Heritage Pallets of Georgia is a family owned and operated pallet company located about 50 miles North of Atlanta offering new, recycled, custom build and heat treated pallets. In addition, we run an extremely competitive pallet buy back program to turn your excess pallets into a source of recycled income.

Industry: Wholesale Building Materials
Company Size: 11-50 employees

Heritage Pallets of Georgia, LLC.

Savvy Admin PROD

**CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER **

Heritage Pallets of Georgia White, Georgia | On-site | $125K-$150K base + bonus

We are a family-owned pallet manufacturing and recycling business in north Georgia. We are

hiring a COO to run the business day-to-day so the owners can step into a board role and focus

on long-term direction. This is an operator seat. Three directors report to you. The board reports

the vision. You run the company.

**About Heritage Pallets **

Heritage Pallets has been around for years and the business has grown into something the

current structure cannot fully support. Revenue is climbing. Profit is up year over year. The team

is capable. The yard is busy. What is missing is a single person who owns daily execution end

to end.

Right now, decisions get stuck in gray areas. Loads get planned without clear ownership.

Communication runs through informal channels. The leadership team is doing the best they can

without a real chain of command above them. That is on the owners, and they know it. They are

fixing it by bringing in a COO and stepping into a board role.

Father and daughter currently own and operate the business. The father has decades of pallet

industry experience. The daughter runs strategy, sales leadership, and systems. Both are

moving out of day-to-day operations and into a board of directors role with one outside director

joining them. They are not looking to be replaced. They are looking to be supported.

**The Seat **

You are the highest-ranking executive inside the business. The board sets direction. You

execute. You own production, logistics, maintenance, the yard, inventory, labor, and the

relationship between sales and operations. You report to the board.

**Reports to: ** Board of Directors (currently the two owners plus one outside director)

**Direct reports: **Three directors covering operations and production, sales, and finance and

admin. You will also have indirect oversight of the rest of the team through those three.

**Compensation: **$125,000 to $150,000 base, plus a bonus tied to operational and financial

performance. Bonus is real but not the entire story. We are looking for someone who is bought

into building a great company, not someone chasing the next bonus check.

**Location: ** On-site at our facility in White, Georgia. This is not a remote job. Pallet companies

are run from the yard, not from a laptop in a coffee shop.

**What You Own **

You own the entire daily operation of the business. If something is happening today inside the

four walls or on a truck, it is your responsibility.

**Daily Operations and Throughput **

● Run the yard, the plant, logistics, and maintenance every day

● Make real-time decisions so the board is not pulled into daily issues

● Set production expectations and hold the floor accountable to them

● Identify bottlenecks and remove them

● Standardize repair and build processes so output does not depend on who is on shift

**Structure and Accountability **

● Build and maintain a real org chart that everyone follows

● Make sure every employee knows who they report to and what they are responsible for

● Hold the three directors accountable to their roles. No overlap. No gaps. No side

conversations

● Replace tribal knowledge with documented systems

**Weekly KPI Review **

You build the dashboard. You run the meeting. You drive the action items. We are looking at

metrics like:

● Cost per pallet, new and recycled

● Pallets per man-hour

● Line output and downtime on the Viking and repair lines

● Scrap and waste percentage

● Inventory levels and turns

● Freight cost per load and per mile

● On-time delivery percentage

No more guessing how the business is doing. It gets measured weekly and reviewed with the

board on a defined cadence.

**Logistics and Load Planning **

● Own routing, scheduling, and load decisions

● Manage freight cost and carrier relationships

● Eliminate the confusion around who decides what goes on a load. That decision lives

