While supply chains and shipping logistics have received a burst of scholarly attention over the past decade, the bulk of it centers on the shipping container and the container ship, telling a story of big boats, big containers, big machines, and the systems of labor and logistics that move them around. The relative invisibility of stretch wrap outside the warehouse or distribution center is echoed in the critical literature on the movement of cargo. Today they remain an industry leader their semi-automated machines cost in the neighborhood of $10,000. Lantech debuted their first semi-automated pallet wrapping machine to much enthusiasm at the 1973 Packaging Machinery Manufacturers trade show, and by 1977 they were selling one machine per day. Unlike its domestic cousin cling film (popularized in the US as “Saran Wrap”), which serves to seal in moisture and keep out air, stretch wrap was designed for its elongation and tensile strength, which helps hold objects together and keeps unruly loads under control. However, the shrink-wrapped bag system had significant limitations at the time, and the brothers hypothesized that stretch wrap - which they initially conceptualized as a kind of rubber band that would stretch around a pallet load - could help to overcome some of these issues. As a corporate history of Lantech explains, the Lancasters initially aimed to develop an infrared heating system for shrink wrapping pallets (an alternative palletizing system that involves a loose plastic bag that shrinks to a tight cover when heat is applied). Lantech, the self-proclaimed “inventors of the stretch wrapper,” was founded by brothers Pat and Bill Lancaster in 1972. There isn’t a definitive date when stretch wrap was first used in industrial settings. Stretch wrap is now ubiquitous for wrapping and stabilizing palletized loads, but its history and rise to prominence is somewhat murky, with details scattered through industrial product websites and scholarly papers.
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