EP 594: A Skinny Pallet Jack, Big Savings, and the Power of Innovation
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Hey, and welcome to the New Warehouse Podcast. This episode was originally recorded live at ProMat 2025 and features Dan Betts, Vice President of Operations at Andrews Distributing, and it is proudly brought to you by Big

Joe Forklifts. So give it a listen and I hope you enjoy. The New Warehouse Podcast hosted by Kevin Lawton is your source for insights and ideas from the distribution, transportation, and logistics industry. A new episode every Monday morning brings you the latest from industry experts and thought leaders. And now here's Kevin. So tell us a little bit about your company, Andrew's Distributing, and what you do.

I'm the executive vice president of operations at Andrews Distributing. We are a family-owned business. We've been in business for about 50 years. Our location is Dallas, Fort Worth, and Corpus Christi. We're in the beer and spirits business. Oh, we like that. Oh, yeah. It's a fun business to have. But we do about 45 million cases a year. We deliver to 13,000 customers annually.

We make about half a million stops or deliveries a year. Okay. And we do that with 2,000 teammates, hardworking teammates of mine. Nice, nice. And you do all your own deliveries, all your own trucks? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, wow. Okay. So we deliver on behalf of our suppliers, Molson, Coors,

Corona, you know, all the great beer brands that we have. Yeah, all that great beer that we love. Yeah, love it. Definitely, definitely. So tell us a little bit about kind of that, because it's direct store delivery, essentially, right? So tell us a little bit about that, because, you know, not...

Not every store is so convenient to deliver to. Maybe convenient for the customer, right? But on the back end, there might be some challenges there. So tell us a little bit about kind of what that direct store delivery looks like and some of those challenges.

Well, in operations, we are always about continuous improvement, as you know. We have that Kaizen mentality, so we wake up every day and say, how do we get better? And in this particular event, what we did was we value stream mapped the delivery process. So we started at the moment that our delivery team leaves our distribution centers and by the time they come back. And, Kevin, what we discovered was that 25% of that time in delivery is

was $5 million for us, if you look at what our costs are, just on the labor side. That's a lot of money. And that 25% was just in the check-in process. So that's getting the beer in the front or back door and making sure what the customer wanted, they actually got. And we look at that as waste or muda. There's an opportunity to reduce that. We think that of that $5 million, we can cut it in half. So we think for Andrews, it was about $2, $2.5 million and an opportunity for us to cut back.

And really what we'd be doing is driving service up and keeping our costs down. And where that cost is, is getting that product to the front door or the back door because every case, 45 million cases at Andrews has to be checked in by hand. So you're taking time away from a store clerk or store manager at, you know, call 7-Eleven or Joe's Beer Shack. Yeah. So you're taking their time away from the customer or doing what they need to be doing or waiting on them while they're taking care of the customer.

So, obviously, there was a way to do it better. And if you think about the front door that we have to go through, 50% of our customers are going through a skinny door, right? 36 inches or less. Not really made for a pallet or anything like that, right? Well, if you think about the pallet, the pallet is almost useless to us when we're getting into the store because we pick on a wide pallet. Yeah. A fat pallet. We also...

have our forklifts or our fork trucks to get inside the store. It's 3,500 pounds. They won't allow it. It's too heavy on their floor. So we can't get in with the pal. We can't get in with the jack. And so we're picking this on something that forces us to do something extra. So we have to down stack it. So...

45 million cases, if you think about that down stacking, we down stack it in front of the customer, blocking the customer's way inside the store because we can't get through the door yet. Right. We break it down in sets of seven and we two-wheel it in. So 45 million cases, one at a time, going in seven at a time, and then another touch to set it down to get it checked in. Yeah. So obviously there's a lot of opportunity for savings there.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it sounds like such a, it's such a challenge, right? Because it's, you know, on both sides, you know, what sticks out to me first is you're saying like the waiting time, right? It's like your driver, delivery drivers waiting, right? And then you're maybe the customer's customer is waiting, right? Which is not good, right? And I'm sure the customer's customer is going to be the priority versus delivery driver. But then the delivery driver's got to make another stop, I'm sure, right? Yeah.

