The Pallet That Went to the Wrong Dock
One pallet of whey powder went to the wrong dock and spent a weekend at a farm supply store, where it was displayed beside the birdseed.
We ship powder in fifty pound bags on wooden pallets, and each pallet gets a big sticker with the port and the container number. We have a system. The system is a clipboard. One Friday afternoon a forklift driver named Cecil carried a pallet to the dock, set it down and drove away, certain it was bound for the coast.
It was not. The pallet had been picked up by a delivery driver who works for a farm supply store in the next county, and who had a very similar pallet and a very similar sticker. By the time anyone noticed, our whey powder was on a flatbed headed east, and it arrived at the store at six o'clock on a Friday with nobody to receive it.
The store manager, a friendly man named Bud, looked at the pallet and decided it was a promotional display. He put a sign on it that said New Arrival: Dairy Protein Blend. He stacked it near the front door, between the birdseed and a rack of tomato cages. By Saturday morning, three customers had asked about it, and one had bought a bag.
We discovered the error on Monday. I called Bud, who said, "I wondered what that was." He sold us back the remaining bags at full price, and he kept the sign. He said the one customer who bought a bag had written to say her chickens loved it. I did not know how to respond to that, so I sent her a coupon.
The pallet we were missing arrived at the dock two days late and our buyer shrugged it off. In my line of work, that is practically a medal. We replaced the stickers with a larger design. I also read the farm money planning pages to see how to account for a pallet that goes on vacation. The story lives on farm.FM, and Bud writes in every month to say the birdseed is selling well.
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