The Ouk-rra-i-nah Story by Warren Metzler Table of Contents
19. Size matters
Back when I first investigated importing vodka from Zhitomir, I also began to investigate the requirements of US Customs and the various ways products were shipped to the US. I soon realized there was an issue related to pallets.
Since you may not be familiar with pallets I’ll describe them. Each one is a flat item; typically four feet by three feet in width and four inches thick. The four-inch thick part contains numerous openings, into which you can insert the arms of a forklift. Most goods stored in warehouse, or being transported in containers or in trucks, are stacked on pallets. And with a forklift you can easily move pallet-loaded goods: change their location in a warehouse, or move them on or off a truck or container. Ever since pallets were introduced, most have been made of wood; although, recently, increasingly they’re made from plastic.
Last summer, 2005, the US government decided that bad organisms live in the wood of the pallets, that those organisms arrived in the US on pallets, and then infected certain US vegetation. Realizing this problem, they sought a solution. The solution chosen was to require all pallets which arrived in the US, which were made of wood, to be treated: soaked in an special chemical, or exposed to high heat for a specific length of time. Regulations were issued, soon adopted internationally, and before long every country which engaged in international trade had an office that oversaw implementation of these regulations. These regulations were to be in effect by January 2006, which was prior to when any container I would order would be shipped.
I found a web site that described this problem, plus one which listed the offices in each country that oversaw the implementation of these regulations. Then I wrote to Igor, told him the address of each web site, and informed him of the situation. It took him some time, but eventually he found a company in Zhitomir that made pallets of wood that had been treated. Hence that problem was solved.
The next issue that arose was in regard to packing the shipping container. But, again, first some background: I previously mentioned that the factory required me to send the entire purchase price prior to bottling the vodka in my order, which of course meant prior to shipping the vodka. And they wanted the exact price; to the penny. For me to accomplish this task, I needed to know exactly how many bottles would be placed in one container.
This issue would have been handled with ease if the factory had experience of shipping vodka overseas as required in my order: all the goods stacked on pallets, and the contents of each pallet shrink-wrapped. The factory had shipped vodka to other countries in containers, and had shipped that one container to Miami the previous year. But all those shipments had been all Presidential Standard, and pallets had not been used. So no one at the company knew, regarding to my order, exactly how many cases would fit in a forty-foot container.
My natural response to all such situations is for me personally to search for a solution. So I contacted my shipping broker and asked him about shipping, I went to the warehouse I would use to ask them about shipping (that warehouse had much experience receiving containers from overseas filled with alcohol products), and I searched the Internet.
I finally concluded that the standard approach is to use four-foot by three-foot pallets, and stack the pallets about six feet high, wrapping the cases on each pallet in shrink-wrap. With pallets that size, twenty pallets would fit in a forty-foot container: two rows of ten. International shipping containers are all a standard size: about seven and a half feet wide and seven and a half feet tall, and either twenty feet or forty feet in length. Although there is seven and a half feet of space inside each container, it is not recommended you stack the cases that high for international shipments that travel on ocean-going ships (as opposed to air freight). You want to leave room for the cases to move, and you want to avoid the weight of the cases on the upper levels of each pallet causing breakage in the cases on the lower levels, especially during the times the ship encounters rough seas.
But those were not all the factors involved in packing my container. The Presidential Standard bottles were tall and thin, whereas the Harr-a-sho! bottles were of a regular size. This meant the Presidential Standard cases would have a different size compared to the Harr-a-sho! cases. That difference in size could mean a different number of cases of Presidential Standard would fit on a single pallet, compared to the number of Harr-a-sho! cases.
And there’s more: The factory did not have the capacity to fill 50 ml bottles. But I’d found a place to bottle miniatures here in California. So I was also ordering two 200-liter bulk containers, one of each type.
Then one more question: How many of each type would I order? How many cases of Presidential Standard versus cases of Harr-a-sho!? If I knew which type would sell best that decision would be easy, but I was starting from scratch, with no experience in the alcohol business.
It was quite a quandary, and there was no solution in sight. I decided that the two 200-liter bulk containers could fit on one pallet. And I further decided that if Vlad would only tell me how many cases of Presidential Standard fit on a pallet, and how many cases of Harr-a-sho! fit on a pallet, I would decide how many pallets of Presidential Standard and how many pallets of Harr-a-sho! to order, and then calculate the total purchase price; (to the penny! :-) ).
During several of my conversations with Vlad (with Regina as translator) I attempted to have him give me those cases-per-pallet figures, but he kept refusing. Then during one such conversation, he asked for the name and phone number of a shipping agent in the Ukraine.
This request irritated me, because if implied to me Vlad was not accepting my shipping “expertise”. And normally I would have refused to attempt to discover such information, because of a standard I’ve followed for years, which is that I never acquiesce to another person’s agenda, especially when I perceive that agenda as unreasonable —unrealistic for the current circumstances—.
However, however! A few days prior to Vlad presenting his request for a shipping contact, a person, who I’ll call Sanford, had asked me to do something I considered quite unreasonable. My initial response was to say no. But then an inner voice told me to go ahead and act as Sanford requested. And I did. And after I fulfilled Sanford’s request, the situation between he and I was resolved.
Now achieving resolution is very important to me. Actually I have a principle that I must pursue resolution each time I have a disagreement with another person. And life has shown me many many times, that each time I achieve resolution that current situation improves a considerable degree. So once I experienced with Sanford that acquiescing to an “unreasonable” request lead to resolution, I was sure going to consider that with each unreasonable request I encountered in the future.