with you and the structure you build under you

**Inventory and Yard Organization **

● Implement real inventory tracking, not estimates

● Set min and max levels for key SKUs

● Reduce dead inventory and overproduction

● Organize the yard for flow and efficiency

**Labor and Performance **

● Oversee hiring, training, and staffing levels

● Align labor to actual production needs

● Set performance expectations for every role

● Hold supervisors accountable for their teams

**Maintenance and Equipment **

● Implement preventative maintenance schedules

● Track downtime and root-cause it

● Make sure the Viking, saws, and nailers run at capacity

**Cost Control and Profitability **

● Know the true cost per pallet by type

● Drive repair-versus-rebuild decisions with data

● Find margin leaks and close them

● Make sure operations and sales are aligned, not working against each other

**Sales Alignment **

● Work through the Director of Sales, not around them

● Make sure what gets sold can actually be produced and delivered profitably

● Help guide pricing decisions based on real production cost

● Push the team to move slow or excess inventory

**Board Liaison **

● Filter and organize information from the team into clear board updates

● Translate board direction into executable plans for the team

● Bring decisions to the board cleanly: what is working, what is not, what we need from

them

● Eliminate noise, emotion, and incomplete information from the board's view of the

business

**Who We Are Looking For **

This is not a stretch role. We are not training someone into the seat. We need someone who

has already done this job at scale and is ready to do it again here.

**Required Experience **

● Proven track record running operations with at least $10 million in P&L responsibility

● Manufacturing, recycling, building products, lumber, logistics, or a closely adjacent

industry. You do not have to come from pallets, but you have to come from a real

operating environment with trucks, lines, materials, and labor

● Experience reporting to a board, ownership group, or PE sponsor and translating their

direction into execution

● History of building org charts, KPI systems, and accountability structures inside

companies that did not have them

● Experience managing through directors, not just running things yourself

**Required Mindset **

● Thick skin. The owners are stepping out of operations after running it for years. The

transition will not always be smooth and you will get pushback

● Comfortable being the person on the receiving end of frustration when things go wrong,

and not deflecting

● Operator instincts. You can walk a yard, watch a line run, and tell within an hour where

the money is leaking

● Calm and direct under pressure. You do not panic, you do not posture, and you do not

need to be the loudest person in the room

● Builder of people. You make the directors better, not smaller

**What Will Disqualify You **

● Career consultant or strategist with no operating reps. We need someone who has

actually run the floor, not someone who has advised people who run the floor

● Someone who needs a fully built environment to be successful. This one is not fully built

yet. That is the job

● Someone whose first move in a new seat is to blow up the team. A lot of the people here

are good. They have been working without structure. Build the structure first, then make

personnel decisions based on what you see

● Someone who needs to be the smartest voice in every room. The owners are still

owners. The directors are good operators. You will be respected, but the room is not just

yours

**How We Will Work Together **

The board sets vision and high-level direction. You run the business. The line between those

two things will be drawn clearly during onboarding so there is no ambiguity.

**What the board owns: **

● Long-term vision and strategy

● Major capital decisions

● KPI review and oversight

● Supporting and aligning with you

**What the board does not do: **

● Direct employees on the floor or in the office

● Step into daily decisions

● Bypass the COO to give direction

On-site, board members will observe and ask questions. They will not direct the team.

Everything flows through you.

**The First 90 Days **

We are not handing you a written 90-day plan. A real operator builds their own. But here is what

we expect to see by the end of your first quarter:● A defined org chart, communicated and adopted

● Clear ownership of every recurring decision in the business, including load planning

● A weekly KPI dashboard up and running with the directors

● A documented read on the team, the lines, the yard, and the cost structure

● A short list of the three to five biggest issues you are going to attack first, with timelines

● A working rhythm with the board: weekly, monthly, quarterly

**Compensation **

● Base salary: $125,000 to $150,000 depending on experience

● Annual bonus tied to operational and financial performance, structured to reward

sustainable improvement, not short-term cuts

● Standard benefits package

● Relocation support is open for discussion for the right candidate

**How to Apply **

Send a resume and a short note. Not a cover letter template. Three to five paragraphs in your

own voice telling us:

● A business you ran or operated, the size of the P&L, and what you actually did with it

● A specific problem you walked into, how you diagnosed it, and what changed because of

you

● Why this seat, in this business, in this stage of your career

We will read every one. The notes that get a callback will be specific, honest, and short.

**Heritage Pallets of Georgia ** PO Box 276, White, Georgia 30184 | heritagepallets.com

Chief Operating Officer

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Heritage Pallets of Georgia, LLC.

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