BOTTLE WINE REFRIGERATORS

I have often regretted that I never took any photographs as momentos of past employers. This time I decided to make the effort and, on my last day at the warehouse of Messrs Damage & Sendit, slyly smuggled my camera into the building while everyone else was out at his tea break. Here I am mounted on a PPT or Powered Pallet Truck, used mainly for loading pallets onto the trailers of articulated lorries. They are great fun to use.
Damage & Sendit operate this warehouse for a well-known chain of stores ranging in size from village shops to sizeable supermarkets. Because the smaller stores have no unloading facilities and their deliveries have to be taken across the pavement and in through the front door of the shop, goods mostly go out in cages ...pallets being reserved for large stores with loading bays. The cages being assembled here were destined for stores at Thatcham and Tilehurst. The warehouse is refrigerated and divided into two chambers kept at slightly different temperatures. "Produce" (fruit, veg. and flowers) are on one side; "chill" (basically anything you would keep in a 'fridge) and meat are on the other. The orders are assembled heaviest-stuff-first to avoid damage to more delicate items. The cage directly above the forks of the PPT contains the beginning of a produce pick. Produce starts with potatoes and ends with mushrooms and flowers. On either side of it are cages containing the early part of a chill pick. Chill starts with fats and liquids and proceeds to eggs and cream cakes. Those blue and silver things made from spacesuit material are "shrouds" for keeping bananas at correct temperature during transit in refridgerated lorries.
The orange stickers on the cages are handwritten labels. Damage & Sendit's client are not wealthy, big-league players in the supermarket game and the warehouse is not over-provided with such modern conveniences as label-printing machines. Personally I was always glad of this as I enjoy any activity that involves making marks on a blank surface with some kind of writing implement. My labelling was famous for its beauty and legibility. Others were not so conscientious. Anyone who doubts the decline of handwriting, education and literacy need only look at some of the elaborately awful labelling to be found here. I forgive the difficulty of Poles or Kurds with such placenames as Penrhiwceiber or Ynysyddu, but there is no excuse for a native-born Briton who writes "Bercon" for Brecon, or "Western Ho" instead of Westward Ho!".

Originally built as a refrigeration warehouse it stored butter, cheese, cream and dairy supplies from 1903 to 1979. Conversion to office and loft space was delayed seven weeks until three feet of ice was defrosted from the walls. Located on Wynkoop Street in Lodo, Denver.

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