So there's a lot of inefficiency there and kind of that waste and certainly very time consuming to make those deliveries, just a few cases at a time going through the door. So tell us a little bit about the idea because I understand that you've come up with this creative solution to this, this skinny idea, right? Tell us a little bit about how this idea kind of came about and what it's all about. Well, I work with a great team.

We have hundreds of years of experience in front of us. So what we did is we worked as a team and really dug into that experience. We said, how do we do it better? We know what we see. We've been doing it for decades. How do we change the industry? So we really leaned into that experience, led by Paul Bila and his team out of Fort Worth. And many folks on Andrews participated in this as well. But we said...

We need a skinny pallet to get through that door and a skinny jack light enough to get on the floor. Yeah.

And there's companies out there that are dabbling with Skinny Pallet and Skinny Jack. I believe they're inferior compared to what Big Joe has out there. Okay. So we came up with this idea. Let's do Skinny Pallet, Skinny Jack, and let's weigh it in. So we'll check in by weight. And there's no one out there today who's checking in product by pallet, by weight. Interesting. So instead of one case at a time, 44 million cases, you're bringing it in and checking it in by weight. If you think about it, Brinks...

they weigh their, their dollars and a hundred dollar bills, thousand dollar bills with weight. So why aren't we doing that? So we went to several, uh, uh, suppliers and got rejected. They thought it was, uh, too far out there. And, uh, we just believed in the impossible and we just kept pushing and we, uh, we were fortunate enough to get with a couple of partners like big Joe and, um, they

That was a really incredible partnership we have going with them. Yeah, yeah, I think that's really interesting. And I love that you push through and you're like, no, we're going to do this, even though so many other people are saying, like, ah, this is too much of an out-there idea, but we're going to make it happen. And I think it makes so much sense. So tell us, I mean, when we talk about, you know, standard pallet, it's 40 by 48, right? But we talk about a skinny pallet. What size is a skinny pallet? Oh, boy, you're putting me on the spot. I think even my engineers...

Peninsula pallet to help me with that one. But it's less than 36 inches to get through that door. I think it might be 32. Interesting. But the pallet we designed was skinny and a little shorter than what's out there today, which made it more stable.

So we partnered up with the two together. So we got Peninsula Pallet to get with Big Joe. And we wrapped that pallet around that Big Joe custom-made pallet jack. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. And so now the skinny pallet, I mean, obviously allows you to bring more in there. But I'm curious, too, like on the backside, as you looked at that, I mean, does it change anything within your operations?

operations, like when you're picking that order to go out for delivery? Great question. We had thought that it might slow us down, and originally it was a learning curve, but it's a minimum difference. So we feel that we can overcome that, because instead of putting

three pallets now on a jack. We're putting four and five on a walkie rider, as we call it, and picking it inside the distribution center. So it's very minimal, but the significance gain is on the delivery side. So it helps our customer out. We're in and out of the way of their customer. We're in and out of the way of them, so they can do their job.

So we just believe that as brand builders that we can really be our very best to serve our customer and the customer's customer. So there's an opportunity here, and particularly with Andrews, we believe there's two, two and a half million dollars worth of savings there because if you cut that time in half, the check-in time,

That's about, if you look at the beer industry, it's about 3 billion cases annually. So that could really be about $130 to $150 million of elimination of waste and muda. And really being able to service your customer better because we'd like to give back to our team. We believe we're a good jobs company. So we'll give back to our teams. We'll invest in our teams and our equipment and our buildings.

But one great thing about that is that it's just a beer industry. I mean, this thing can go into other industries, whether it's water or soda. Yeah.

Yeah, who's ever doing that? Store delivery. Yeah. Yeah, interesting. And I love how you kind of looked at it and dissected the problem, essentially, and figured out how do we navigate around this. So talk to us a little bit about the relationship with Big Joe there and how the development of this skinny jack kind of came about. Because I think it's interesting, too, that there had to be...

not only a consideration of the size, but then also a consideration of the weight, too, as you mentioned, for the floor. So tell us a little bit about how that development works. Sure. We had this idea, and no one would take us up on it. Well, there's a forklift distributor in Fort Worth named Shoppus, and they have a vice president of sales that was in on a sales call here at Andrews.

