Family Tree Farms, located in California’s San Joaquin Valley, a leading producer of stone fruit that is sold at fine grocery retailers throughout the U.S., Canada and many parts of Asia and Mexico, has joined the ever growing group of companies that have switched from wood pallets to plastic pallet solutions, selecting iGPS Logistics (igps.net) as its new national shipping platform.

Family Tree’s decision reflects what is becoming an increasingly evident trend in the supply chain as more and more companies look for something newer and more efficient than the wooden pallet that has been the work horse used for the last 40 plus years for the transportation of products to market.
“It’s the right time to make the change to iGPS plastic pallets,” says David Jackson, CEO of Family Tree Farms. “We put so much effort into growing, harvesting, packaging and marketing our fruits-so it makes sense that we also should take the opportunity to upgrade the quality of the pallets we use for shipping our product to our valued customers.”

iGPS will supply Family Tree, and several of their stone fruit neighbors with their pallet requirements out of the new depot that iGPS has opened in nearby Fowler, California.

“We chose this location specifically to service the produce growers and packers located in this region,” says Jeff Liebesman, CEO of iGPS Logistics. “The Fowler Depot is just one of 11 others that have been opened during the last year in geographically convenient locations to service the increasing demands of iGPS’ growing portfolio of customers.”

By creating a common set of operating procedures across all of these depots, iGPS ensures that they provide a consistent quality and specification of pallet to all of their customers. iGPS uses a strict set of quality criteria to ensure consistency of supply, which creates efficiencies that drive costs down and provide savings to iGPS customers.