Food & beverage

Specification appendix

The four things worth putting in writing for any sector, and the reference tables behind them.

How to specify, in ten lines

1. Footprint, length first, in inches — and the carton pattern that produced it, so we can check for overhang.
2. Construction: stringer or block, two-way or four-way entry. Specify block if you cannot control racking orientation.
3. Maximum deck gap in inches. This is the number that decides whether a carton falls through your rollers, and no grade implies it.
4. Minimum entry height if you run powered pallet jacks. Repairs with thicker boards quietly eat clearance.
5. Squareness tolerance. ±¼" for racking and automation; ±½" is fine for floor storage and cheaper.
6. Moisture ceiling, with the measurement method named. 19% standard, 15% for food contact or chilled service.
7. Treatment: HT and ISPM-15 marked, and re-marked after any repair introducing untreated wood.
8. Species, if stiffness matters. Mixed hardwood for racked service; southern yellow pine where nothing spans anything.
9. Permitted repairs: plates allowed or not, companion boards allowed or not. Automation usually wants neither.
10. Load case: weight, support condition, dwell time, whether it stacks. This is what lets us pick the grade rather than you guessing it.

Grades

Tolerances

Load ratings

• 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

Lead times

Commercial appendix

The arithmetic behind a pallet decision, the sector matrix, and the four decision trees we walk customers through.

Cost per trip, worked

Building your own model

1. Delivered unit cost. Not the quoted unit price — add the freight to your dock.
2. Useful trips per unit. Ask your supplier, then halve it until you have your own data.
3. Return rate. Of units leaving your building, how many come back into your control? Operations assume 80% and discover 45%.
4. Repair cost and repair rate. What share needs work per cycle, and at what price.
5. Handling labour. Count touches, multiply by minutes, multiply by fully loaded labour cost.
6. Disposal or credit. A yard that pays for broken units turns this line from a cost into revenue.
7. Failure cost. Rare, expensive, and the reason cheapest-per-unit is not cheapest-per-trip.
8. Then divide. Total cost ÷ useful trips. That is the only number worth negotiating on.

What each sector actually needs

Decision trees

Recycled, new, or cut down?

1. Does a standard footprint fit your carton pattern with no overhang? If yes → recycled.
2. 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.
3. Does anything automated read the pallet's geometry, or do you need ±⅛"? If yes → new build.
4. Is the racked load above about 2,500 lb? If yes → new build, mixed hardwood, block construction.
5. Is a documented chain of custody for the wood itself part of an audit? If yes → new build.
6. Otherwise → recycled, at the lowest grade that survives the journey.

Buy, own a fleet, or rent from a pool?

1. Measure your return rate first. Everything below depends on it and nothing else matters as much.
2. Below 50% return → your pallet is packaging. Buy recycled one-way and price it as consumable.
3. 50–85% return → the messy middle. Buy recycled on a managed programme, with collection on the same movements.
4. Above 85% return, with controlled geography → own a fleet and use toll repair to keep your asset numbers.
5. Mandated by a retailer's pool, or shipping to hundreds of points needing identical quality → pool rental, and budget for loss charges.
6. Wash-down hygiene is a process requirement → plastic, and we will point you to somebody who sells it.

Stringer or block?

1. Does it go into racking where you cannot guarantee orientation? Block.
2. Do powered jacks enter from the 48" side? Block.
3. Automated storage and retrieval? Block, or new.
4. Heavy load sitting for months? Block, mixed hardwood.
5. European or ISO-metric footprint? Block by specification, not preference.
6. Otherwise → stringer: lighter, cheaper, deeper in recycled stock and easier to repair.

Repair or replace?

1. Crack crossing a notch, or more than a third of a stringer's depth? Plug, or condemn.
2. Three or more stringer repairs already present? Condemn — that is a pallet held together by optimism.
3. Four or more deck boards gone on a low-value footprint? Harvest the boards.
4. Above 24% moisture? Dry stack first, then decide.
5. Contaminated with oil, chemicals or paint? Out of every reuse stream, permanently.
6. Otherwise → repair and re-nail fully, at roughly a third of replacement cost.