A material handling apparatus including pallets developed to operate in radio frequency rich environments. Pallets are provided having at least one large compartment capable of enclosing at least one electronic device or a package populated with a plurality of devices. The devices include RFID pallet tags that communicate with RFID item tags and RFID beacon tags positioned within distributed RFID networks. The devices include sensors to monitor pallet conditions to which a pallet management system is responsive. The devices include wireless transceivers for communicating indicative information through LAN, WLAN and Cellular communications networks. An antenna array operating on different radio frequency signals is provided. The apparatus includes a power resource in order to facilitate long term autonomous operation.