While numerous Olympians are preparing to set world records in Paris, the team at ALAN is enjoying a record year of its own thanks to the largest pallet jack donation in its 19-year history.
It all started in 2022, when the Material Handling Equipment Distributors Association, responding to ALAN’s request for help with Hurricane Ian relief, introduced ALAN to NOBLELIFT. Within days, NOBLELIFT donated three electric pallet jacks to assist the Harry Chapin Food Bank in Fort Myers – and let ALAN know it would be happy to help out again.
“Many in-kind donors would be one and done after such a donation, especially because material handling equipment can be so expensive,” said ALAN Executive Director Kathy Fulton. “But thankfully for us, the opposite was true.”
Over the next two years, NOBLELIFT continued to say yes to multiple ALAN requests, ultimately donating more than $30,000 worth of material handling equipment to nine different non-profit ALAN partners across the United States. Some, like the NYC Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, use their donated equipment to help with refugee relief efforts. Others, like Truckers Safety, Support and Supply Fleet, employ theirs to support poverty relief initiatives.
This would usually be the part of the story when we’d say something like “in-kind generosity doesn’t get any better than this.” However given what happened next, that would be a massive understatement.
In February of this year, NOBLELIFT called ALAN with a first-of-its-kind-offer: Would ALAN be interested in taking possession of 80 semi-electric pallet jacks to use as needed for disaster response and recovery efforts?
“Needless to say, our answer was a highly enthusiastic yes. After all, we’d never received an offer of this size, and we frequently get requests for this type of equipment,” Fulton said. “But then we realized we had to quickly get to work, because with no logistics assets, space or services of our own, we needed several other in-kind donors to help us accommodate and manage it.”
Shortly thereafter, one longtime ALAN contributor, Partners Warehouse, agreed to house the pallet jacks free of charge until they could be redistributed to our non-profit partners. And another, Port Jersey Logistics, donated the transportation needed to move the pallet jacks to Partners’ warehouse in Elwood, Illinois.
Meanwhile new ALAN partner CargoSense donated 80 customized QR code placards so ALAN could individually label each pallet jack. (“That way, every time a jack is rehomed, the non-profit will be able to scan the QR code and share impact stories spotlighting how the equipment is boosting its humanitarian work,” Fulton explained.)
According to Fulton, ALAN has already started distributing the donated pallet jacks. Two have made their way to Gentry, Arkansas, to aid Adventist Community Service with tornado response efforts (thank you UPS Foundation and Coyote Logistics for donating the transportation). Six have been delivered to Valdosta, Georgia, where they are helping Second Harvest of South Georgia combat hunger in their community. And several others are awaiting transportation donations so they can head to their new homes in California, Connecticut, and Texas.
The ALAN team anticipates distributing several others to non-profits that need MHE for relief efforts this Hurricane Season and will share the remainder with various other disaster relief organizations and non-profit as requests for assistance come in.
“It’s a great feeling to know that we already have this equipment on hand and ready to be deployed, because it means we can assist our disaster relief partners on the ground much faster – and help boost the operations of more community-based non-profits who don’t have extensive logistics assets of their own,” Fulton said. “We’re so thankful to NOBLELIFT for this incredible gift and to our friends at MHEDA, Partners, Port Jersey and CargoSense for the roles they’ve played in supporting it.”
“I have been familiar with ALAN for many years, starting with my days of serving on the MHEDA Board of Directors. I agree with their mission,” said Loren Swakow, Managing Director for NOBLELIFT. “Disaster relief is needed. We cannot help directly to those that need help, but we are happy to help ALAN who does all the hard work with boots on the ground.”
ALAN will be sharing more updates about the continuing impact of this donation in future blogs, newsletter stories and case studies, so stay tuned. In the meantime, if you’d like to read more about the difference pallet jacks and other pieces of MHE can make, check out our blog at https://www.alanaid.org/mhe-myself-and-i/.
*If you’d like to help with the movement of these pallet jacks to their new homes, drop us a line at alanaid.org/contact.
