Industry: hospitality supply
Pallets for the warehouses that feed the parks and hotels
Infill warehouses in Orlando supply Universal, Disney, regional hotels and the Orange County Convention Center. Their inbound freight is steady and so is the pile of empty pallets it leaves.
The freight
Food and beverage, linens, cleaning supplies, amenities and equipment all arrive at a central warehouse and are broken down for delivery. That pattern means pallets come in loaded and go out mostly empty, with the surplus left at the dock. The Orange County Convention Center sits on International Drive, and events add to the swing in demand.
What the pallet needs
| Need | Why |
|---|---|
| Dry Grade A or B | Deliveries to kitchens and storerooms get checked |
| Standard 48 x 40 | Fits the racks and trucks of a general warehouse |
| A route out for the surplus | Empties accumulate as fast as inbound freight arrives |
| Cover in summer | Storm season shortens the life of an open yard |
Where these docks are
Many sit in the infill districts of south Orlando. The Orlando Central Park page follows the roads and buildings.
Why an events calendar shows up in pallets
A supplier to hotels and convention halls receives goods ahead of an event and sheds the empties after it. A single trailer of 26 pallets that arrives loaded the day before a large show leaves 26 empties behind that week. Tourist seasons work the same way on a larger scale: school holidays, summer vacation and the end-of-year weeks bring heavier deliveries, and a few days later the dock has more empties than it can stack.
Questions for a hospitality dock
- Are the pallets all one size, or does a linen supplier use a different one from a food supplier?
- Which empties belong to a pool and must go back?
- Is there covered space for the stacks in the wet months?
A week at a supply dock
| Day | Inbound | Empties |
|---|---|---|
| Before a convention | Several loaded trailers | Few |
| During | Smaller restocking loads | Building |
| After | Almost none | The full surplus |
Linen, mattresses and kitchen freight
Hotel freight is light and bulky. Linen and towels arrive in bales or boxes that cube out a pallet at a few hundred pounds, and mattresses and furniture stand taller than any rack beam. Kitchen supply is the opposite: cans, dry goods and cooking oil in jugs push a pallet toward its load rating. A hospitality warehouse therefore holds two kinds of pallet at once, a good one for weight and any usable one for volume.
Seasonal swings
Hotels, parks and convention halls buy ahead of busy weeks, and the supplier's dock follows the calendar. After a holiday weekend the stacks of empties grow. A supplier that lists how many pallets it expects in a busy month, and what size, gives a buyer something to plan against; a vague promise of "lots" does not.
What a hotel receiving dock checks
Hotel and resort receiving docks are small and shared with guest-facing areas, so the pallet that arrives must be tidy: no loose nails, no splinters, no wet boards leaving marks on a floor. A delivery driver often leaves the pallet behind, and the property then has to store, return or discard it. Properties without a compactor or a yard usually push empties back to the supplier, which is how a pile builds at the central warehouse.