POTTSTOWN, Pennsylvania – Dan Ullmann has called on his leadership skills and experience as an Army officer to successfully grow a pallet business. Along the way, he has made significant investments in machinery and equipment from some of the leading suppliers in the pallet and sawmill industry.
In June of 2019, Ullmann started out in the pallet sector with just a few employees, a trailer and a small building. His approach involves collecting surplus pallets, hauling them by pickup truck and trailer to a small warehouse, and reselling them – repairing damaged pallets as needed. Through steady customer-focus and reinvestment in the business, he has significantly grown the size of the company in just under five years. Today, DJ Pallets operates in a larger warehouse and employs more than 30 people. Located in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, which is about 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia along the Schuylkill River, the company supplies pallets to customers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware.
DJ Pallets continues to be primarily a pallet recycling business. About 85% of pallet production is recycled, and 15% is new. The company also offers custom and specialty pallets – as small as 16×24 and as large as 120×50. It also makes some heavy-duty pallets with 4×4 runners and deck boards 1-2 inches thick. The most common sizes are 36×36, 42×42, 54×43, 72×40, and 96×40.
Dan Ullmann is a man of many talents. He is fluent in German, Dutch and is on his way to learning Swedish. He also played lead guitar in a Black Crowes tribute band. He has had to back out of the band due to the time constraints of the business. He stated, “I love the Black Crowes’ music because it is just pure rock, very guitar oriented, similar to Led Zeppelin and the Stones, just from a different generation.”
Critical Business Lessons from the Military and the Industry
Dan Ullmann has drawn on the lessons and leadership skills he cultivated as an Army officer as he plans to grow and expand DJ Pallets. As an Army officer, Ullmann learned how to supervise and plan, formulate backup plans, and even contingency plans for those backup plans. He has brought those lessons to the business world. Ullmann served 15 years in the Army, including deployments to Bosnia and Iraq, and achieved the rank of Major.
One of the most important lessons Ullmann learned in the military was to never give up. When he was going through Officer Training School, he was 11 weeks into a 12- week program and failed out. He was mostly done with the process except for a land navigation exercise where you have to find markers hidden in the field. There was a time deadline, and he completed the course only a few minutes late. Ullmann recalled, “If I wanted to be an officer, I had to go back to the very beginning, which was devastating. And to make it worse, we had a 16- mile road march back into the barracks.” Ullmann quoted his company commander as saying, “‘Dan, I know this is tough, but you make that road march, you hold your head high, and you’re going to make a great officer one day. A lot of guys this happens to decide not to come back. But you need to come back and do it all over.’ And he goes, ‘it’s a real tough pill to swallow, but don’t give up.’”
Ullmann never forgot that lesson and has pushed through a wide variety of adversity. For example, as the recycled market has become tough over the last year or so, DJ Pallets has shifted to doing more new pallet production and customization. This correlates to another key lesson he learned in the military: when you are confronted with a challenge, don’t focus on the problem or what you can’t do. Ullmann explained, “A former boss in the military told me, ‘Dan, don’t come to me with a problem. Tell me this is messed up. Come to me with a solution.’” In the military, soldiers are given a lot of authority at the lower levels to problem-solve and find solutions. Ullmann tries to do the same with his workers.
Another thing that has helped him grow his company has been networking with people he has met at events of the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association and the Western Pallet Association. He has used a wide variety of resources to seek out mentors from other pallet company owners. And he continues to benefit from those relationships. He has also learned a lot from reading articles in the Pallet Enterprise magazine. Ullmann stated, “I love it. I read it every month. Sometimes it gives me new ideas. Sometimes it just confirms what I am thinking. And I can use the magazine to show my staff why we need to try new approaches, such as using an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.”
Recently, Ullmann started implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System in his business. He used a book called “What the Heck is EOS” to guide his process. DJ Pallets worked through the book with key managers and led meetings to discuss implementation strategies. Ullmann noted, “EOS has helped us get everyone on the same sheet of music, everyone understanding what their particular job responsibilities are, whose lane is what, etc. This approach has improved communication and our processes. It has given us tools to resolve issues faster.”
The pallet industry is a “simple business,” said Ullmann, “but you can add layers of sophistication to it to make it more competitive.”
Employees have played a critical role in the success of DJ Pallets. Ullmann recognized, “Your company is a lot about your employees. Your strength and weakness depend on your team. If you don’t have a good team, you can only go so far. You have to rely on them 100% because one person alone can only do so much.”
Ullmann believes in giving people second chances. He has had employees who have quit, but he welcomes them back if they want to return to work. Some employees have been convicted felons. He figures that if nobody hires them, they may be forced back into a life of crime. “If you’re not willing to hire a felon, people will get trapped in that life,” Ullmann suggested. “My current employee, who is a felon, told me, ‘I am a lifer with you because I don’t know if I’ll find another opportunity without you. You’ve given me a chance.’”
