Thrift Stores: Brought to You By Material Handling and Supply Chain
By Alex Batty, MHI Marketing Communications Coordinator |@mhi_alex
Today is National Thrift Shop Day, and I was toodling around some thrift shop websites (because I like me a good thrift shop) to try and find a way to somehow tie this in with material handling.
Gotta find that content somewhere.
Turns out, I don’t need to reach at all. The content is already there for me to repurpose and make a point with.
Desert Industries, or the DI as the locals call it, is the thrift shop I grew up with. Now they do a lot of great employment things that you can read about on their website, but I saw this video and ’bout screamed. You can follow one material being handled throughout the whole donation process! WATCH -> https://www.deseretindustries.org/blog/does-my-donation-make-a-difference
Me, watching this video: MATERIAL HANDLING EVERYWHERE! CONVEYORS! PALLETS AND SHRINK WRAP! OH LOOK A FORK TRUCK!
I spotted a whole bunch more equipment that our members make, so give me a shout out at @mhi_alex if you spotted your equipment!
Now material handling is not an island, and is often talked about as part of the whole supply chain and ties closely to logistics, part of which you saw in the video. But they have another one that made me smile.
Meet Steve. Steve is an adorable human being who seems to love his job, which is driving a truck for DI. Check out this video to see the day in a life for logistics for a thrift store.
But of course, the DI is not the only thrift store in town. Living out here at MHI HQ in good ol’ North Carolina, the major thrift store of repute is Goodwill. Goodwill also does good employment things and we’ve actually partnered with Goodwill of the Southern Piedmont in the past to produce a special edition of our material handling textbooks that they’ll use in their Forklift Certification course.
You can read about how we partnered with them here, and learn more about their training courses here.
At the end of the day, if you’ve shopped at a thrift store – you’ve participated in material handling. If you’ve ever donated gently used items – you’ve participated in material handling. So the ever-present moral of the story is, material handling makes everything work.
