One of the more memorable booth stops at Manifest this year was Pickle Robot — and not just because of the name. I sat down with Mike Fair, Senior Director of Product Management, to talk about what it actually takes to pull humans out of one of the worst jobs in a warehouse: unloading floor-loaded containers and trailers.
We covered:
— What the Pickle Robot does: unloading containers and trailers autonomously and feeding freight directly onto a connected conveyor system
— Why this job is so hard to staff — extreme temperatures, brutal physical wear, and constant turnover
— The freight types it handles: import apparel, complex hub-to-hub distribution freight, and soon, parcel
— Why onboarding is faster than you’d expect — no prior freight knowledge needed, no training period, just press play
— Big-name customers already using it: Ryobi, TTI, and UPS
— What’s next: loading trucks is on the roadmap
— The story behind the name (yes, it’s a riff on Apple Computer Company)
Sponsored by SPI Logistics—the premier freight agent program in the country. See our freight agent guide for our interview series with actual agents on how they made the jump to SPI→https://go.everythingislogistics.com/SPI
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