Notes from the yard.
36 pieces written at the benches, the chambers and the fiber line — not by an agency. Specification, compliance, economics and craft, with the arithmetic shown.
Ask us about anything here
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- Pieces
- 36
- Oldest
- March 18, 2021
- Newest
- August 21, 2026
- Written by
- The yard
2026
- August 21Sustainability · 9 min · The grading bench
The best climate story in logistics is a dirty wooden rectangle
Nobody has ever written a press release about a pallet. It is, nonetheless, the most successfully circular object in global trade — and it got there without a single sustainability initiative.
- May 19Sustainability · 7 min · The repair benches
You have a broken pallet. Here is the whole decision tree.
Not a philosophy of circularity — an actual answer to the actual question, in the order the options should be considered, for one broken pallet in front of you right now.
- March 12Craft · 8 min · The shop
The collar system almost nobody in America uses
Four hinged wooden walls and a lid turn a flat pallet into a box that folds to an inch and a half when empty. It is standard practice across much of Europe and genuinely rare here, and the reasons are historical rather than good.
- January 27Economics · 7 min · Coordination desk
When the pallet is the reason your truck is overweight
On dense freight, the wood under the product can be the difference between a legal load and a weigh-station problem. Twenty pounds a unit across a full trailer is five tons.
2025
- November 7Compliance · 8 min · The export desk
The paperwork behind an export pallet
Under ISPM-15 the mark is the certificate — there is no document that travels with the pallet. That surprises people, and it means the records that matter are the ones you keep, not the ones you send.
- September 16Operations · 9 min · The grading bench
How to audit a pallet supplier in ninety minutes
You do not need to understand grading to assess a yard. You need to look at five things, ask four questions, and notice one thing about how they answer.
- July 22Operations · 8 min · Coordination desk
Do not put RFID on your pallets yet
Pallet tracking technology works. The reason tracking projects fail is almost never the technology — it is that the operation had no clean manual baseline and therefore no way to tell whether the system was telling the truth.
- May 13Craft · 7 min · The repair benches
Where staples belong, and where they absolutely do not
Staples are fast, cheap, kind to thin stock and have a large bearing area. They also have roughly a third of the withdrawal resistance of a ring-shank nail, which is why finding them in a deck joint tells you something.
- March 18Operations · 8 min · Coordination desk
Reverse logistics when you only have one dock
Every article on pallet recovery assumes a network, a fleet and a person whose job it is. Here is the version for an operation with forty staff, one dock and a growing pile out the back.
- January 21Operations · 10 min · Coordination desk
Designing a returnable packaging programme that survives year two
Returnable programmes almost always work in year one, because everybody is paying attention. The ones that survive year three share five structural features, and enthusiasm is not among them.
2024
- November 12History · 9 min · Coordination desk
The 2021 pallet squeeze, in hindsight
For about eight months, the most boring object in global trade became impossible to buy. It is worth remembering accurately, because almost every lesson people took from it was the wrong one.
- August 13Economics · 7 min · Coordination desk
Lumber futures do not set your pallet price
Every few months a customer sends us a chart of falling lumber futures and asks why their pallets have not got cheaper. It is a completely fair question with an unintuitive answer.
- June 25Economics · 8 min · Coordination desk
Why pallet prices move, and when
Recycled pallet prices are genuinely seasonal, genuinely regional and genuinely volatile — and almost none of that volatility has anything to do with the cost of wood.
- April 9Operations · 8 min · Coordination desk
Your pallets are being destroyed at the dock
Most pallet damage is not caused by the load, the rack or the road. It happens in a twelve-foot stretch between the trailer floor and the warehouse floor, and almost all of it is geometry.
- February 27History · 9 min · The grading bench
The forklift invented the pallet, then the pallet trapped the forklift
Neither object makes sense without the other, and for ninety years each has constrained the other's design. Almost every dimension in a modern warehouse descends from that argument.
- January 16Materials · 7 min · The fiber line
Dyed mulch, honestly
Coloured mulch has a reputation problem built mostly on a misunderstanding of what the dye is and a legitimate concern about what the wood underneath it might be. Both deserve a straight answer.
