The pallet industry is full of unique people, but the industry recently lost one of its biggest advocates when Norm Normile passed away this summer. Known as “Northwest Norm”, he was a supplier of equipment and consumables products, focusing on smaller businesses in the western United States.
Norm Normile was a fierce advocate for the little guy and personally visited hundreds of pallet plants across the West. He was a well-known advocate for the Western Pallet Association (WPA). He loved to recruit people to join and get involved with the WPA. He was a perennial winner of the WPA’s membership contest. Living in the Portland area, Normile crisscrossed the West visiting pallet shops both small and large supplying nails, blades, consumables, safety gear, etc.
Early in his career, Normile built and performed demos for SMETCO. Later he went out on his own as an independent rep. Chaille Brindley, the editor and publisher of Pallet Enterprise, remembered Norm, “He would call me on occasion pressing me to write about specific issues, especially things that burdened independent pallet shops. He was a fierce advocate for the smaller operators. And he was never shy about sharing what he thought. He was truly one of the most unique people I ever met in the pallet industry.”
The WPA recently remembered Norm in the Western Pallet Magazine, “Norm’s power was personal. He didn’t work in the industry; he lived in it, forming bonds over burritos, crab legs and parking lot conversations. He preferred phone calls to emails, eye contact to transactions… He cared about doing the right thing for the industry, for the customer and for the people he called friends. He may not have sold pallets, but few people did more for the people who do.”
The staff of the Pallet Enterprise salutes Norm Normile and remembers how he touched many people in the industry.