Adding Critical Equipment to Automate Lumber Recovery and Production
Over the past few years, DJ Pallets has automated its operations. And each investment has been carefully considered, although sometimes Ullmann realizes that a few little tweaks can make a big difference. DJ Pallets is equipped with a Wood-Mizer Pallet Hawg PD200 bandsaw pallet dismantling machine. Watching workers carry the reclaimed lumber to a Wood-Mizer trim saw, Dan Ullmann quickly realized how inefficient it was. He added a Wood-Mizer conveyor to carry the reclaimed lumber directly inline to the trim saw. Ullmann said, “The Wood-Mizer sawmill adds diversity to our pallet stock production. We don’t have to just rely on our supply of cants from other mills. We can produce our own cants and utilize the mills to supplement our own supply.”
Initially, Ullmann bought cut stock when he began using new lumber to repair pallets, build combination pallets or manufacture new pallets. He soon decided it would be better to invest in equipment to manufacture pallet lumber. As the company has moved to produce more custom pallets and packaging, having the versatility allowed by an internal lumber operation makes sense. Ullmann said, “We’re able to cut the size and the dimensions that we need, no matter the thickness or length. This allows us to make longer length and heavier-duty pallets efficiently.”
Ullmann turned to Pendu to supply a cant cut-off saw with an inline gang saw to cut cants and low-grade lumber to length and then saw them into pallet parts. Recalling the installation process, Ullmann explained, “The Pendu staff provided excellent customer service as we worked to get up to speed on the new cant line.” He added, “The Pendu cant line gives us high production of deck boards and runners. The gang saw allows us to keep up with production demands.”
DJ Pallets later added a Wood-Mizer WM4500 sawmill. The company buys low-grade hardwood and pine logs for the band mill, which has computerized setworks and is fed by a Wood-Mizer log deck. DJ Pallets buys mainly poplar, ash, white pine, hemlock, and fir logs 19-36 inches in diameter in 2-foot increments from 8 feet to 16 feet long.
A conveyor carries the flitches to a Wood-Mizer edger, and the cants are conveyed to a deck. The cants are cut to length on the Pendu cut-off saw and cut into deck boards or stringers on either the Pendu gang saw or a Go Fast Manufacturing two-head band resaw system. About 80% of the company’s pallet lumber is produced by its own cut-up operations. DJ Pallets still buys some pre-cut stringers.
The company is equipped with a Universal Inline nailing machine for producing longer run orders. Custom and smaller orders are assembled manually. About 25% of the company’s new pallets require ISPM-15 certification, so Ullmann invested in a pallet heat treating chamber from Kiln-Direct. He admitted, “If we didn’t have a kiln, there would be a lot of customers we would be able to service. And the Kiln-Direct system is easy to use and reliable.”
For trucking, the company has three semi-tractors, 22 trailer vans and a truck.
Dust Collection and Grinders Improve Wood Waste Handling
The company has a Vecoplan grinder that is used to reduce residual material from the sawmill and cut-up operations. The grindings are supplied for free to another company that uses them in mulch. Dan is considering adding a second Vecoplan grinder to process scrap material from the recycling operations, and he is seeking to develop markets for wood grindings.
The right grinding solution is necessary to keep waste from building up. Ullmann explained, “Without the Vecoplan grinder we would have a huge problem with the waste wood we produce from our sawmill. With the grinder, we grind the edges material and turn it into saw dust that is collected for animal bedding. It’s a win-win solution.”
Ullmann was impressed by the construction of the Vecoplan grinder he bought. He said, “It’s German made and built like a tank. We got one of the smaller models, and it’s super reliable. It will grind up just about anything you put into it.”
Ullmann acknowledges that Dan Dinan from Vecoplan has been very helpful in a consulting role. He said, “Dan came out to see our facility and potential locations to help with facility design considerations and workflow. He also connected me with a dust collection company that I ended up using.”
Ullmann added, “Dan has been instrumental in uncovering revenue generating solutions for my wood waste. The return on investment from the finding process has exceeded my expectations, adding significant value to my operations.”
Ullmann recently invested in a dust collection system from Massachusetts-based Dustpipe. This system captures sawdust and blows it through ducts directly into a trailer van. Sawdust is sold for animal bedding to a nearby farm. For a while, DJ Pallets operated the equipment without dust collection. He recalled, “The gang saw just produces so much sawdust, it would clog up the machine and you’d be running for 20 minutes and then have to stop and clear it out. This affected production, and we saw a noticeable difference in efficiency once we installed the dust collection.
Dan Dinan from Vecoplan provided the connection to Dustpipe and suggested that the equipment works well and is cost effective compared to other solutions on the market. Ullmann acknowledged, “Bryan Murphy and the Dustpipe crew made the entire process of planning and installing a dust collection system simple and painless. The dust collection system works beautifully. It provides a lot of suction, and we never have to think about it.”
ERP Provides Critical Information to Manage the Company Better
Information is critical to managing a pallet company, particularly as DJ Pallets grows and adds more facilities and capabilities. DJ Pallets relies on Pallet Connect ERP software to connect its various production lines as well as the office and sales tracking.
“Information is power. A good ERP allows you to know what is really going on in your business,” Ullmann stated.
DJ Pallets uses the Pallet Connect to track inventory, production, employee piece rates, pricing for raw material, driver locations via GPS, loads on the trucks, and much more. Instead of guessing, data from various aspects is centralized in one place for easy reporting and analysis. Ullmann added, “Pallet Connect can illustrate the data visually, too, in charts and graphs. It is a great organizational tool. Pallet Connect has helped me truly understand what is going on in real time.”