2023
- October 24Sustainability · 8 min · The fiber line
What happens to a pallet that finally dies
About four percent of the wood that enters this yard cannot be a pallet, a crate, a collar or a table ever again. Here is exactly where it goes, step by step, and why three magnetic passes are not excessive.
- August 29Compliance · 8 min · The export desk
Inside a heat treatment run
Fifty-six degrees Celsius for thirty minutes, at the core of the thickest piece of wood in the load. Everything difficult about heat treatment is contained in that sentence, and most of it is about where you put the probe.
- July 11Materials · 8 min · The fiber line
Kiln dried, air dried, heat treated: three different claims
These three terms get used as if they were interchangeable, which costs people money at borders and in mould claims. Two are about water, one is about insects, and only one of them is a phytosanitary certification.
- June 6Materials · 9 min · The grading bench
Pallet lumber is the wood nobody else wanted, and that is the point
Furniture takes the clear grain. Construction takes the straight lengths. Pallets take what is left — and it turns out that knots, wane and colour variation matter almost not at all for the job a pallet does.
- April 19Operations · 8 min · Coordination desk
Pallets are not stolen. They are collected.
There is a grey trade in used pallets, it is largely sustained by operations that have no idea what their own empties are worth, and the fix is not a fence. It is a price.
- March 14Materials · 10 min · The grading bench
Plastic versus wood, from a company that only sells wood
We do not sell plastic pallets and we are not going to start. That is exactly why this comparison is worth reading: here are the four situations where a plastic pallet is genuinely the right engineering answer, and why it is wrong for almost everything else.
- January 24Operations · 7 min · Coordination desk
Stretch wrap is a structural component
Most operations buy film on price per roll, set the wrapper once in 2014 and never touch it again. Film is the cheapest structural element in a unit load and the one most often misapplied.
2022
- November 30Materials · 8 min · The grading bench
Your carton is weaker than the test says
Box compression figures are measured on a new carton, in a conditioned laboratory, loaded once, quickly. Your warehouse is none of those things, and the gap between the two is where product damage lives.
- September 27Operations · 7 min · The grading bench
One inch of overhang
Product hanging over the pallet edge is the most common packaging fault in North American freight and the one least often identified, because the damage shows up two layers down and three days later.
- August 2Economics · 7 min · The repair benches
Repair or replace: the five-second decision at the bench
Our graders make this call about two and a half thousand times a week. It comes down to four questions, in a fixed order, and the first one settles most of it.
- June 14Craft · 9 min · The grading bench
Unit load design, or why the pallet is the least of it
The pallet, the product and the packaging form one structure, and most of the strength comes from the part people think of as wrapping. Design them separately and you will overbuild one and break the other.
- April 26Materials · 8 min · The grading bench
Cold pallets, warm warehouse, wet product
A pallet that has been outside overnight at 35°F and comes into a 68°F building does not just warm up. It condenses — on itself, and then on whatever you put on it.
- March 8Economics · 7 min · The repair benches
The cut-down pallet: the cheapest custom size there is
If your product needs a footprint nobody throws away, your two obvious options are a new build or a compromise. There is a third one, it costs about a third of a new build, and it arrives next week.
- January 20Operations · 7 min · The grading bench
Slip sheets: brilliant, awkward, and right about four percent of the time
A slip sheet weighs ounces, costs a fraction of a pallet and ships more product per container than any wooden unit can. It also needs a push-pull attachment, a disciplined operator and a product that tolerates being dragged.
2021
- November 16Economics · 8 min · Coordination desk
What an empty pallet costs you per week
Nobody puts empty pallet storage on a budget line, which is why operations routinely hold four times what they need. Here is the arithmetic, and it is larger than the pallet.
- September 29Operations · 9 min · Coordination desk
Why your fire marshal cares about empty pallets
An idle pallet stack is one of the highest fuel-load items in a warehouse, burns faster than the product it carries, and is the thing most likely to be sitting somewhere nobody designed for it.
- August 11Compliance · 7 min · The export desk
How to read an ISPM-15 stamp in four seconds
The mark is the size of a playing card and contains exactly four pieces of information. Three of them are checkable from where you are standing, and the fourth is the one that holds containers.
