Handling Bales of Cotton in Public Warehouses: Methods and Equipment

Excerpts from the report: The biggest operating expense in warehousing cotton is that for physical handling of the bales. Bales are handled many times in moving them into, within, and out of the warehouse. When they arrive at the warehouse, they are unloaded, weighed, sampled, transported to the storage area, and stored ; on receipt of shipping orders, they are broken out of storage, transported to a loading area, and loaded into cars and trucks. Other handling, such as that required when bales are compressed, may also be involved. In warehouses, some of these jobs are done mainly by hand, others by powered handling equipment, and still others by a combination of machine and manual methods. Warehousemen can do this handling at lowest cost only by using the most efficient equipment and methods for each type of operation. At the request of the National Cotton Compress and Cotton Warehouse Association, the United States Department of Agriculture initiated research in cotton handling, which resulted in this and earlier reports. The purpose of the Department's cotton-handling research was to determine what handling methods and equipment cotton warehousemen can use to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Unloading, weighing, stacking, and other tasks in the warehousing of cotton were studied to determine the relative efficiency and economy of different methods. This report was prepared primarily for the use of cotton warehousemen. Principal findings are reported in terms of the relative efficiency and costs of different ways of doing the major handling operations.