georgia crate company finds strong niche in custom work · as pumps or motors. “they’ll design...

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PEACHTREE CORNERS, Georgia –Reliability is the strength of Reid Pack-aging, said owner Ward Phillips. “Youwill get what you order when you expectit.”

Reid Packaging specializes in supply-ing wood crates and containers for ship-ping industrial products. The companyalso provides related services, includingon-site crating.

The company is based in PeachtreeCorners, a suburb north of Atlanta. It islocated just a few miles west of the I-85corridor and a short distance north of the285 beltway that encircles the Atlantametropolitan region.

Reid Packaging has been in businesssince it was founded in 1982 by Peter

Georgia Crate Company FindsStrong Niche in Custom WorkBy Tim Cox

Versatile Production Capabilities: At times Reid Packaging is steadily manufacturing wood crates and containers, and at othertimes it is busy crating large objects at on-site locations.

Reid, who ran the family-owned and op-erated business until selling it to Phillipsin 2007.

Phillips, 62, grew up in the Southeastand earned a bachelor’s degree in jour-nalism from the University of NorthCarolina-Chapel Hill. He spent 24 yearsworking in the industry that manufac-tured photography products — films andthe paper and chemicals to develop theminto photographic prints. He workedmostly for a British-based company andlived with his family for part of that timein England. He left the company in 2006— at the time he was director of salesand marketing worldwide — and re-turned to the United States and settled inthe Atlanta area.

Phillips took six months off and thenbegan looking for a business to buy. Hedid due diligence on a few other manu-facturing businesses, but found they didnot “measure up.” Then he found ReidPackaging. “It was absolutely pristine,”he said. As he did the same type of duediligence, he found that Peter had accu-rately portrayed the company’s finances.

“I took a well-run company with agreat reputation, and one that I could eas-ily understand in terms of growth andstrategic planning,” commented Phillips.

The photography industry, at least thatportion that manufactured film and prod-ucts for developing film, was overtakenand decimated by technology: digitalphotography. People still buy cameras,

peFebruary2018.pmd 1/24/2018, 2:25 PM30

FEBRUARY 2018 31YOUR #1 MACHINERY AND INFORMATION SOURCE

but photographic film has gone the wayof buggy whips.

That was one thing that attractedPhillips to Reid Packaging and the crateand container industry. There is a certainamount of security in the packaging in-dustry insofar as it is unlikely to be over-taken by a technology revolution likedigital photography, suggested Phillips.Businesses continue to move goods andproducts from one point to another, andthey need transport packaging to movethem and protect them. “I felt like it wasa safe, long-term investment, and a busi-ness I could understand and relate to, and— quite frankly — enjoy.”

Reid Packaging is “a little bit all overthe place,” said Phillips. At times it issteadily manufacturing wood crates andcontainers, and at other times it is busycrating large objects at on-site locations.About two-thirds of the company’s busi-ness is for wood crates and containers,and about one-third, corrugated contain-ers.

The company has a 60,000-square-foot shop and about 20 employees. They

are augmented at times by about two tosix temporary workers who perform pro-duction tasks, such as feeding wood to a

saw.Asked to describe the company’s

‘bread and butter’ product, Phillips ex-

Wood-Mizer Resaw: After hardwoods cants are cut to length, the material is turnedinto deck boards or stringers on a Wood-Mizer HR130 horizontal bandsaw resaws.This saw is equipped with the optional return system so the machine can be operatedby one worker who re-feeds the cants to the single head saw.



plained the process of working with acustomer, most of whom are manufac-turers of heavy industrial products, suchas pumps or motors. “They’ll design anew one, and they’ll want a crate for it,”he said. “We work with them to developexactly what they want, and we keepthose drawings on file.”

The customer may subsequently ordersix of those crates, or four of another thatalready has been designed and is on file.“They reorder as needed. We can makethem in short runs, and they can havejust-in-time inventory for crates.”

Repeat customers are purchasing cus-tom crates that become a stock item fortheir business, although Reid Packagingwill accept an order for even a singlecrate. Most customers are within the At-lanta metropolitan region.

Reid Packaging supplies crates forcompanies that manufacture industrialcomputer cabinets, satellite antennas andsmoke stack scrubbers to name a few oftheir products. Some crates are larger thana sea container. By contrast, the smallestcrates the company has supplied wereabout 9 inches by 12 inches by 15 inches.

