Only a day after MH&L’s report that plastic pallets were being cited as a possible source of butter contamination, a legal grease fire has started. Intelligent Global Pooling Systems (iGPS Company, LLC), operator of a rental service providing RFID-tag-equipped plastic pallets, has lawyered up to sue the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association (NWPCA) and its president and CEO Bruce Scholnick for what it claims are false, malicious and defamatory statements.

In its suit, iGPS claims that NWPCA, to protect the economic interests of the wooden pallet industry, has conspired to drive it out of business. It also states that the press release NWPCA put out a week ago to start this skirmish contained “intentionally false, misleading and defamatory statements singularly calculated to create the completely false impression that iGPS’s pallets were the possible cause of an alleged contamination of butter in certain Texas stores.”

To be fair, the NWPCA press release never comes out and says iGPS pallets were the cause of the contamination, but it makes it awfully easy for any reader to connect the dots between two previously unrelated facts and join an effect to a cause.

Fact A: A University of Texas (UT) School of Public Health study showed high levels of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants in butter samples purchased from five grocery stores in the city of Dallas.

Fact B: According to an iGPS life cycle analysis, each of its pallets contains 3.4 lbs of decabromodiphenyl ether (decaBDE), one of several chemicals classified as a PBDE flame retardant.

Here’s where NWPCA picks up a bright red crayon to join those two facts:

“While UT researchers speculated on possible causes of contamination such as the butter’s paper wrapper, given the high levels of PBDE used in plastic pallets, they should be examined as the root source of transfer to the food. Investigators suggest the incident represents the worst documented case of PBDE contamination in food ever reported in the U.S.”

The NWPCA press release later states: “iGPS plastic pallets are used almost exclusively by the food industry.”

Forget the red crayon, that’s a day-glow highlighter.

I called Bruce Scholnick to ask him if maybe putting out a press release connecting iGPS to an incident that nobody else connected this company to was a bit opportunistic.

“My point is not whether it was riding on a pallet of wood or plastic, but that deca-bromine has zero tolerance for food. FDA doesn’t want it around food at all. iGPS pallets are loaded with deca-bromine. My point is, let them test their pallet to make certain it isn’t leaching deca-bromine.”

Yeah, but the butter in question was riding a wooden pallet, not plastic.

“I never said the iGPS pallet was carrying the butter,” Mr. Scholnick continued.”

It will be interesting to see whether the iGPS suit against NWPCA has any impact on either side. Whether it does or not, this whole greasy mess is a great reminder for all of us: facts and truth are often two separate things. Connect the dots between them with care.

Just as the new economic reality is causing people to postpone their retirement until well into their 70s, lift trucks are facing the same fate. In putting together a feature on maintenance for our December issue, I heard dealers and OEMs say they’re seeing customers hang onto their equipment well past the usual 7-year-maximum service life expectancy.

When times were better, this was seen as a huge mistake—even if the truck was well maintained. Even if the user was extending his fleet’s useful life, the reasoning went, he was still doing his company a disservice by going beyond its economic life. Any lift truck OEM will tell you there is a limit to their product’s economic effectiveness past a certain point. When that point is reached, the cost to continue maintaining it exceeds the cost to replace it. That makes sense, considering that each new generation of lift trucks comes with features that make it more productive than its predecessors.

When the economy was slow, managers could get away with postponing fleet upgrades. Productivity wasn’t the priority, cost savings were. But now that business is coming back, the question will be how well prepared end users and their fleets are to meet the growing demand for their products and services. Add this follow-up question for those who were faithful to maintenance: will they stick to their service-life over economic-life mentality?

It seems that for many, the answer to that last question is yes—and some lift truck providers have adopted an “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy to keep them as customers. I just received a press release from Decker Forklifts, a wholesale buyer and reseller of new and used forklifts, announcing a contest. This is taken right from the release:

“The ‘My Classic Forklift’ contest honors forklift owners and operators who have mature and durable forklifts still running in their warehouses, factories, plants and other facilities. … The contest, which ends February 1, 2011, is open to all used forklift and lift trucks that are at least 15 years old. All makes and models are eligible. Several prizes will be awarded, including three gift cards - $100, $75 or $50. All participants will receive an honorary ‘My Classic Forklift’ badge that they can place on their web sites.”

So in this new economic reality, assets don’t get old; they become classics. I have to remember that when I turn 65. It’ll look good on my resume.

As if companies haven’t seen enough crises in the last couple years, The Wall Street Journal recently added another: It’s an identity crisis. That’s right, WSJ cites several big companies whose growth into new areas of business has challenged their marketers to come up with a concise catch-phrase for what their companies do.

Here are some examples followed by their translations:

–“A power management company.” (Gears and pumps.)

–“Active and passive safety.” (Brakes and safety belts.)

–“World leader in creating and sustaining safe, comfortable and efficient environments.” (Air conditioning.)

–“Leverage an innovative, outcome-based, managed service engagement model with committed productivity benefits over the long term.” (Consultants—what else?)

Some elements in the material handling and logistics industries have a similar problem. They’re trying to escape the narrow confines of their customers’ conceptualizations of them. Take transportation, for example. Carriers are too often seen as providing warehouses on wheels, and worse than that, being part of their customers’ waste problem. The cost of fuel tends to overshadow the value-added services many carriers are trying to promote.

A member of MH&L’s own editorial advisory board sees transportation as one of seven deadly wastes, on a par with overproduction, waiting, overprocessing, inventory, motion, and correction of defects.

“These are production costs that create no additional value in the product,” says Thom MacLean, vice president of operations for Osborn International, part of Jason, Inc. “Transportation in production is normally viewed as a waste in a lean view of the supply chain. It is no coincidence that many Tier 1 automotive suppliers build plants right by the plants they supply. If you have a customer 500 miles away and your competitor is in their backyard, you will frequently be asked to normalize freight to your customer’s location. Any dollar of transportation cost eliminated drops right to your bottom line.”

Even lift truck dealers are trying to get beyond that narrow definition of what they do. Associated, a Raymond dealer serving the Chicagoland region, has “Integrated Supply Chain Solutions” as its tagline. I asked Mike Romano, Associated’s president and CEO, if the days of lift-truck-centric, brand-affiliated dealers are coming to an end. He answered no, but with a caveat:

“I think that brand exclusive lift truck dealers are realizing, more than ever, they need to provide value to their customers other than in just supplying lift trucks and related support thereof. Dealers must find ways to differentiate themselves to be able to avoid the commoditization of their businesses and continue to provide a compelling value proposition that will drive continued demand for their role in the marketplace.”

According to Romano, the smart lift truck OEMs will support their dealers in this brand reinvention, while others may fight what they perceive as a reduction in the “mindshare” they get from their dealers. But I like Romano’s take:

“The businesses that define their vision, develop definitive plans to accomplish that vision and ensure that they have or acquire the core competencies needed to execute their plan will end up on top.”

Bruce Pelynio, president-CEO of Heli Americas, a Memphis-based distributor for China’s Anhui Heli lift trucks, agrees with Romano. He told me it will be more difficult for single line lift truck dealers to sustain themselves.

“We’ve seen it go away on the car side of the business, and in the construction equipment business, and the lift truck business may be one of the last bastions of it,” he said. “I think it will be a more open market going forward and you’ll see in the next five years the end of proprietary dealerships except for the factory stores.”

The marketers in the material handling and logistics worlds have their work cut out for them and not much time left. A certain southern region—way, way south—is starting to freeze over.