- June 22Craft · 10 min · The grading bench
Block or stringer: the trade-off nobody states properly
Stringer pallets are cheaper and lighter. Block pallets are stiffer and orientation-insensitive. Everything else written about this choice is marketing, and the decision usually comes down to a single question about your racking.
- May 4Craft · 8 min · The repair benches
The fastener decides everything
A pallet is not a wooden structure. It is a nailed structure that happens to be made of wood — and almost every service-life difference between a good pallet and a bad one comes down to about forty cents of steel.
- March 18Operations · 9 min · Coordination desk
Your pallet count is wrong, and here is by how much
In eleven years of walking other people's warehouses we have never once found a pallet count that matched the building. The gap is usually between eight and nineteen percent, it always runs in the same direction, and nobody is being dishonest.
If a piece here could have been a brochure, we did not publish it.
Reference tables
The numbers referred to above, in full, so you do not have to take a sentence's word for them.
Footprints
| Footprint | Inches | Millimetres | Construction | Where it lives | Our stock | Per 53' van |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GMA 48×40 | 48" × 40" | 1219 × 1016 | Stringer & block | Grocery, general distribution, retail | Deep | 480–560 |
| 48×48 | 48" × 48" | 1219 × 1219 | Stringer | Drums, reels, wire, square loads | Good | 392–420 |
| 48×45 | 48" × 45" | 1219 × 1143 | Stringer | Automotive, tyre | Good | 420–450 |
| 48×42 | 48" × 42" | 1219 × 1067 | Stringer | Telecom, paint, coatings | Good | 440–480 |
| 42×42 | 42" × 42" | 1067 × 1067 | Stringer | Chemicals, drums, paint | Good | 480–520 |
| 40×48 | 40" × 48" | 1016 × 1219 | Stringer | Beverage, rotated GMA | Good | 480–560 |
| 40×40 | 40" × 40" | 1016 × 1016 | Stringer | Dairy, beverage, bakery | Good | 520–580 |
| 36×36 | 36" × 36" | 914 × 914 | Stringer | Compact, display, light goods | Good | 640–700 |
| 32×30 | 32" × 30" | 813 × 762 | Stringer | Retail display, in-store | Limited | 900+ |
| 30×30 | 30" × 30" | 762 × 762 | Stringer | Light goods, display | Limited | 960+ |
| 48×20 half | 48" × 20" | 1219 × 508 | Stringer | Retail half pallet, promotions | Limited | 1,000+ |
| EPAL 1 | 47.24" × 31.50" | 1200 × 800 | Block, 9 blocks | European trade, retail | To order | 540–600 |
| EPAL 2 / ISO | 47.24" × 39.37" | 1200 × 1000 | Block | Europe, Asia, best container fit | To order | 480–520 |
| Asia square | 43.30" × 43.30" | 1100 × 1100 | Block | Japan, east Asia | To order | 460–500 |
| AU square | 44.88" × 44.88" | 1140 × 1140 | Block | Australia, chemical CP series | To order | 440–480 |
Trailer counts are for stacked, unstrapped loads of sound recycled stock and vary with repair thickness. We confirm the actual count on the bill of lading rather than estimating it. Anything not on this list we cut from reclaim — see custom milling.
Grades
| Grade A | Grade B | #1 premium | #2 economy | Custom cut | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Original boards | All | Some replaced | All | Several replaced | Mixed |
| Companion boards | None | Permitted | None | Permitted | Permitted |
| Stringer plugs | None | Permitted | None | Permitted | Permitted |
| Metal plates | None | Permitted, disclosed | None | Permitted | Permitted |
| Squareness | Within ¼" | Within ½" | Within ¼" | Within ½" | Within ½" |
| Colour uniformity | High | Mixed | High | Mixed | Mixed, fresh saw ends |
| Protruding fasteners | Zero | Zero | Zero | Zero | Zero |
| Moisture ceiling | 19% (15% on request) | 19% | 19% (15% on request) | 19% | 19% |
| Typical service | Retail-facing, export | Internal, bulk | Automation, racking | One-way, yard storage | Odd footprints |
| Relative price | Highest recycled | −18 to −30% | High | Lowest | ≈⅓ of a new build |
| Remaining life | Longest | Shorter — already repaired once | Longest | Shortest | Varies |
Grade A and #1 overlap: we use #1 for units that needed no repair at all and A for units that are cosmetically uniform. Where a customer holds their own written standard, that document governs and supersedes these names.