Specialty Jobs: Sometimes Reid Packaging will develop a specialized crate for a very large object, such as a car, industrialmachine or large parts for fighter jets.

Customers often order in multiplesfrom five to 50 units, indicated Phillips.For one customer the company produced20,000 small crates. “Most of what wedo would be considered a short run,”added Phillips.

The company fills a lot of orders forjust one crate or container. Reid Packag-ing also supplies packaging that meetsmilitary specifications. Many companiesthat manufacture products for the U.S.military do not have the knowledge andequipment to meet the packaging re-quirements, said Phillips. Reid Packag-ing can help them in one of two ways. Itcan supply a complete container kit for acustomer that includes all the materialsand appropriate documents and labels, orthe customer will ship them goods, andReid Packaging will unload them andthen package them according to the mili-tary specifications. “We do a fair amountof that,” said Phillips, both supplyingkits and re-packaging shipments.

A lot of customers put their product ina crate or container and store it or ship itto a warehouse, not knowing if it willeventually be sent somewhere in the

United States or abroad. For that reason,most crates made by Reid Packaging arefor export shipments, so the companyuses heat-treated wood material in orderto comply with ISPM-15 regulations forwood packaging used in export.

The company also makes use of foamcushioning products, static control prod-ucts, and barrier bags to package andprotect a customer’s shipment. Cratescan be equipped with such optional fea-tures as carrying handles, hinged lids anddoors, latches, hasps and locks, foamlined interiors, partitions, drawers, rampsand casters. And they can be labeled witha company logo or promotional signage.

Reid Packaging was chosen byLockheed Martin to supply all the woodcrates and containers and to perform on-site services for the complete disman-tling of manufacturing operations thatproduced the F-22 Raptor fighter jet inMarietta, Georgia and Meridian, Missis-sippi. That project took 15 months tocomplete.

Bill Reid, Peter Reid’s son, continuesto work at the company as a senior salesexecutive. At Reid Packaging, a sales



single head saw.For cutting plywood panels the com-

pany is equipped with two horizontalpanel saws, a Homag and another manu-factured earlier under the Hozlma brandname. For some cutting or forming pro-cesses the company uses a CNC routerand an inverted pin router. The companyis equipped with an assortment of otherwoodworking machines for remanu-facturing lumber, probably few brandsthat are familiar to people in the palletindustry. The list of equipment includesa Tannewitz bandsaw, a couple ofCameron optimizer chop saws, twoNorthtech up-cut chop saws, a Diehlstraight-line rip saw, and TOS gang ripsaw.

The panel saws and routers are on oneside of the shop for processing panels,and equipment for remanufacturing lum-ber is on the other side. Plywood isstaged near the panel saws, and the di-mensional lumber is staged all along theback wall. The components are cut andloaded onto rolling carts with the draw-ings for the crate and moved to themiddle of the shop, where crates andcontainers are assembled.

Top and Bottom Redundancy: WardPhillips believes in equipment redun-dancy to ensure they can fulfill orderseven if a machine has to go down formaintenance or repairs. Also, this extracapacity comes in hand for rush or emer-gency orders.

manager has a dual role as a project man-ager, Phillips explained, actually design-ing a crate or container, determiningwhat components are required, and over-seeing the production of the first sampleor prototype.

For raw material, Reid Packagingbuys mostly plywood panels rangingfrom 3/8-inch to ¾-inch thickness andheat-treated southern yellow pine lum-ber in such dimensions as 1x4, 2x4,2x10, 4x4 and 6x6. The company buystruckload quantities through brokersfrom mills in the Southeast, includingGeorgia, Alabama, South Carolina andNorth Carolina.

Some customers do not require cratesfor export shipments, and in those casesReid Packaging will buy mixed hard-wood 4x6 cants from mills in Georgiaand remanufacture and resaw the mate-rial into components. Cants are cut tolength first on a Northtech 24-inchupcut saw. A Wood-Mizer HR130 hori-zontal bandsaw resaws the materialinto deck boards or stringers; it isequipped with the optional return sys-tem so the machine can be operated byone worker who re-feeds the cants to the

All crate and container assembly workis performed by hand with pneumaticnailing tools.



