A pallet wrapper is a turntable and a roll of stretch film on a mast. You put a loaded pallet on it, press go, and the film wraps round the load while the mast goes up and down. It counts its cycles and its film. Ours runs one cycle a night on a pallet with nothing on it, and in the morning the film is standing on the pallet on its own, in a shape, and the shape is not a load.
I am the despatch team leader at a warehouse and the pallet wrapper is the last thing a pallet sees before the lorry.
What it does.
A turntable at floor level. A mast beside it with a roll of stretch film on a carriage. The forklift puts a pallet on the turntable, the operator ties the film to the pallet and presses go, the turntable spins and the carriage climbs and the film goes round and round the load from bottom to top and back, and cuts, and the pallet is a solid block you can put on a lorry.
It counts cycles and it weighs the film it has used, because film is money.
One cycle a night. About two in the morning. About four hundred grams of film, which is a full wrap of a tall load.
The pallet.
An empty one. Whoever or whatever runs the cycle puts an empty pallet on the turntable first, because in the morning there is an empty pallet on it, and there was not at the end of the shift, because I check, because a pallet left on the wrapper is a forklift into the mast.
The film is on the pallet. It is wrapped as if round a load, a full wrap, bottom to top, and the load is not there, and the film has not collapsed. It stands. About a metre seventy. Narrow at the bottom. Wider at about a metre forty, where it goes out on both sides, and in, and up, to a top that is rounded.
It is the shape of a person standing on a pallet with their arms at their sides, being wrapped.
What has been checked.
The wrapper. Serviced, and the service man ran the cycle himself on an empty pallet, in the day, and the film collapsed to the turntable, which is what film does.
The camera on despatch. At two, the turntable turns. The carriage climbs. The film pays out and goes round, and it goes round something, because film does not go round nothing, it goes round the shape it goes round, and on the camera the shape is there in the film and not there inside it, and the film is going round a man, and the turntable is turning him, and his arms are at his sides, and the mast is climbing past his shoulders to his head.
It cuts at the top. The turntable stops. The shape stands there, in the film, and the camera watches it until the day shift comes in.
The day shift.
They cut it off. They did from the start, before anybody had told me, because a wrapped empty pallet on the machine is a thing you cut off and throw in the skip and get on. The lad who does it now says the film is always warm and it is always tight, tighter than the machine wraps, tight the way it would be if the thing inside had been pushing out against it.
I asked him what happens when he cuts it. He said it falls down. He said it falls down like a person falls down, all at once, at the knees, and then he puts it in the skip.
Who.
Despatch has had one death. 1996, a man on the wrapper, the old wrapper, the one before this one, a faster one with no guard, who had stepped onto the turntable to fix a film tail while it was running and been caught, by the film, and turned, and wrapped, and the carriage had climbed, and the people on the other side of the despatch bay had seen a pallet being wrapped and had not looked twice because that is what the wrapper does.
The film had gone over his face at about the thirtieth turn. The machine had finished its cycle and cut.
What is done about it.
The night cycle is on the machine's count and the film it uses comes out of my budget as a wastage line, and I have had a word about it from finance, and I have said the machine has a fault, and they have said to get it fixed, and I have said I am trying.
What I do.
I lead the despatch team.
I have put a knife on the wrapper. A safety knife, on a lanyard, on the mast, at the height of the thing's hands. It was not there in 1996, because the machine was older and nobody had thought of it, and it is there on every wrapper now because of him.
The cycle still runs. The shape still stands there in the morning. But for the last fortnight the film, when the lad gets to it, has been cut. From the inside. A slit, from about the waist down to the pallet, clean, the way a safety knife cuts, and the shape is still standing, but the film is open at the front, and the knife is on its lanyard, and the lad says it is warm.
He has been trying to get out for twenty eight years, and I gave him a knife, and he has started. I do not know what happens when he is out. I am not sure he does. I have told the lad to leave the shape alone now and let him finish, and the lad asked me what he was supposed to put on the wastage sheet, and I said put film, and he said how much, and I said all of it.