Materials Handling Editor Cliff Holste and I went and enjoyed the bi-annual ProMat material handling show in Chicago in January, and generally had a good time. (See Promat 2009 Show Review).

I have attended many dozen trade shows in my career in numerous capacities, including many shows as an exhibitor, but generally as a software provider, not with a major equipment seller.

So it was interesting talking last week to a large materials handling vendor about how it works at a show like ProMat.

As you may or may not know, as an exhibitor at these kinds of shows, you cannot directly install your booth yourself. You must use union labor, either “general” show crews, or a union crew you hire yourself from a company authorized to work in this case at Chicago’s McCormick Place, though it is pretty much the same in every city (though some are more “friendly” than others.)

What is probably surprising to some is that this applies not only to the booth fixtures and displays, but to the equipment as well. So, the vendor I spoke with, along with many others at the show, had a major, live materials handling system demonstration. The vendor’s technicians supervise the install, but they can’t do it themselves.

This company brought in a local crew they had used in the past. Keep in mind this exhibit installation company basically knows nothing about materials handling systems. The materials handling company I spoke with tries to minimize some of the pain by building “snap in” connections for electricity and other components as much as is possible back in the shop, but that can only take you so far.

The show opens on a Monday morning. The booth construction starts the previous Thursday. This particular vendor, one of the industry’s largest, required a crew of 12, at the union rate of $95 per hour straight time, to get the construction done by Sunday. The weekends count as overtime.

In addition, most days they required a crane operator at $125 an hour, who spends most of the time sitting in his equipment, but if you just rely on the general crane workers available from the show, it may be hours between the need and when they show up. So, it’s better to pay and have the crane available when needed, even if that’s just a fraction of the time.

This same crew needs to come back for tear down when the show ends, but that process takes much less time, fortunately.

It’s also good to have some “walking around money,” a political term referencing what happens on some election days, but the same concept applies to, for example, perhaps influencing how fast the truck that is to be loaded with your stuff after the show actually shows up on a dock.

It all adds up to a lot of money. So next time you go to a show of any kind that features a lot of equipment, recognize the effort – and money – it took to get there.

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