Is it a pallet? Is it a dolly? No, it's a Pally!
June 1st 2008

With its Pally, Loadhog has successfully combined the advantages of a pallet and a dolly in one highly versatile unit. Charlotte Stonestreet visited the company to find out about the development of the product and the benefits it can bring to a wide range of applications

For anyone familiar with Loadhog's eponymous re-usable lid system, the fact that the Sheffield-based company has come up with another highly original product will come as no surprise. In an industry often beset with 'me too' products, Loadhog stands out as a genuine innovator, providing practical, easyto- use solutions that offer immediate benefits – the latest of which is the Pally.

Original concept The original idea came about when Loadhog was working with Royal Mail to develop a half-Euro size version of its lid. At the time Royal Mail was looking to move away from large, heavy roll cages and use a more 'dolly-type' base to move product from mail centres to local delivery offices. Although in the end it was far too soon for Loadhog to provide the Pally as a solution at the time, it did provide the catalyst for a development programme that eventually led to the new product – which is, in fact, currently being trialled by Royal Mail.

As its name suggests, the Pally is a pallet and dolly in one. On the face of it, this sounds like a pretty simple concept – it's only once you really look at the product and the effort that has gone into getting it right that you begin to realise why it hasn't been done before.

According to product manager Ed Stubbs, one of the fundamental differences between the Pally and other (generally wheeled) products designed to do a similar job is that when the Pally is being used in its pallet form the complete load is transferred from the wheels to the pallet bearers.

"With most wheeled solutions, in situations where the unit needs to be stationary, a simple friction brake is applied.

The wheels are still load bearing and in contact with the ground, it's just harder to move them than it would be with the brake off. It's like a supermarket trolley – if you push it hard enough you can still move it and if it's on a steep enough hill with a full load it can still roll away," says Stubbs.

"The best way to brake something is to take the wheels away, because then it can't move. It's not a question of friction any more, it simply won't shift!" It was this concept that the company took to Tesco and, following trials with two suppliers in ten stores, is now looking to market more extensively.

In grocery retail the Pally is particularly appealing because of the growing trend for suppliers to use merchandising units right across the supply chain. Often constructed on an automated line, the fully loaded merchandising unit requires minimal processing throughout distribution – simply being cross docked before going straight to the end store. Then, rather than the product having to be placed on a shelf by hand, the complete unit is wheeled into the aisle ready to be picked from by the end consumer.

"The challenge here has been that the retailers like wheels because then they don't need mechanical handling equipment on the shop floor; while for the suppliers, it's notoriously difficult to automate a wheeled solution," says Stubbs. "So essentially, the suppliers want a pallet and the retailers want a dolly.

"With the Pally we have produced a unit that will function as a pallet down a supplier's production line, which they can stack, which they can rack, which they can secure in transit. And likewise when it gets to retail they flick a pedal and they can wheel it to the shelf. The beauty is that it can function completely as a pallet or completely as a dolly and a really important part of that is lifting the load off the wheels– because if you are not lifting the load off the wheels, all you have is an elaborate braking system!"

One press lifting According to Stubbs, one of the main challenges in designing the Pally has been to develop a simple, cost effective mechanism that has the ability to transform the unit from pallet to dolly form within an 800 x 600 footprint with a maximum height of 185mm. And central to this is the ability to enable one operator to easily lift up to half a tonne with one press of a pedal.

"Initially we were working on the basis of having a pallet and trying to turn it into a dolly," he says. "We made lots of prototypes using a foot pedal and at one point were essentially pumping dolly wheels out of a pallet base. This prevented us from having a one-pedal-press action and, more crucially, meant that in order to get the 30mm clearance required you had to lift the whole load by that amount." The Eureka moment came when, following months of trials with ever more complicated designs to turn a pallet into a dolly, it was decided to try the opposite approach and work on the basis of turning a dolly into a pallet.

"Doing this suddenly meant that for 28 of those 30mm you are pushing the bearers, engaging them with the ground – so effectively it's only for the last 2mm of clearance that you are lifting half a tonne," says Stubbs. "From an engineering perspective and a mechanical advantage, the mechanism we use now works perfectly.

That really was the step change that allowed us to solve the problem and now we are allowing the user to lift half a tonne with one pedal depression."

Reduced manual handling In practical terms, this means that to change the Pally from pallet to dolly simply requires one half pedal depression to release the pallet bearers and engage the castors with the ground, while one full pedal depression engages the pallet bearers and lifts the castors to convert it from dolly to pallet. In comparison with, for example, moving a palletised load using a hand operated pump truck, the Pally requires much less effort and reduces levels of manual handling –operators simply press the pedal and the load is ready to go. There is no need for further mechanical handling equipment, so no time is spent locating it and no space is wasted in storing it.

Although the Pally incorporates dedicated handle locations, once the castors are engaged, the majority of users tend to manoeuvre the load simply by pushing or pulling it, and often use the half-euro sized Loadhog Lid to secure the load in place of wrap or banding. The fact that no further specialist equipment is needed to move the load means that it is particularly suited to use in confined spaces. This is further enhanced by the ability to operate the unit via identical pedals at both ends – a feature that is key to the Pally's versatility.

"During the design stages we very quickly realised how important it was that the unit was operable from both ends," says Stubbs.

"There are already solutions on the market that are orientation specific, but the problem with these is that if someone has used a pump truck or a forklift to move a unit then parked it against a wall or in the aisle the wrong way round, then the next person that needs to move it will not always have the necessary equipment on hand.

"We could have had a lift pedal and a release pedal, but we felt that for maximum ease of use it had to be one pedal at either end. It means that if someone has turned the unit into a dolly at one end and then turned it round, they can turn it back into a pallet from the opposite end, and vice versa.

To achieve this, the two pedals operate completely independently, yet have been designed to interact – in effect they have a memory which enables identical operation from both ends."

Use in production facilities Although trials for the Pally have so far mainly been in grocery retail and mail environments this is by no means the whole scope when it comes to applications. In particular, production environments potentially have much to gain from adopting the Pally.

"We use Pallys here in our own production facility, and we are also seeing lots of our re-usable lid customers now using Pallys in their production processes on a really simple basis," says Stubbs.

"In manufacturing environments so many people are moving loads from A to B, or from one stage of manufacture to another using pallets and pump trucks and it's really time consuming. It's not necessarily the finished product I'm talking about here, it's work in progress that has to be moved round internally between processes or operations. It's here that the Pally can save everyone a huge amount of time and effort because it eliminates the need to find and operate a pump truck in a potentially restricted environment. So I think that it also offers real added-value as a very simple replacement for pallet and pump truck."

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