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Even though there are millionsof people out of work in thisUnited States, many pallet com-panies are reporting having dif-ficulty finding qualified labor tofill all their positions. And withObamacare and other rules,people continue to get more ex-pensive each year. That is whycompanies are looking at waysto automate and improve theirproduction.

By Chaille Brindley

Labor Woes

Viper Helps Pallet CompaniesBoost Nailing Productivity, ReduceWorkforce Needs

Viper Knows Nails and Nailing: From its on-site services to plant surveys to reduce inefficiencies, Viper wants to solve andprevent problems. Pictured left to right, Craig Eubanks, Cody Carpenter, Ty Lewis, Jennifer Mazur, Todd Mazur, Sean Johnsonand Del Wagner.

Helping companies solve their laborand production woes has been one of thekey reasons for the success of Viper In-dustrial Products, which was establishedin 2009. Over that time Viper has be-come a significant player in the nail sec-tor and is starting to make a mark in thenailing equipment arena.

Viper offers pallet nails, pallet nailingtools and equipment, service and is nowthe sole sales representative for theWoodpecker nailing machines. Laterthis year, Viper is launching the Viper3000, a high-speed nailing system de-signed to compete against other top-linesystems.

A key driver for all of the things that

Viper does for its clients is to reduce theamount of downtime, make employeesefficient and try to eliminate labor re-quirements.

Todd Mazur, president of Viper,commented, “Our company is adaptingto changes in the industry where labor isa major concern for pallet companies allover the country. The right type of auto-mation and the proper nail and tool pro-gram can boost productivity and make itpossible for companies to produce morepallets with fewer people”

He added, “Once we get engagedwith customers we try to prevent prob-lems before they occur. In our businessno news is good news, which tells us our

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customer’s expectations are being met.”One of the ways that Viper does that

is by visiting a new customer and audit-ing its current nail programs from nailguns used at repair or manufacturingtables to looking at nailing needs for au-tomated systems.

Del Wagner, sales manager for Viper,said, “Not all nails are created equal.You can get more holding power with anail that is configured properly.” Viperwill work with customers to simplifynail programs and make sure they havethe right nail and/or equipment for thejob.

Mazur said that his people will workwith a pallet company to review a PalletDesign System™ (PDS) analysis to seeif a pallet is overdesigned. Mazur ex-plained, “We can look at the nail andfigure out how to reduce the deck boardthickness based on using a more favor-able nail.”

There are a lot of nail factors that canbe reviewed based on a PDS analysis,such as the length of the nail, the diam-eter, the thread type, etc. Some specialtypallets or crates require a heavier gaugeor longer nail. Mazur added, “We knowa lot about fasteners, but we also know alot about pallets and how our fastenersare used in their finished product.”

A few years ago the country faced ahardwood lumber shortage and peopleopted to use more pine and SPF material.Mazur said that pallet suppliers started toget calls from customers that boardswere popping off the top deck. Viperadvised its customers in those cases to

start using a rink shank nail because itgets better performance in the lumbercompared to a screw shank nail when itcomes to softwood material. This solu-tion solved the problem.

Let’s look at some of the real-worldscenarios where Viper helped customersimprove their production processes, cutlabor requirements and boost production.

Viper Overhauls Nail Program atL&R Pallet

A major pallet manufacturer and recy-cler in Denver, Colorado frequentlyfaced problem with its hand tools andnails. Jamie Doyle, plant manager forL&R Pallet, explained, “We were using adifferent vendor for nails, and we were

getting nails from themand handling our own

tools. Our mainte-

nance department was servicing nailguns that we purchased. It was a hugehassle for us because we probably have150 nail guns here.”

Jamie Doyle added, “Our maintenancedepartment was capable of doing it, buttaking care of nail guns got treated as anafterthought.”

Nail guns were breaking down, jam-ming, causing extra nail discharges. Itwas not only a production problem, ithad turned into a safety concern as well.James Ruder, president of L&R Pallet,observed, “What brought this to a headfor me was the downtime that we experi-enced. And it was a major safety issue.We were getting new hires that had littleexperience with the equipment. Andsome safety issues arose.”

Viper solved the problem by bringingin better nailing tools, handling all the

Nailing Programs: Viper helped L&R Pallet reduce its nail skus and reduce down-time by putting in better hand tools. From a full audit to color coding tools for variousdepartments, Viper simplifies everything.

