Steel King Rack Donation Helps Food Bank Optimize Storage
Posted on Jul 8, 2020
When Steel King was first approached by a volunteer at Operation Bootstrap to help them optimize their storage space, the answer was an easy “yes”. As the principle food bank for Portage County (where Steel King is headquartered), Operation Bootstrap feeds almost 545 people a day through referrals from social service agencies, community organizers, and school workers. What’s more, the organization is staffed entirely by volunteers, including the executive director and board members, which means that all contributions go directly to helping the community.
With increased unemployment rates due to COVID-19, demand for Operation Bootstrap’s services has increased as well. However, due to supplier shortages related to the pandemic, the organization was facing challenges in purchasing crucial items such as toilet paper, laundry detergent, and dish soap.
“When items have become available, we wanted to have the opportunity to buy more and store it in our warehouse.”, said Cathy, an Operation Bootstrap volunteer. “Our current warehouse had limited space for storage of pallets of food. We were limited to horizontal storage.”
To help solve this problem, Steel King donated thousands of dollars’ worth of SK2000® pallet rack and wire mesh decking, along with the freight and installation of the product. The new racking will help Operation Bootstrap to utilize vertical storage in their warehouse, enabling more efficient use of the space and freeing up additional floor space for product storage.
“Operation Bootstrap helps our local community immensely by providing much needed assistance for families with basic needs in crisis situations,” says Dan Wierzba, part of the Inside Sales team at Steel King who helped facilitate the donation. “Working with this organization helps people to realize that there are many, many families in even our somewhat small community who simply don’t have things most others take for granted.”