Load ratings and deflection
| Construction | Static | Dynamic | Racked (unsupported) | Unit weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recycled GMA 48×40 stringer, sound | 4,600 lb | 2,800 lb | 1,500 lb | 33–45 lb |
| Recycled 48×40 block, sound | 5,200 lb | 3,000 lb | 1,900 lb | 40–55 lb |
| Recycled 48×40 stringer, repaired (B) | 4,400 lb | 2,650 lb | 1,400 lb | 35–48 lb |
| New southern yellow pine, 5 top boards | 4,200 lb | 2,500 lb | 1,400 lb | 33–38 lb |
| New mixed hardwood block, 7 top boards | 6,000 lb | 3,500 lb | 2,400 lb | 48–58 lb |
| Heavy-duty new build, doubled stringers | 9,000 lb | 5,000 lb | 3,800 lb | 62–78 lb |
| Skid (no bottom deck) | 3,800 lb | 2,200 lb | Not for racking | 24–32 lb |
Representative planning figures for sound stock, not engineering certifications. Racked ratings assume the load spans two rails with nothing under the middle. Derate a further 20–30% for dwell times beyond a few weeks, because wood creeps under sustained load.
- Design ceiling: deflection of span ÷ 100 — about 0.4 inches across a 40-inch unsupported span.
- Orientation: rack a stringer pallet across the wrong axis and the deck boards carry the span instead of the stringers. Capacity can halve.
- Creep: wood deflects progressively under sustained load. A unit measured inside tolerance on day one can exceed it after six months in a rack.
- Stiffness, not strength, is the limit. Mixed hardwood outperforms southern yellow pine in racking by more than their strength figures suggest, because it is substantially stiffer.
- Drive-in racking gives a long unsupported span with no support at the leading edge. Derate hard, use block construction, consider full-perimeter bottom boards.
Moisture and dew point
| Moisture content | What happens | Typical source | Freight weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6–12% | Indoor equilibrium. No mould risk. Dimensionally stable. | Kiln dried, stored inside | Lightest |
| 12–19% | Safe working range — our standard ceiling. | Covered dry stack | Normal |
| 19–25% | Mould within days to weeks in warm conditions. | Rain-exposed stacks, green lumber | +5–10% |
| 25–40% | Mould rapid, blue stain likely. | Pallets left in the open through a wet week | +10–20% |
| Above 40% | Saturated. You are paying freight on water. | Standing water, flooded yard | +20%+ |
Mould needs free water. Below roughly 19% the water in wood is chemically bound in the cell walls and spores cannot germinate; above it, they can. Heat treatment kills insects and confers no moisture guarantee; kiln drying reduces moisture and is not a phytosanitary treatment. They are separate claims and conflating them causes both mould claims and border holds.
| Air temperature | Relative humidity | Equilibrium moisture content | Dew point — a pallet colder than this will sweat |
|---|---|---|---|
| 68 °F | 30% | ≈6% | ≈36 °F |
| 68 °F | 40% | ≈7.7% | ≈43 °F |
| 68 °F | 55% | ≈10.2% | ≈51 °F |
| 68 °F | 70% | ≈13.1% | ≈58 °F |
| 68 °F | 85% | ≈18.5% | ≈64 °F |
| 55 °F | 60% | ≈11.3% | ≈41 °F |
| 75 °F | 65% | ≈12.4% | ≈62 °F |
Approximate, for planning. Two separate lessons: wood will eventually equilibrate to whatever air it sits in, and any pallet colder than the dew point of your building's air will condense water on itself and then on your cartons. Acclimatise cold stock indoors for four to twelve hours before loading.
