This issue commemorates the 40th anniversary of our company in the pallet industry. Through the years, Industrial Reporting Inc. (IRI) has become a key ally in the success of many pallet and lumber companies.
In 1977, the opportunity to become involved with the wooden pallet industry was presented to me by Bill Carden, owner of Potomac Supply Corp., one of the largest pallet manufacturers at the time. Bill and 10 other Virginia-based pallet companies met with me at the Commonwealth Club. They all agreed to subscribe to a new market report for the industry that they wanted me to start. They felt there was a need for a weekly marketing and management report for the industry. Similar reports were common for many industries, but the wooden pallet industry was struggling with very little published information and an overall lack of leadership.
I had moved to Virginia in 1975 as an associate professor in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business with educational and teaching experience in statistics, mathematics and management science. Over the next six months or so, the Wooden Pallet Index readership grew through the Virginia and Mid-Atlantic region. In the fall of 1977 I had the opportunity to address a meeting of West Coast pallet companies in Anaheim, California, when we added a California section to our report and picked up about a dozen and a half western subscribers. We were off and running with the Wooden Pallet Index, which later became the Pallet Profile Weekly market report.
As I learned more about the wooden pallet industry and our report expanded to include most of the United States, and eventually Canada, our exposure to the overall wooden pallet industry grew and the need for a good industry magazine became obvious. In November/December of 1981, I started the Pallet Enterprise magazine, which over time grew from a bi-monthly magazine to a highly respected monthly publication.
I was able to expand my analytical and management skills as I became more and more knowledgeable about the pallet industry. As a consequence I had many opportunities to attend pallet industry meetings and trade shows across North America and later in Europe. The pallet industry had grown in importance since its early days. And thus need arose for an impartial person with a fairly wide perspective of the industry to share his expanding knowledge. People in the pallet industry found our market reports to be valuable sources of both lumber pricing information and editorial pieces which contained unique analytical information on our industry.
The Index eventually changed its name to the Pallet Profile Weekly, and our new recycling report, called the Recycle Record, started early in the 21st century. If you have not checked out our reports, you are missing out on some of the best products that we produce. These market reports regularly provide analysis and information that you can’t find anywhere else. And many readers have come to see the weekly edition as the closest thing the industry has to a newspaper.
We thank our subscribers for their support through the years. To find out more about the Profile, visit www.palletprofile.com and the Recycle Record go to www.recyclerecord.com or call 804-550-0323.
