The Membership Drive Is On!
This year's membership drive is now underway, and as always, the competition will be intense.
In addition to valuable cash prizes, the winner now also receives the membership plaque, presented at the Annual Meeting. With the highly successful 2019 Annual Meeting now in the books, it is time to work toward 2020.
When you recruit new members, the entire WPA membership is the winner!
New members can join and pay on the website. Here is the link: www.westernpallet.org
JANUARY 2020
2020 Annual Meeting Speaker Program Delivers Valuable Insights
The wood waste panel session included Joe Flood (at left), Nick Korn, Rodney Wadel and Raymond Gutierrez. Beatrice Vasquez was the moderator.
This year's speaker program provided many valuable insights for Meeting attendees. Several of the highlights from each speaker follow below.
Brad Gething - NWPCA and Fire Code Update: Industry Solutions from Coast to Coast
- Back in 2018, there were fire code changes being proposed by the National Fire Protection Association and the International Code Council that would have been very onerous for the wood pallet industry. NWPCA was actively involved in the development of the revised requirements and was influential in ensuring that one of the underlying principles of the revised requirements would be to address the fire risk with sound operating practices.
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The result was the creation of NWPCA’s Fire Code Compliance Manual (click here to download.) “This is basically your Cliff notes version of how to get into compliance,” Gething said. “It’s a pretty straightforward approach to these new codes.” There are four major components: site plan, fire prevention plan, fire emergency response plan, and security plan.
The 2018 code changes are now being rolled out at the state level. It is important to act proactively and reach out to establish a relationship with your local code inspectors, if you have not yet done so, rather than reacting to being found in non-compliance. “That's a much more difficult conversation to have than to reach out to your code official and say, ‘Hey, we have these new codes and I want to get in compliance. Can you come in and check me out?’”
About 60% of NWPCA members have downloaded the fire compliance manual ( and it has also been distributed at NWPCA events. And while it is written to apply to U.S. pallet operations, it has been downloaded by pallet operators around the world, as well as by fire compliance officials looking to better understand pallet operations.