by Randy Squires, PCCA Vice President of Warehousing
Most people think of safety as hard hats, training manuals, and compliance requirements, but for those of us within the PCCA Warehouse Division, it means much more. Our leadership team sees safety as a direct contribution to operational performance. A safer workplace leads to fewer disruptions, more efficient operations, lower costs, and better service for our farmers and gins. Safety creates results.
If you were to walk through any of our warehouse locations, you would see a very active environment that demands constant focus from our employees. Safety has become increasingly important as our warehouse locations have expanded across states and up to a 1.5 million-bale capacity. In the same way that our farmers are good stewards of the land, our priority is being a good steward of their crop when it leaves the gin. That means maintaining safe operations, treating employees fairly, and operating efficiently so we can contribute to the bottom line for the farmers we serve.
Safety Starts with People
We’ve transitioned to a more proactive safety approach, which means our locations undergo regular safety reviews, employee training is adjusted each year, and plant managers work closely with their teams to identify opportunities for improvement before accidents occur. We’ve worked hard to create an environment where safety isn’t something that’s “done” to employees, but something they are fully involved in. Safety committees and training programs ensure that our employees have a voice in improving operations, which we have found leads to quicker adoption of new procedures and programs. For example, we invite OSHA into our facilities for consultations – we don’t just wait for them to come to us. They give us a thorough review and tell us what to adjust, so that when they visit the following year, we don’t have a pile of fines and safety violations. It results in major cost savings that, in turn, go back into our members’ pockets.
Our Altus, Clearwater, and Liberal plants have all been recognized as OSHA SHARP locations, meaning our operations there are carried out with exemplary safety standards and are nationally recognized for it. This was no easy feat and reflects years of hard work and dedication by the entire warehouse team and Forrest Doshier, our Safety and Compliance Director. We’ve had a significant drop in workers’ compensation claims and incidents as a result.
However, our safety achievements don’t just benefit employees – they ultimately benefit our farmers. Every decision we make at PCCA ties back to the producer or gin. This team-wide mindset influences our decisions about equipment, technology, maintenance, employee retention, customer service, and more.
Safer Operations, Better Operations
When we show up to work each morning, rain or shine, our goal is to make sure everything is running smoothly and safely, and that everyone, from the office to the plant, is doing the best we can for our farmers and helping them get the most value from their cotton.
We’re not just a cotton warehouse; we’re not just a storage location; we are a service for our customers, too. We are constantly evaluating our systems for improvements – one of the most notable, which you may be familiar with, is the installation of our private intermodal rail facility at our Altus, Oklahoma, warehouse. The train has taken millions of truck miles off the road and has made shipping farmers’ cotton to the ports much quicker and more efficient. Our goal is that when a container is opened overseas, the first thing our customer sees is clean, high-quality cotton. We want buyers to recognize that cotton shipped through PCCA warehouses is clean and contamination-free.
Our commitment to safety is reflected in other aspects, too, such as the ability to track a bale through our warehouses. Any time it moves, we can tell where it is. When you have hundreds of thousands of bales on a plant, knowing exactly where each one is requires tremendous organization and coordination. We are also working on maintenance technology and other projects to improve the longevity of our facilities and equipment, because this benefits the farmers’ bottom line.
When it comes to technology evolution, we’re making leaps and bounds. Many of these improvements aren’t visible from the outside. Many of the changes involve dashboards, tracking systems, and reporting tools that help us monitor and identify inefficiencies. Sometimes innovation isn’t a single breakthrough; it’s a series of smaller improvements or adjustments that add up over time.
Not every idea we have is going to work out – that’s just the nature of the business – but we would rather know that something doesn’t work than continually wonder whether it will because we never tried it. The important thing to understand is why we are trying something in the first place. Every improvement we are pursuing is intended to benefit the farmer. If an idea doesn’t tie back to serving our members and gins and improving that value, then we have to ask why we are doing it.
Results You Can Measure
The same attention to detail that protects our employees also protects our farmers’ cotton. We believe in giving our employees something meaningful to own, allowing them to do it, holding them accountable for it, and recognizing them when they do it well. The results speak for themselves. In 2016, there were 18 injuries reported in PCCA warehouses. Four years later, in 2020, that number was just six. By 2025, the warehouse division concluded the season with only three injuries. All our safety efforts, no matter how big or small, contributed to these improvements.
Throughout the year, we provide shorter education and training sessions, but in August, when the season has slowed, we ramp it back up. In September, we have a long safety training session. We get to refine our skills and focus on what we discovered needed more emphasis or refinement during the season. We train both new and experienced employees on proper bale handling, storage, retrieval, and transportation practices. We focus on maintaining bale integrity, preventing contamination, and preserving packaging quality.
The moral of the story is that we don’t ever want to get comfortable with where we are today. Whether it’s labor, technology, equipment, or operations, we are always looking for ways to improve. Safety is a key objective of our operations. It’s one of the many ways we deliver consistently competitive results and irreplaceable service to the entire cotton supply chain.
At PCCA, our employees get the job done in every kind of weather: heat, rain, cold, wind, snow – no matter what. You can rely on our mission of safe operations and strong returns.