High-speed and Affordable: Todd Mazur said that Viper will soon launch theViper 3000 nailing line capable of producing 2,500-3,000 pallets on a shift at a muchlower cost than other systems. Pictured above is the front half of a complete system.

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servicing and training workers on properpractices. Viper set up a tool manage-ment program where tools for each de-partment were color coded. This allows amanager to easily identify if a nail gun isout of place. This program also ensuresthat each tool is serviced in a timely man-ner.

Jamie lamented, “Nailing problemswere constantly on our radar, and that isnot something you want as a production-oriented company.” Tools were wearingout where the nose cones were stretchingallowing for multiple nails to be dis-charged at once. This resulted in qualityand safety concerns.

By bringing in better equipment, Vi-per was able to solve the issues. Mazurexplained, “Many of the suppliers willtry to put as cheap of a tool as possible inthere because it is an expense. But we putbetter quality tools in there so the cus-tomer has less downtime related to theequipment, and we have less labor in it tomaintain and keep it running well.”

Wagner added, “Recycling is a toughbusiness and you need good tools tohandle the job. We offer on-site serviceso everything is repaired as needed.”

To service L&R Pallet, Viper found atechnician to handle servicing the tools.Jamie said that he was impressed withhow Viper was willing to enter a marketwhere it did not have a presence. Headded, “Viper just didn’t come in look-ing to sell one thing, they wanted to see

how they could help us fix our prob-lems.”

Ruder couldn’t be happier with the de-cision to switch to Viper. He explained,“Our nail program with Viper was a littlebit more expensive initially, but it solvedso many problems that we couldn’t evenput a number on the conveniences andbenefits we have received.”

Viper focuses on the total value of itssolution, which includes the expertise ofits personnel. Jamie suggested that DelWagner was a wealth of knowledgeabout nailing systems, and he reallyhelped them solve even some nailing re-lated issues on their automated nailinglines.

Ruder commented, “A lot of palletcompanies are experiencing a lot of turn-over and this adds to safety challenges,and the Viper program helped us havebetter tools and training to accommodatenew workers, boost production and im-prove safety all at the same time.”

One thing Viper did was look to con-solidate and simplify the nail program.Ruder said, “Viper made recommenda-tions to help us consolidate our SKUsand reduce the number of the type ofnails that we were buying, which makesus more efficient.”

With tools maintained on-site, down-time was significantly reduced. Jamieraved, “Viper took over the managementof the nail and tooling program so I don’teven have to think about it anymore.

What used to be a huge problem is nowcompletely off my radar screen.”

Woodpecker Nailing SystemSolves Labor Issue forC.W. Price Enterprises

Focusing on specialty pallets hashelped C.W. Price maintain a strongbusiness. The company has moved fromlong runs of common sizes to shorterruns of specialty designs. For years thecompany made most of those pallets byhand. But labor challenges have made itimperative to find a way to automate andreduce labor needs.

Homer Townsley, vice president ofsales for C.W. Price, observed, “Wehave gone from having applicants comethrough the door almost on a daily basisto where we are lucky if we have a fewapplicants come through here once permonth.”

Located in Missouri, the companyfaces labor challenges and has found au-tomation to be a worthwhile solution.Townsley said, “The labor pool is notvery robust right now. We are sittinghere scratching our heads trying to re-place people when they leave. This ma-chine has allowed us to move some ofour better guys to other jobs.”

Townsley explained, “The Wood-pecker Jr. is there everyday building agood pallet, and I can put a new hire onthe machine and make it work just fine.”

This gives the company flexibility toput more senior employees on othertasks and put new hires on the positionand still be very productive. The Wood-pecker Jr. can produce about 450-500pallets per day with one worker whereasfour experienced builders used to pro-duce about 600 pallets per day.

Townsley bragged, “We build a lot ofcomplicated specialty pallets that havealmost a solid top with maximum cover-age and very little gaps between theboards. We tend to use thin deckboards.It is very labor intensive when buildingthis design on the hand tables. But thisWoodpecker does a great job with thatdesign.”

C.W. Price operates its own scraggmill and cuts lumber to size. Based onthe customer specification, C.W. Pricecuts the lumber so there is just a quarterinch gap between the boards.

