Systems and Costs for Warehouse Receiving and Retail Store Delivery of Citrus Fruit

Anthony, Joseph P.,

No 355588, USDA Miscellaneous from United States Department of Agriculture

Abstract: The costs of 16 systems for receiving, handling, and delivering citrus fruits (oranges and grapefruits) were developed. The systems were the possible and practicable combinations of 12 cost factors that were developed. The cost factors included handstacked unloading, slipsheeted unloading, palletized unloading, and pallet bin unloading of truck shipments; handstacked unloading and palletized unloading of rail shipments; estimated wholesale losses; handstacked retail delivery; palletized retail delivery, mobile cart retail delivery, pallet bin retail delivery, and estimated retail losses. Models were constructed to reflect costs for handling cartons or carton equivalents of citrus fruits from unloading of the transport vehicle through order selection to delivery at the retail store. The palletized systems (both palletized unloading and palletized delivery) had the lowest total system costs for trucks at 40.0 cents per carton and railcars at 39.6 cents per carton. The system combining slipsheeted unloading with palletized delivery was a close second for trucks at 40.3 cents per carton and the system combining palletized unloading and mobile cart delivery was a close second for railcars at 40.4 cents per carton. The system using pallet bins for unloading and delivery had the highest total system costs at 44.8 cents per carton equivalent. Because the receiver owned the bins, the ownership costs of the bin including subsequent handlings and rehandlings were the main source of this system's disadvantage in this comparison. Total distribution system analyses could alter the relative position of pallet bins by including costs for other systems that do not fall in this comparison. The system costs ranged from a low of 39.6 cents per carton for the totally palletized railcar system to a high of 44.8 cents per carton for the pallet bin system. This total spread of 5.2 cents per carton (or 0.12 cent per pound) between these 16 systems shows how close the results were.

Keywords: Labor and Human Capital; Marketing; Production Economics; Research Research Methods/Statistical Methods; Supply Chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26
Date: 1978
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:usdami:355588

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.355588

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