. Bell telephone magazine . ouched by human hand orshifted by human muscle until takenoff the shelves to fill a telephonecompany order. Before this innova-tion, containers were stacked by handand could not be piled higher thanseven feet, the limit of a mans of space above the stacks werewasted. Now, however, metal racksdesigned to accommodate exactly a loaded pallet reach to the ceiling,sometimes as high as 20 feet. Atruck picks up a heavy pallet, carriesit to its proper aisle, lifts it with easeto the highest rack, and deposits itneatly into its own tailored compart-ment. If the p
. Bell telephone magazine . ouched by human hand orshifted by human muscle until takenoff the shelves to fill a telephonecompany order. Before this innova-tion, containers were stacked by handand could not be piled higher thanseven feet, the limit of a mans of space above the stacks werewasted. Now, however, metal racksdesigned to accommodate exactly a loaded pallet reach to the ceiling,sometimes as high as 20 feet. Atruck picks up a heavy pallet, carriesit to its proper aisle, lifts it with easeto the highest rack, and deposits itneatly into its own tailored compart-ment. If the pallet were stackedwith eggs—which are not a stock itemin Westerns Houses—chances arenot a shell would be cracked, so gentlydoes the operation handle telephoneapparatus. A late refinement of this techniqueutilizes a slender new truck nicknamedthe straddle stacker. It can jockeya load into lifting position in an aisleonly seven feet wide, compared withthe 10 feet required for maneuvering 178 Bell Telephone Magazine AUTUMN. Short pieces oj drop wire^ which formerly could only he jufikedy are now spliced together at JVesterris distributing houses and restored to use other fork trucks. This gives a divi-dend of three feet of storage space ineach aisle. Another time- and money-saver items are shipped the same day theused wherever possible in distributing orders are received. As a result, thehouses is the conveyor line. One such telephone companies can keep their move along just a shortsection of the slowerline are pushed off ontothe speedier one whenfilled. The minutessaved by this device,multiplied by thousandsof orders, mean speed-ier and lower-cost serv-ice. To the telephonecompanies, the scopeof Westerns distrib-uting operations is asconvenient as a house-wife would find livingnext door to a mod-ern metropolitan de-partment store. Evenwith the telephone com-panies ordering, as theydo, as many as i,6oo,-ooo items per monthfrom stock (and anitem is one entry onan order, whether
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