(Editor’s note: This is the 17th installment in a monthly series highlighting some of the region’s unsung manufacturers that make products essential to the economy and, in many cases, our way of life.)
The sounds of buzzing saw blades and booming hammers echo throughout Atlas Barrel and Pallet Inc.’s production area as dozens of employees do their part to carry out a process of fabricating and recycling three generations in the making.
One worker picks up a wooden pallet, a flat square structure ubiquitous in every warehouse that allows forklifts to carry as much as 2 tons of goods at a time. He checks for damage and slams it down to expose the broken pieces. The undamaged portions are fused together to create recycled pallets.
Other employees steer forklifts through the company’s sprawling 16-acre site in the Harrisville section of Burrillville, moving pallets here and there through the towering stacks of hundreds of pallets that will be eventually trucked to customers throughout the region and beyond, as many as 520 at a time.
Some may look out at the stacks at Atlas and see wooden boards. But Heather Ross, Atlas president, sees much, much more in the products the company has been manufacturing and recycling for nearly 70 years.
In fact, she says she has an eye for pallets like someone shopping for just the right pair of shoes for certain occasions, be it high heels, sneakers or flipflops.
“When I see pallets, that’s how I see it,” Ross said.
Some pallets are made with heavier material, she says. Others are designed for lighter loads, and some are what’s called “combo pallets,” made from recycled and new materials.
“There’s hundreds of different kinds of pallets here built to meet whatever the customer needs,” she said proudly.
Ross’ deep knowledge of pallets comes from her family’s roots.
The company, doing business as Atlas Pallet Corp., was incorporated in 1969, but Ross says her grandparents, Earl V. and Heather Handrigan, had been in the recycling business as far back as 1946. In its early days, Atlas was small, with a small number of employees working at the company’s warehouses in Central Falls, Pawtucket and Lincoln throughout the 1940s to 1960s.
Along with giving the family business its start, Ross credits her grandfather for sharing his entrepreneurial essence that has been passed down through the generations.
“What I admire most about him is his entrepreneurial spirit because starting your own business, running your own business is hard work – it’s not for everybody,” Ross said. “When I think about my grandfather and the stories I hear about him, and how he and my grandmother worked to start Atlas, he was a true entrepreneur.”
Ross’ father, Earl E. Handrigan, certainly exhibited the spirit of an entrepreneur, too. From a young age he could be found running one of his first businesses repairing wooden soda crates.
After his father died in 1970, the younger Handrigan and his brother Carl took over Atlas and led the family business as it blossomed at a time when pallet recycling was still an emerging industry, Ross says. In 1972, Atlas purchased the former Mohegan Mill property in Burrillville, where the company is still based.
“My father brought definition and discipline to an industry that really didn’t exist,” Ross said. “He really took this business and saw it for what it could be and developed the process, developed customers and really worked so hard.”
After studying economics in college and working in the insurance sector, Ross took the reins of Atlas Pallet but credits her father for setting the stage for her to expand the customer base, improve efficiencies and maneuver into different product bases. Ross’ son, Max, sees the very same spirit in her.
“All the skills that we talked about, my grandfather amplified through her,” said Max Ross, who is an MBA student at the University of Rhode Island and handles Atlas’ business development. “She’s done a lot for the company, she’s had that same driven mindset, same motivation and same passion for it.”
Atlas now has about 50 employees.
[caption id="attachment_457443" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
NEED A LIFT? Heather Ross, president of Atlas Barrel and Pallet Inc. in Burrillville, speaks with forklift operator James Orourke.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Decades ago, sustainability was not on the mind of business owners when placing pallet orders at Atlas, but now a major focus of Atlas Pallet is helping its customers lower their net carbon emissions by using recycled lumber.
Through recycling pallets and repurposing wood, the company is able to extend a pallet’s lifetime, which is typically measured in “turns,” or the number of one-way trips it takes. This can range between 12 to 15 turns depending on the kind of materials the pallets are carrying, Max Ross says.
When a pallet’s usefulness comes to an end, it gets recycled or goes to salvage where it is repurposed as firewood or goes into a bin at the edge of Atlas’ property for use by people in Burrillville.
Atlas Pallet’s goal is to generate zero wood waste.
“One of our core values is bringing sustainability to our clients and helping them get to net zero,” Max Ross said, noting they are always looking for ways to extend their products’ lifetime. “It’s a small change a company can make that really has an impact.”
Heather Ross says Atlas can show customers the environmental effects of their pallet order, using a calculator developed by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Waste Reduction Model.
The model estimates the emissions differences between tossing used pallets in a landfill and recycling the lumber for other purposes. “What I love the most is helping our customers to help their sustainability story,” she said. “That to me is fun: finding homes for somebody else’s unwanted or surplus pallets.”
Throughout its seven decades of business, Atlas Pallet has grown a solid base of customers in the New England region and beyond, Ross says, also noting how she values the interconnectedness of the southern New England manufacturing community and has maintained long-standing customer relationships. One of her grandfather’s first clients, Hindley Manufacturing Co., remains a customer.
Along with recycling pallets, Atlas Pallet also offers several custom services, which allows the company to tailor pallets to a customer’s needs.
This includes making heat-treated pallets, which are popular among customers in food production and pharmaceutical industries. Heat treatment sterilizes the wood, removes invasive species, reduces risk of mold and bacteria growth, and meets export compliance requirements. The pallets go into a giant kiln located on Atlas’ site at 133 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes, Ross says.
Also, Atlas can build custom pallets depending on what a customer needs with a variety of materials, shapes and sizes ranging from the size of a standard sheet of paper to 20 feet long.
Running the family business can be tough. Ross says being an entrepreneur requires resilience and optimism in the face of constant challenges. But among the many decisions she makes each day, Ross says she strives to treat all her employees – some of whom have worked there for 30 to 40 years – like family.
“If those employees work hard for me, then I’m going to work hard for them,” Ross said.
