there is a huge pallet manufacturing company about 20 miles south of Lafayette on US 52 at the intersection with IN 28. It has a fifteen or twenty acre site with a couple of pole buildings and a stockpile of God only knows how many pallets stacked up five stories high and maybe an acre or two in area. There are also several mountains of sawdust about.

I always wondered what kept the sawdust from spontaniously combusting.

I drive by it a couple of times a month or so and every time I go by I say to myself, "why hasn't that burned yet?"

So over the weekend it caught fire. The blaze was so huge that all the little fire departments, volunteer, sent in their trucks to fight it. Our department in Lafayette I hear even sent down a command vehicle and directed the fight. They fought it all night to contain it. It closed down both roads.

I also always wondered at the huge stack of inventory on hand.

Now of course, unless arson is proved, they will get retail for all the burned product.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

I think the paper said it was a $5 mil gross business per year....how many pallets is that?

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

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Apparently, it's worthwhile to have that volume of inventory (pallets and sawdust pile) on-hand. An inventory consisting of acres of pallets, and a huge pile of sawdust, wouldn't seem to be an appreciating asset, but I don't know the turnover rate taking place either. Perhaps there is a speculative market time value to carry the inventory?

At first blush, I would be less interested in paying what it might cost, to insure a stockpile like that, than being the insurer of that stockpile.

We had a business like that nearby -- a tire recycler that went up a few years ago. They had half a million tires -- it burned for days. Nearby residents have been running periodic checks on their groundwater since. It's in a semi-rural area, and lots of people rely on wells. Here's a link: Watertown Tire Fire

A big pile of sawdust could spontaneously combust, I suppose. $5 mil a year suggests that pallets aren't worth much, considering the scale of the operation. I know the pallet factories in my area seem to gravitate to run-down industrial properties.

Yes it will!

New pallets are around $20 each (for decent ones. Flimsy ones can be found for <$10, heavy duty ones for 4 x 55 gal. drums can run $30+). About a quarter million pallets/yr. I wonder how many it employs? Wouldn't think their overhead would be too high.

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my buddy ran a pallet company.it was in an old warehouse that also had overstock tires from the local goodyear dealer.and in another part it had barrels of oil from the local oil distributor.supposedly the fire started in the truck they dumped the wood chips in.they had a machine to chew up the pallets to make the chips and they were all sent to a local hog facility for bedding.supposedly a hot nail caught the chips in the truck on fire and eventually it burnt the whole place down.about 30 minutes into the fire the local "police chief" halted their efforts,not the fire chief.the reason:the two packing plants within 3 blocks needed the water more.it burned for days,as far as we were concerned the fire was electrical.the electrician that did the wiring in the building had an electrical fire in his own home about 3 weeks later.

Used pallets are big business around here. One of my customers said that he gets $3.50 per pallet.

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Well not to far from Tom W. at the state prison in Westville IN they have a contract to build pallets using inmates labor with a population over a thousand they have no shortage of labor. On the spontaneous combustion issue I understand the heat needed to ignite wood from decaying sawdust would need to be 400 deg f to catch fire pretty unlikely. I also get my compost from the prison as they compost all of there sawdust from the the pallet making process, mounds and mounds of it there and offer it free if you load yourself or a few bucks per yard if they use there loader and labor to dump in your truck. No used or refurbishsed pallets so the saw dust used in the compost is good clean mix of soft and hardwoods.

The blue CHEP pallets are niceeeeeeee. We used to get shipments in on pallets that would just fall apart once we took the goods off them, crap pallets. We would keep the good sturdy pallets for storage on our pallet racks and any non blue or red pallets that were good would go onto our stack of pallets for shipping. The rest went out on the dock for the pallet guy to pick up. He probably made decent money picking up pallets from businesses and selling them to the local pallet company.

I read this morning that they employ 120 folks at that location and have several others.

They said they will be back in business by tomorrow.

doesn't sound by that it is too likely it is arson, though the fire marshall is investigating it.

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[SIGPIC] Diesel loving autocrossing grandpa Architect. 08 Dodge 3/4 ton with Cummins & six speed; I have had about 35 benzes. I have a 39 Studebaker Coupe Express pickup in which I have had installed a 617 turbo and a five speed manual.[SIGPIC]

..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Generally with causes unknown electrical is usually the fall guy used. I usually suspect common owner arson was the real probable cause. I suspect certain people in more numbers probably than thought have burnt their way to prosperity.

With todays replacement value insurances getting as high as they are I tend to suspect more fires will occur at some point. Premiums will rise as I am positive this is one factor insurance companies have already examined in depth. In fact today premiums are very high already compared to historic levels.