Established in 1967, J&L Wood Products began as a small pallet production facility. The company has now expanded to 90,000 square feet under roof on 11 acres in Tipp City, Ohio, just outside Dayton. J&L is both a manufacturer and supplier of new and remanufactured wood products. It also provides recycling programs, complete with a recycling center at a separate location, and have become certified with Dayton Regional Green Business.
J&L Wood Products extends its services beyond pallet building and recycling. According to owner and president Kevin McClurg, custom packaging has become its niche. “The stranger, the better, is really what our forte is,” stated McClurg. “We are best at anything that’s really strange, odd, has lots of holes, needs foam, metal brackets, tight tolerances and items that require CNC work.”
Offering the Basics to Customized Quality Designs for Specific Shipping Needs
J&L supplies clients with common 48×40 pallets and crates in large and small quantities, new or remanufactured. With its own recycling facility at a separate location, J&L builds all different sizes of pallets and combo pallets. J&L provides customers with quality products at a low cost using a streamlined process. “We do have the Pallet Design System™ (PDS), so we design our standard pallets using this software,” stated McClurg.
For custom pallets and crates, the process becomes more detailed. The product in need of packaging will get delivered to the facility, and they will work around it to get an initial design. Sometimes J&L will go to the customer’s facility and hand draw a design, which can be complex. “We will use CAM software to design products, which is programmed into the CNC machine to cut unique pieces,” explained McClurg.
J&L uses a Homag Optimat CNC to create many of its specialty items. The J&L team has expanded into other things, like cutting some signage for airports and parts for speaker boxes. Currently, J&L is looking at a job cutting under floor parts for vehicles. McClurg said, “It has put us in a new direction for other types of business. It gives us opportunity outside of the pallet business.”
Other projects include overseas crates requiring moisture-absorbing paper lining and corrosion-resistant coatings or vacuum sealed bags. The crates are heat treated and stamped to meet ISPM-15 requirements for heat treatment and certified wood packaging, depending on the country where they will be shipped.
The company also builds shock pallets to absorb vibrations during transportation. The pallets are specially designed and use foam blocks in the runners, allowing for more shock absorption during transit.
“We tend to like building the items that most other pallet companies don’t even want to look at. The stranger the package is, the better it fits our wheelhouse,” explained McClurg. Besides shock pallets and plywood pallets, J&L has designed engine crates that have unique set points where the block has to fit in certain spots, as well as packaging for trade show crates.
J&L Wood hopes to get jobs that are going to be done again and again from the initial developed design, but many of the custom builds are just a one-off. It takes a lot of one-on-one time when you have something new and unique. This is very time consuming, however often leads to other business.
Using Quality Machines Allows J&L Wood to Excel in Service and Reliability
The production floor includes a Homag Optimat CNC for cutting specialized designs. McClurg also praises the Homag B200 beam saw, “It’s probably the best thing we’ve bought in a long time. It saves a ton of time on cutting plywood.”
To produce plywood deck pallets, the pallet producer relies on the Rayco Pallet Pro. J&L has used it for over 15 years, and the Rayco still performs great.
For six years, J&L Wood Products has relied on a line of Baker Products equipment including an edger, unscrambler and resaw line. J&L can resaw 2x8s into 2x4s and 1x4s to save money on materials and decrease inventory. The company also uses a Brewer Golden Eagle notcher, LM Verticut 2000 package saw and Ironwood chop saws.
J&L Maintains a Reputation of Making Customers a Priority with a Reliable Team
“We’ve maintained long lasting customer relationships because of our quick turnaround times, great quality and putting our customers first,” commented McClurg. “Most of our staff have been here a long time and are very knowledgeable when it comes to custom pallets and crate building.” Having a good team helps in every aspect of what they do.
When a company has been in business for over fifty years, it has had time to perfect the entire design processes. According to McClurg, the J&L team knows what the customer needs and how to deliver it efficiently without sacrificing quality and precision. He added, “Every day we strive to live up to our mission to ‘serve our customers on-time with the right quality products for their shipping needs.’”