Townsley raved, “The WoodpeckerJunior is about the only machine we have

Woodpecker Jr.: WIL-son Pallet has dealt with its labor challeges by installing anailing machine offered by Viper.

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found that can handle really thin lumberand can produce this design with noproblems.”

Other approaches they tried frequentlyresulted in broken boards. He explainedthat it was easy to changeover from dif-ferent designs, reload the nails and trainnew workers.

Townsley said, “The machine pro-duces a better looking pallet than whatsome builders can make by hand. Everyday it produces quality pallets. There areno shiners. The Woodpecker Jr. hashelped us improve our quality while cut-ting staff requirements.”

Viper made on-site visits to help C.W.Price to determine what machine wouldbe best. Not being just a voice on the endof the phone and getting to know theiroperation helped to make the best recom-mendation possible.

And the big surprise was the cost, heestimates it will pay for itself in 1-2years.

Pallet Factory Finds ToolImprovement Thanks to Viper

Viper has worked with The Pallet Fac-tory headquartered in Memphis, Tennes-see for a number of years. Through apallet nail program, Viper helped ThePallet Factory reduce nail-related safetyissues. Recently, The Pallet Factoryadded a new Industrial Resources repairline, and Viper worked to adapt the nailguns to work with the line. A key ap-proach is to help customers with any as-pect of its nail or nailing issues.

“Todd Mazur of Viper has put to-gether a top notch team. Viper has al-ways treated me great and delivers agood quality nail. Viper keeps us up-dated on what is going on in the marketso that we can plan in terms of costs,”commented Michael Doyle, president ofThe Pallet Factory.

The Pallet Factory is one of the fewlicensed companies that is producing9BLOC pallets. This requires a specialnail, and Viper is one of the few compa-nies that is licensed to provide 9BLOCnails.

One of the big advantages of workingwith Viper is its focus on responding toindustry issues. Mazur explained,“When the anti-dumping issue arose andthere were nail shortages all across thecountry, our customers, such as The Pal-let Factory, didn’t experience any prob-

lems. We were so involved in their busi-ness and kept in communication so theyknew there would not be a problem sup-plying nails.”

Viper to Launch InnovativeNailing System

Identifying a need in the range of nail-ing machines offered on the market, Vi-per has in development its own Viper-branded nailing system. Called the Viper3000, it will compete with the Viking,GBN, Storti and Cape lines, according toMazur.

Mazur stated, “Our system is a con-tinuous nailing machine where mostnailing machines have to stop to shoot anail. We have some technology that willnail a pallet and never stop.”

He estimated his machine can produce6-8 pallets per minute depending on thepallet design. The Viper 3000 uses col-lated nail guns to handle the nailing pro-cess.

Mazur explains the biggest benefit isthe price point and simplicity of the ma-chine. He said the Viper 3000 competesagainst a different market than even thebigger Woodpecker system. The Viper3000 will be able to produce between2500-3000 pallets in a shift. He said itwill be competitive to other high-speednailing systems for basically a fraction ofthe cost.

Mazur commented, “The Viper 3000will cost less than other high-speed

No Problems: From on-site service to effective communication and training, Viperhas displaced Bostitch and made the nail and tool program better, according to MikeDoyle of the Pallet Factory.

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nailers to service and maintain because ithas a simpler design.”

Wagner said, that “80% of the prob-lems that you have with a high speednailing line is with the nailing devices.”He added that the simplicity of the Viper3000 will greatly reduce these issues.

The first unit is set to be installed at aplant in Missouri later this month. Unlikea bulk nail machine where fixing a prob-lem in the nailing head can take 20 min-utes to a few hours. A unique bracketwill allow for quick tool changes to re-duce downtime. The Viper 3000 is madein the USA with a license to an engineer-ing company that specializes in packag-ing, pallet assembly and palletizingequipment.

Viper ExperiencesImpressive Growth

Established in 2009, Viper has grown30% or more every year since the com-pany started. And since it began duringthe financial crisis that has been an im-pressive run. Viper sprung up out of theBostitch business when the nailing giantdecided to spin off its industrial divisionand work through distribution.

Viper has decided to focus on the pal-let sector because that is what it knowsbest. Wagner said, “Part of the demise ofBostitch was that it lost focus on its in-dustrial business…The pallet industry –that’s where our experience and passionhas always been.”

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