I was dating Morgan at the time I got my first Materials Handling catalog from Global Industrial. Sometimes I’d be like, “oh, uh, I might should go water the plant,” and would sneak away to look at the catalog. I’m pretty sure Morgan knew that I didn’t keep any plants; the only thing I was growing was her resentment toward the catalog. But it was an amazing catalog. It had stuff like short pallet racks that you could buy when you were keeping pallets in rooms that weren’t warehouses – I bought some. It also had stuff like Pallet Stackers.

Do you know what a Pallet Stacker is? It’s a thing that stacks pallets if you don’t have the thing that normally stacks pallets (i.e. a forklift). You tend to need a pallet stacker when you’re keeping pallets in a room and not a warehouse. We fit the bill. The pallet stacker was burly and had two legs that would straddle the pallet, then two forks that would get in the right position (keeping this post PG) with respect to the pallet. Then, in the model we purchased, you would pump a foot lever and slowly lift the pallet off the ground. (Should the hydraulics have failed, I knew a guy with two thumbs who had worked in the industry.)

The thing about the Pallet Stacker was it had a lift capacity. And if you exceeded the capacity, you might pump really hard and get a pallet off the ground, but it would slowly sink back to the ground. Next we’re going to jump ahead a few months for one of those stories where you’re like “I HAVE A GENIUS IDEA” but it turns out to be a stupid idea.