Inventory turns are usually a slow, predictable thing. You watch the curves, you stage to the curves, you ship to the curves. Spring 2026 was not slow or predictable.
Between April 6 and April 28 we shipped 4,141 triple-wall 48×40×36 Gaylords — Grade B, lidded, palletized — out of a floor that historically holds about 2,800 at any given moment. That is not a number we are bragging about. It is a number we are studying, because we ran ourselves down to single digits twice and had to push three orders out to the following week.
What we think happened
Three things stacked in the same three weeks. First, two of our recurring closed-loop customers extended their order window to cover a co-pack contract neither of us could discuss publicly. Second, a regional distributor whose name is on a building you have probably driven past called and asked for two trailers, which turned into five over the month. Third — and this is the one we are least proud of — we mis-graded a sub-set of February inbound that we had earmarked as Grade C, which meant the Grade B pile was thinner than the system thought it was.
What we are doing about it
We have already pulled an extra inspector onto the regrade station and pushed a hold on accepting any inbound Gaylords below a documented two-trip history through end of June. We also moved 220 of our older Grade B inventory — the ones we were hesitant to ship on a long route — back into local distribution to free up the truly fresh stock for the customers we know will turn it.
None of this is dramatic. None of it is even particularly interesting unless you run a packaging yard. But the discipline of writing it down — saying out loud where we got it wrong, what the math looked like, and what we changed — is how we keep the next quarter from looking the same.
What it means for you
If you have been buying triple-wall 48s from us routinely and your order shifted by a day or two in April, this is why. If you were planning to ship empties to us in May and your pickup got pushed by a week, this is also why. We took it on the chin so you would not have to.
If you are reading this and thinking about a recurring program, the short summary is: we are open for new closed-loop conversations, we will quote within the day, and we will be honest about whether the math works at the volume you are talking about. Sometimes it does not. We have written about that before.