“Most of the people who come to ushave a separate pallet supplier,” saidPhillips. However, Reid Packaging doesmake a small volume of custom pallets.They are assembled by hand on home-made jigs. When he was interviewed for

this article, Phillips said the most recentpallets the company made were over 100inches long. Occasionally the companyproduces a small run of 40x48 pallets fora customer who needs them for an exportshipment.

The company does include a pallet-type base for some crates and containersthat require them, but the standard baseis more akin to a skid. It is made with 4x4runners and 2x8 or 2x10 for decking.“They’re very heavy-duty,” Phillips ac-knowledged.

Scrap wood material and sawdust isdisposed of at a landfill along with otherscraps of banding, foam, and other mate-rial. Scrap corrugated is recycled.Phillips has looked at options for grind-ing scrap wood, but the company doesnot produce enough residual material. Inaddition, it would require segregating thescrap wood from other scrap material,like banding.

The shop begins work at 6:30 a.m. Itnormally operates four 10-hour dayswith Fridays off. Rush orders can bedone on Friday or the company can payovertime to catch up if needed.

As head of the company, Phillips su-pervises a number of staff who overseevarious aspects of the business: a pro-duction supervisor, two sales representa-tives, an office manager and a mainte-nance technician. He usually begins eachday on his computer, reviewing the

40 Foot Skid: While the company doesn’t make lots of pallets or skids, when it doesthey tend to be very large or specialized to work with some crate or container. This 40foot skid is a heavy-duty platform.



company’s financials. He uses Sage 50accounting software for managing thecompany’s financial information and or-dering process.

Reid Packaging does not use any crateor container design software. It has a sys-tem it has used for many years. Phillipsactually tried a new program, but itended up making work more difficult foremployees on the shop floor.

“We have a lot of experience here,”Phillips noted. Bill grew up with his fa-ther in the business, and the company’sother sales representative has 15-plusyears of experience.

The Great Recession took a firm holdon the U.S. economy in 2009, just twoyears after Phillips bought the business.The company’s business dropped 42%.With his experience restructuring com-panies, Phillips immediately recognizedthe impact of the recession. He laid offfive employees at one time, although allof the positions were restored within ayear. He told them to sign up with tem-porary employment agencies and hiredone person back through the agencywithin two weeks.

If a business needs to downsize andreduce payroll, it is better to make lay-offs at one time, he suggested. “It isn’tabout the money. It’s about the morale.”If you lay off one employee one monthand the next month lay off another, therest of the employees begin wondering:are they next? For morale purposes, acompany is better making any job cuts atone time, he said. “Make your changes,tell them, ‘We’re done now.’”

Phillips may be the kind of person thatmachinery salesmen love. The reason isthat he is a firm believer in having redun-dant machinery capacity. “One thing wehave done over the past 10 years is put inredundant pieces of equipment, back-upsfor every piece of equipment.”

In just about every instance, a singlemachine is adequate for production.However, redundant capacity comes inhandy in two types of circumstances,noted Phillips. If one machine is downfor maintenance or repairs, for example,production can continue with a back-upmachine. Also, if there is a rush order orhigh demand, a second or third machinecan be put into production.

The company’s shop even is equippedwith three air compressors. “One can doit,” said Phillips, but in times of high

level of production, two compressors areutilized.

The strategy behind redundant ma-chine capacity comes back to thecompany’s strength: reliability. The ad-ditional machine capacity enables thecompany to avoid and eliminate poten-tial bottlenecks in operations, Phillipspointed out. “Anything that could be-come a bottleneck has a back-up, readyto go...That way, if we tell you we canget your product made, we have everyreason to believe we can.” A machinefailure or breakdown will not impede thecompany’s operations.

“That was one of my biggest initia- PE

tives,” said Phillips, when he acquiredthe business.

Perhaps even more striking is whenPhillips decided to make investments inmachinery and equipment: during theGreat Recession.

“Rather than back away from it,”Phillips said, he looked on it as an oppor-tunity to add more equipment capacity.As he added machine capacity, it re-duced the number of employees heneeded to hire.

“We try to use automation to increasecapacities,” said Phillips, “not eliminatejobs.” For more information on the com-pany, visit http://www.reidpkg.com/.


georgia crate company finds strong niche in custom work · as pumps or motors. “they’ll design...

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