JAN. 4, 2010 – A sure sign that you’re back home from a long road trip is when you see the big Piggly Wiggly distribution warehouse near Jedburg. The white 650,000-square-foot facility with the red horizontal line around it makes you breathe a sigh of relief because you know your home is nearby.

We visited the center recently and found it a beehive of activity where about 200 workers sort, stack, load and unload tens of thousands of items daily for distribution to the grocery chain’s 105 stores across South Carolina and eastern Georgia.

Forklifts are linked wirelessly to a computer that displays instructions to the 25 forklift drivers who each move 600-pound pallets from one location to another about 20 times an hour.

Nearby are long-time workers who sort “eaches” – individual items from cases of goods. When a store needs only four bottles of hot sauce or three cans of red cherries, these pickers use a computer-generated list to grab items from opened boxes and put them in special crates for the store. A good picker might average putting an item in the special box every 4 seconds; a great one might grab 1,200 per hour — one every three seconds, according to Woody Arsenault, the company’s director of warehousing and distribution.

Also impressive at the big warehouse is the chilled section where there are three “cold rooms.” The cold loading dock area is kept around freezing (warmer than this morning). Regular frozen goods — pizzas, frozen dinners and the like — are kept in a room that’s (-)10 degrees. Ice cream is kept in a smaller room that hovers at (-)20 degrees. It’s so cold in there that you can feel your forehead burn.

Here are some more interesting facts about the distribution center:

Milestone. The facility, which celebrated its 10th birthday in Jedburg in May, serves as the company’s center for operations. Piggly Wiggly, which has corporate offices are in West Ashley, also has a 185,000-square-foot warehouse in North Charleston that handles perishable foods — fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs and more.

First in the area. The company once owned a bunch of land adjacent to the facility that is now being developed by Hillwood, a Perot company, into a complex of distribution warehouses. Up to 10 million square foot of distribution warehouses are planned. That’s the size of 15 more Piggly Wiggly centers. If they have as many jobs as the Pig’s, that would be about 3,000 jobs for the area.

Volume. The average small Piggly Wiggly grocery store might offer 20,000 items; a larger one might have 35,000 different things for sale. About 1 million pounds of goods are shipped out daily from the center to its stores. Trucks making deliveries can visit up to three stores on a delivery run.

Turnover. Goods are constantly turning over. Once a case of something like a can of tomatoes arrives, it generally stays in the warehouse no more than three weeks. With fresh meats and produce, what comes in during the morning goes out in the afternoon.

Docks. The facility has 64 docks for loading and receiving goods in the main warehouse. The frozen foods section has an additional 18 docks. Goods are strategically prepositioned prior to loading of trailers to boost productivity. “Computer software optimizes the loading of the trucks,” Arsenault said.

Shifts. The day shift starts as early as 5 a.m. for some workers, while others start at 8 a.m. A smaller night shift starts at 8 p.m. and continues until work is finished, which is usually around 5:30 a.m.

Pallets. The pallets on which goods are shipped come from a variety of sources and in two forms: wooden and plastic. Wooden ones are cheaper — about $7 per pallet — but only last two or three uses. Plastic ones can cost up to $25 per pallet, but have a life expectancy of 10 years. Piggly Wiggly has purchased plastic pallets for internal uses to achieve cost savings.

Green. The company has invested in automatic fluorescent lighting that cuts off when people aren’t around. It also has a huge recycling area for plastics and cardboard. Annually, it also donates hundreds of thousands of pounds of damaged but usable goods — such as a cereal box with a mashed corner (the cereal inside is still good) or a dented can of peas — to the Lowcountry Food Bank.

Employee-owned. Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. is 100-percent employee-owned. As an American-owned company, it tried to buy American as much as it can, Arsenault said.

In coming months, look for Piggly Wiggly to announce dynamic and fun additions to its popular Greenbax program and to offer new branded products only available at … you guessed it — your local Piggly Wiggly.

Andy Brack is publisher of CharlestonCurrents.com, where this column first appeared. You can reach him by email here.