Tree of Life

Distribution Center Makes a Successful Move with the Help of WarehouseRack.com

Founded in 1970 in St. Augustine Florida, Tree of Life (http://www.treeoflife.com) quickly became the premier wholesale distributor and marketer of natural and organic foods in the southeastern US in the 1970's. Through the 80's with the ever expanding natural and organic food market, Tree of Life continued to grow its operations and establish distribution facilities in key markets across the country. In 1988, Tree of Life entered the specialty food distribution and since then has developed a nationwide distribution network with 10 centers and 3,200 employees and most recently has expanded into Canada.

 
Because of the continued growth of consumer demand of natural and specialty foods, in 2007, Tree of Life found they needed to relocate their Dallas distribution center into a much larger space. The biggest challenge they faced was time in moving their existing warehouse storage system and expanding into the new building. In order to stay operational during the entire move, they had approximately four weeks to move out of their 140,000 square feet building into their new 324,000 square feet location including tear down, moving, re-installing, not to mention purchasing 140,000 square feet of new pallet rack systems.

After putting out a request for proposal, Tree of Life selected WarehouseRack.com to assist them with the move. WarehouseRack.com was chosen as they were a local vendor, had extensive industry knowledge and expertise and offered a valuable cost savings compared to other bidders. According to Clint Wheeler, Director of Operations of Tree of Life, "We felt like they knew what they were doing and could provide us the level of service we needed to get the job done quickly."

In just a few short weeks, 140,000 square feet of pallet rack was purchased and brought in from Fort Worth, unloaded and installed. The existing warehouse rack was then torn down and moved to reinstall at the new location. Wheeler stated, "Our team was pushing in products on pallets right behind the installers. We worked hand-in-hand getting our new warehouse operational in record time. We couldn't have done it without their help."

Due to the extreme deadline of this project and the difficulty factor of the job, including accurate dimensions to the pallet rack and installing according to OSHA guidelines, this was considered a hard install. "WarehouseRack.com provided a knowledgeable crew that worked with extreme speed, care and accuracy," stated Wheeler.

Wheeler and Tree of Life have since recommended WarehouseRack.com to their other 10 distribution centers nationwide because they were so impressed. "We will most certainly use WarehouseRack.com in the future," Wheeler declares. "They go above and beyond what is asked of them."