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PalletCentral • July-August 2020
palletcentral.com
Wayne Wagner,
Sales Manager,
Midwest Machinery
and Automation
We have been fortunate
during this difficult time.
All our manufacturing
partners are in the Midwest,
fabricate with U.S. steel, and
utilize many U.S. components, so
we have not made any changes to our
production because of supply. We have been more
cautious when traveling to perform installation and
service work to make sure we are not interfering
with our customer's day-to-day schedules as they
deal with COVID-19 measures.
We have seen several interesting trends during
this time. First, many customers tell us they have
a hard time getting employees to come to work
out of fear, and many cannot get employees to
come back to work. These employees are receiving
unemployment and have been making more money
at home. While you might think that this is good for
a company that provides machinery and automation
solutions, it is not entirely good because we still need
quality people to run machines. We hope this is a
temporary problem that gets better as the economy
improves and the unemployment programs return to
normal.
Secondly, many customers are still busy and need
to produce quality pallets at a high rate. While there
is a lack of quality employees available, we will have
more demand for machines and that creates longer
lead times. We strive to get our machines to market
as quickly as possible because we know they are
necessary for the industry and our customers. We
hope that this trend is also temporary as we make
improvements to our process, and as unemployment
programs return to normal.
