>>...often without the benefit of forklifts and pallets.

Great analysis, including some things I hadn't read elsewhere.
That said, it's underappreciated how important palletization is for logistics. It's similar to the revolution in global shipping that's come out of adoption of the TEU shipping container. The US armed forces have taken palletization to an extreme (even HIMARS rockets are delivered to the launcher as a kind of pallet - and they have a system that puts multiple cruise missiles into a palletized launcher that can be dropped out of a cargo plane, the rockets all launched from the pallet post-drop).
Here's a question for anyone: has the RF palletized *any* of its logistics?