting an increasing number of requests for special and custom pallets. In order to meet this demand, the company had to incorporate manual and automated work methods. It added pallet dismantling equipment and a trim saw to increase production of recycled lumber and also invested in a nailing machine.

            A-1 Pallet deals in such pallet sizes as 48×40, 48×48, 42×42, 44×44, 36×36 and 40×32. About 70% of sales consist of GMA pallets while custom and specialty pallets made up the remaining 30%.

            A-1 Pallet is the only pallet supplier in Mississippi that has the capacity and resources to manufacture and remanufacture quality pallets in high volume on a just-in-time basis, according to Charlotte. The company can produce 300-800 pallets in an 8-hour shift, depending on the type of material used. A-1 Pallet employs about 20 workers, about five of them dedicated to building or repairing pallets.

            A-1 Pallet completely remanufactures the reclaimed lumber it recovers from used pallets. The lumber recovery operations are equipped with bandsaw dismantling machines supplied by Pallet Systems Manufacturing. Used stringers and deck boards are cut to the appropriate length on trim saws supplied by Pallet Repair Systems (PRS) and Pallet Systems Manufacturing.

            The reclaimed wood is put through a Yield Pro planer equipped with Profile Technology Nailbuster tooling; the specialty tooling, which cuts through nails, completely resurfaces the wood. “They create a board that looks just like a new board,” Monte said. A PRS stringer sizer ensures that used stringers are sized to correct, uniform thickness.

            The company buys a small volume of new material, usually in the form of 4×6 oak cants in 16-foot lengths, and it resawn into new pallet stock.

            For automated pallet assembly, the company turned to Viking for a Champion nailing machine. “We bought the machine brand new, and we were probably one of the first recyclers that got a Champion,” Monte said.

            For pallet repairs, A-1 has Minick lead board removers, which double as repair tables.

            Eagle Metal sales rep Clarence Leising is his “secret weapon,” said Monte. “Clarence comes by frequently and updates us on what the industry is doing,” he said. “Plus, he gives me pointers on how to improve my incoming and outgoing processing work flow.” A-1 uses Eagle Metal plates and equipment for plating stringers and splicing stringers.

            The company has purchased a number of used machines from Trace Equipment Corp. A-1 uses Mid-Continent Nail Corp’s Magnum fasteners – both bulk and collated nails. Saw blades are supplied by Saw Service & Supply Inc.

            A-1 Pallet gives away scrap wood in the winter for firewood; scrap material is stored in the warm months. Small pieces are sent to a landfill until the company can launch a wood waste energy program.

            Part of the reason for A-1 Pallet’s success is the company’s market position, according to Charlotte. “Our market position is extremely strong because of our pro-active approach to customer service and our innovative leadership in devising methods to efficiently rebuild used and damaged pallets so they can be re-sold at a competitive price,” she said. “As a result, our market share has grown from a first-year low of one percent to our current level, which is approaching 50 percent.”

            A-1 Pallet won a 2003 Top 40 Award as one of the 40 fastest-growing companies in Mississippi. It also has received other recognition. In 2001 the company won the Keep Mississippi Beautiful Award for industry and the Mississippi Business Expo Award for small business. In 2002 A-1 received the Governor’s Business Achievement Award for small business. In addition, Charlotte was named one of the top three women on Mississippi’s list of 50 Leading Business Women in 2003.

            The company is heavily involved in volunteer work. For the past five years the Reeveses have been Phi Theta Kappa scholarship judges and have been involved with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Jackson. Their involvement with the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs has brought about some interesting contacts, most notably with former First Lady Barbara Bush.

            Although working with the under-employed has had its challenges, Charlotte said, the company has found a number of very capable, skilled workers who simply needed a chance. “Several of our employees who we have rescued off the streets and out of half-way houses have turned out to be very talented with machinery and very smart,” she said. “Monte can tell them what he’s trying to do to save time or energy, and they can be very innovative in building equipment to do it.” Once these workers have a chance to succeed, most of the time they do a good job and they want to stay; A-1 Pallet has a low employee turnover rate.

            One of the biggest challenges A-1 Pallet has faced is from people scavenging for pallets. “For the most part they’re street people,” Charlotte said. “They became aware of the demand for recyclable pallets and began infringing on local businesses by picking up only the good pallets—usually after business hours—and scattering wood debris and damaged pallets on those premises.” The scavengers sell the used pallets to businesses that need them and to pallet recyclers.

            A-1 Pallet used to pick up excess and damaged pallets and clean up wood debris at various businesses at no charge. It was ‘paid’ in the cores and raw material it got for its pallet recycling operations.

            However, once the scavengers came on the scene, it became much harder for the company to find good cores that could be repaired and recycled.

            The solution? Instead of fighting with the scavengers, the Reeveses got to know them. “What we did was make friends with some of them,” Charlotte said. “Now they bring us legitimate pallets and we buy them.”

            A-1 Pallet is committed to more than just being a pallet company. “We strongly believe that it will take a concerted effort to conserve our dwindling natural resources,” Charlotte said.  “We strongly believe that human beings are our most vital resource. So we believe in good Christian stewardship of Mother Earth so that humans, animals and plants can have a clean, harmonious environment in which to flourish.”

            A-1 Pallet is an environmentally friendly company at both ends of the spectrum, she noted. “At one end we’re preserving trees, which are the lungs of the earth, and greatly conserving the amount of energy that’s needed to process trees to lumber. At the other end of the spectrum, we’re saving valuable space in landfills and reducing the amount of energy it takes to dispose of unwanted pallets.”

            In the future, Charlotte and Monte hope to increase pallet production and to convert waste wood material into fuel products, such as fuel pellets and fireplace logs.

            “We need to make a lot of strides to be sure we’re not so dependent on foreign countries for oil,” Charlotte said. “This is one way we can start — recycling wood waste into energy sources. We believe that we have an obligation to be wise stewards of the Earth’s resources, and we take pleasure in being able to manufacture products from a renewable resource — trees —and then recycling them. Over the past decade, we’ve saved approximately 249,700 trees, reduced the demands made on our landfills by about 41,500 tons of wood waste, and added to the beauty of our city.”