Fasteners
| Fastener | How it holds | Relative withdrawal | Correct for | Wrong for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ring (annular) shank | Rings bite into the fibre; withdrawal must tear wood | 1.8–2.2 | Deck boards, repairs, anywhere a fork strikes | — |
| Helical (screw) shank | Threads itself into the fibre as it drives | 1.7–2.1 | Stringers, blocks, hardwood | — |
| Smooth shank | Friction only; wood shrinks away from it | 1.0 (baseline) | Nothing in a pallet | Every pallet joint |
| Staples | Two thin legs, wide crown, large bearing area | 0.5–0.8 | Collar panels, crate sheathing, lids | Deck and stringer joints |
| Galvanised (any shank) | As above, corrosion resistant | As above | Outdoor and wash-down service | — |
Doubling withdrawal resistance roughly doubles the number of trips a unit survives, for a fastener cost measured in cents. We use ring-shank and helical only, and every unit that has been apart is fully re-nailed. The MIBANT bend-angle test is the industry's rough proxy for nail ductility: too brittle and it snaps on impact, too soft and the joint loosens.
Conversions
| Inches | mm | Millimetres | Inches | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20" | 508 | 600 mm | 23.62" | 1 board foot = 144 in³ |
| 24" | 610 | 800 mm | 31.50" | 1 cu yd = 27 cu ft |
| 30" | 762 | 1,000 mm | 39.37" | 1 short ton = 2,000 lb |
| 32" | 813 | 1,100 mm | 43.30" | 1 kg = 2.205 lb |
| 36" | 914 | 1,140 mm | 44.88" | 1" = 25.4 mm exactly |
| 40" | 1,016 | 1,200 mm | 47.24" | 56 °C = 132.8 °F |
| 42" | 1,067 | 1,219 mm | 48.00" | 19% MC = mould threshold |
| 44" | 1,118 | 1,016 mm | 40.00" | 32 bf ≈ one GMA unit |
| 45" | 1,143 | 914 mm | 36.00" | L/100 = deflection ceiling |
| 48" | 1,219 | 762 mm | 30.00" | ≈500 units per 53' van |
Decision trees
Recycled, new, or cut down?
- Does a standard footprint fit your carton pattern with no overhang? If yes → recycled.
- If no: does an oversized footprint exist in reclaim that can be sawn to your size? If yes → cut down, at roughly a third of a new build.
- Does anything automated read the pallet's geometry, or do you need ±⅛"? If yes → new build.
- Is the racked load above about 2,500 lb? If yes → new build, mixed hardwood, block construction.
- Is a documented chain of custody for the wood itself part of an audit? If yes → new build.
- Otherwise → recycled, at the lowest grade that survives the journey.
Buy, own a fleet, or rent from a pool?
- Measure your return rate first. Everything below depends on it and nothing else matters as much.
- Below 50% return → your pallet is packaging. Buy recycled one-way and price it as consumable.
- 50–85% return → the messy middle. Buy recycled on a managed programme, with collection on the same movements.
- Above 85% return, with controlled geography → own a fleet and use toll repair to keep your asset numbers.
- Mandated by a retailer's pool, or shipping to hundreds of points needing identical quality → pool rental, and budget for loss charges.
- Wash-down hygiene is a process requirement → plastic, and we will point you to somebody who sells it.
Stringer or block?
- Does it go into racking where you cannot guarantee orientation? Block.
- Do powered jacks enter from the 48" side? Block.
- Automated storage and retrieval? Block, or new.
- Heavy load sitting for months? Block, mixed hardwood.
- European or ISO-metric footprint? Block by specification, not preference.
- Otherwise → stringer: lighter, cheaper, deeper in recycled stock and easier to repair.
Repair or replace?
- Crack crossing a notch, or more than a third of a stringer's depth? Plug, or condemn.
- Three or more stringer repairs already present? Condemn — that is a pallet held together by optimism.
- Four or more deck boards gone on a low-value footprint? Harvest the boards.
- Above 24% moisture? Dry stack first, then decide.
- Contaminated with oil, chemicals or paint? Out of every reuse stream, permanently.
- Otherwise → repair and re-nail fully, at roughly a third of replacement cost.