And they were selling forklifts. We stopped them right there. We said, how about, would you be interested in this idea? So we presented the idea, and his eyes went wide open. Oh, yeah. He's like, you're on to something, and we're an aggressive company, and I know exactly who you need to partner up with. Within seven days, he got a hold of Big Joe, and Dan, the president of Big Joe, comes in. He brings his vice president, Matt, from engineering. Yeah. Sitting at our table seven days later, they bring out a white sheet of paper, and

And they asked us one question. What do you need? Yeah. And you know what their next question was? What? When we were done with the white piece of paper, it went from top to bottom. We told them exactly what we needed for our business, the beer business at Andrews. They said, we got you. We love this idea and we'll take it on. And they did it. They made that magic happen. They made everything we wanted and they got it. And everything they did was exactly to spec that we needed. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. And I love that too because I love the idea of being able to be, I guess, progressive in that thinking and open to new ideas and seeing from the voice of the customer, literally, on what they need and how do we go about and address that and see the opportunity there. So I'm curious, we're here at...

ProMat, right? And obviously there's lots of innovation all around us, really, you know, shiny things going on, right? So tell us a little bit about how do you, you know, as an end user, essentially, right? As a customer, how do you come in here? How do you go approaching with an innovation mindset? And how do you, you know, look at these different solutions and kind of figure out like what's right for me, what actually works for me and what's just like looks cool?

Well, I was here with several of my teammates yesterday, and I told them, I said, be prepared to walk out of here and to some degree feel inferior because there's so much out there that you just want to grab and take. Yeah. But...

Really, the challenge is to grab things that really pertain to you and your business. And even though it might not be presented in your business, look at something that's being successful in some other area and see how you can convert that to us in the beer and spirits business. So that's always fun to come here and do that at Pro-Mat.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there is so much going on here. I love that you said that. You prepared your team to tell them that, oh, you feel like we're way behind on everything, right? I mean, it's so easy to feel that way with all the technology here. So, I mean, what would you say from an end-user perspective for some of the solution providers that are out here? How do they...

you know, have a more open mindset? Because you said you went to a couple companies first with this idea and they weren't necessarily open to it. What would you say or what advice would you give them from a customer perspective that say, you know, you need to think about things a little differently nowadays? Well, it was a tough journey. I mean, first of all, you got to state your case and state it clearly and state how big the pie can be for that particular vendor.

So kind of put it in their language, what they do best, what we need most, and try to find that happy medium where they feel that they could actually add value to what we're asking for and it's going to be significant. But if they can't see that, you push...

You try again, and then you got to go on to the next one. And fortunately with Big Joe, we struck gold with that one. I mean, I've never had a partnership where someone was so tuned in to the customer and so fast. I mean, we did this thing basically in mid-fourth quarter of last year, and here we are. Yeah. And we're doing this in DFW at our customers' locations, and it's catching on like fire. Yeah.

Five like it. Five goes to ten. Ten goes to 100 customers.

Once these customers are seeing the advantage of it, they start wanting to sign up for it. So actually, we're actually behind the customer request or demand right now, but we're going to catch up. Nice, nice. Wow. Wow, I love it. And definitely a great story, and I'd love to hear about how these kind of innovative ideas come together and kind of where they come from, too, the source. So I'm really happy you could join us today and kind of talk us through this process and exactly how you were able to come up with the idea, for one, right, and some of the challenges there, and then

also you know how you were able to work with the the right partners in i think it's peninsula palette right and big joe to be able to to come up with these two solutions that can be together and then you know at the end of the day help your customer help your drivers your employees and then help your customers customers too because

taking away that wait time for sure. So really appreciate you coming by this morning and talking to us and give us a little innovation story as well here first thing in the morning. Love that. So if people are interested in learning more about Andrew's distributing, what's the best way to do that?

They can go to Big Joe. They have a booth here. I'm not sure the booth number, but Big Joe will be there ready to show off what we have, the Skinny Pal, Skinny Jack, with a weight scale. And that's the key. The weight scale is the gold. Definitely. All right. Well, Dan, appreciate you coming in the booth here and hope you have a good rest of the week here at ProMap. Appreciate you, Kevin. Nice meeting you. You too. You've been listening to the New Warehouse Podcast with Kevin Lawton. Subscribe and check us out online at thenewwarehouse.com.

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