pallet

For the fictional town in the Pokémon series of games, named after an artist's palette, see Pallet Town.

A Pallet can also be a small, hard, or temporary bed (a term heavily used in the southern United States to describe a makeshift bed consisting of a blanket and a pillow on the floor).

A pallet is a flat transport structure made of wood or plastic (and in a few cases metal and paper) which can support a variety of goods in a stable fashion while being lifted by any mobile forklift or other jacking device. The goods are placed on top of the pallet, and can be secured to it by straps or stretch-wrapped plastic film. A pallet is sometimes colloquially called a skid, by back-formation from skid loader.

Overview

Today, over half a billion pallets are manufactured each year and about two billion pallets are in use across the United States alone. Over 90% of all pallets are made of wood, consuming close to 12% of all the lumber produced in the United States.^{citation needed]} Only the residential home construction industry uses more wood.

Standardization

Dimensions

A Standard pallet measures 100 by 120 by 12 cm (slightly less than 40 inches by 48 inches by 5 inches). It weighs 15 to 21 kilograms empty. Most pallets can easily carry a load of 1,000 kg (about 2,000 lb). The gradual advent of containers for the transport of nearly all goods has spurred the use of pallets because the containers always offer the clean, level surfaces needed to make pallet movement economical. The common ISO standard pallets also fit neatly into common ISO containers, which in turn fit neatly on container ships, trains and trucks.

In Europe an EUR standard pallet is commonly used and measures 80 by 120 by 12 cm. It is also called a CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation - European Committee for Standardization) pallet and it is used mainly for retail business, its size having been determined by the internal dimensions of trucks making deliveries from warehouses to retail establishments.

In Australia, a standard pallet (either "Chep", "Loscam" or "Pink Pallets" is 1,165 mm x 1,165 mm square x 135 mm high with a surface area of 1.357225 m² - most international shipping containers (TEU or FEU) can accept these pallets. Australian pallets weigh between 23 kg for a steel pallet and 42 kg for a wooden pallet.

Phytosanitary Compliance

Due to the International Plant Protection Convention (abbreviated IPPC), most pallets shipped across national borders must be made of materials that are incapable of being a carrier of invasive species of insects and plant diseases. The standards for these pallets is specified in ISPM 15.

Pallets made of raw untreated wood, are not compliant with ISPM 15. To be compliant the pallets must be treated by either of the following means under the supervision of an approved agency.

• Heat treatment The wood must be heated to achieve a mininum core temperature of 56ºC for at least 30 minutes. Pallets treated via this method bear the initials HT by the IPPC logo.

• Chemical fumigation The wood must be fumigated with methyl bromide. Pallets treated via this method bear the initials MB by the IPPC logo.

Pallets made of non wood materials such as steel, aluminum, plastic, or made of engineered wood products, such as plywood, oriented strand board, or cardboard do not need IPPC approval.

Development of Commercial Transport Packaging

Skids and pallets were slowly introduced throughout the early 20th century; wooden boxes, crates, barrels and kegs were much more commonly used to unitize, protect, store and transport goods. The predecessor of the wooden pallet was the wooden skid, which consisted of stringers fastened to a top deck. It first appeared in American factories in conjunction with the low lift truck. A crude low lift hand truck was invented in 1887 and a more durable, all-steel low lift truck design was introduced in 1909.

The high lift fork truck first appeared in 1915. With further modification in 1919, the truck could lift loads several feet high while other improvements included cantilever design and forks. The emergence of forks as well during the same period enabled lift trucks to handle a much greater range of materials.

Another development was the new capability of the mast of the fork lift to tilt both forward and back, independent of the lifting mechanism. These developments, along with the emergence of the double-faced pallet during the same time period, allowed for tiering of unit loads. As early as 1926, the essence of the modern lift truck had been developed. Now, pallets no longer were simply a means of moving materials within the plant. High lift trucks made possible vertical stacking of unit loads and a resulting dramatic improvement of warehouse and plant storage efficiencies.

Evolution of the Pallet

The pallet evolved in stages. Spacers were used between loads to allow fork entry, progressing to the placement of boards atop stringers to make skids. Eventually boards were fastened to the bottom to create the pallet. The addition of bottom boards on the skid, which appeared by 1925, resulted in the pallet. With the bottom deck, several problems common to the single faced skid were addressed. For example, the bottom boards provided better weight distribution and reduced product damage; they also provided better stacking strength and rigidity. Lift truck manufacturers promoted the idea of using more vertical area of a plant for stock storage.

Impact of Pallet on Rail Car Transport

Pallets and forklifts also provided much quicker turnaround of rail cars and ships. In 1931, three days were required to unload a boxcar containing 13,000 cases of unpalletized canned goods. When the same amount of goods was loaded into the boxcar on pallets or skids, the identical task took only four hours.

With the entry of the U.S. into World War II, the urgency for material handling reform changed almost overnight. Palletization was regarded as an enormous opportunity to help the U.S. armed forces do more with less. Palletized loads could handle more goods with fewer people, freeing up men for military duty; it also could increase warehouse storage capacity and throughput, reducing the need for additional warehouse capacity. Pallets were used somewhat in the European theater, but they were put to work extensively in the Pacific.

Pallet Construction

The cheapest pallets are made of softwood and are often considered as expendable, to be discarded as trash, along with other wrapping elements, upon reaching destination. These pallets are of a very simple construction which permits lifting from one of two opposite positions only. Slightly more complex hardwood pallets and most plastic pallets and metal pallets can be lifted from all four sides. These costlier pallets usually require a deposit and are returned to the sender or resold as used. Many of these "four way" pallets are color coded according to the loads they can bear, and other attributes. The National Wooden Pallet & Container Association has developed a Pallet Design System PDS© to manufacture pallets. PDS© is a computer program that allows the pallet maker to generate the best suited pallet design for a specific load and generate several options for wood selections to further reduce costs.

Wooden pallet construction specifications can depend on the pallet's intended use: general, FDA, storage, chemical, export; the expected load weight; type of wood desired: recycled, hard, soft, kiln Dried or combo (new & recycle); and even the type of fasteners desired to hold the pallet together: staples or nails.

Paper pallets are often used for light loads, but engineered paper pallets are increasingly used for loads that compare with wood. Paper pallets are also used where recycling and easy disposal is important.

Businesses in retail or manufacturing with accommodations for loading and unloading standard sized pallets and internal procedures for taking advantages of the modular nature of the pallets usually have a distinct advantage over businesses which do not exploit standardized pallets. The exceptions are those establishments which sell small quantities of luxury items such as jewelry stores or extra large items such as cars. But even they are at least indirectly affected. For instance, the distributors of costume jewelry and like items would normally use pallets in their warehouses and car manufacturers have long ago integrated pallets in their logistics systems for transporting components from their suppliers and for moving around spare parts.

One of the greatest advantages of pallets is the number of ways they can be moved around. They can be hauled by forklift trucks of different sizes and they can also be transported by hand-pumped and hand-drawn jacks which require no more than muscle power, wherever a solid and even floor with enough room is available. A forklift truck often costs the same as a luxury automobile but a good reconditioned hand-drawn "pumper" jack can be gotten for a few hundred euros. The greatest investment is thus in the time it takes to plan for clearances and level surfaces in the construction of commercial or industrial buildings where the use of pallets could be economical.

Alternate uses

Old and discarded pallets can be used in pallet crafts, or to build a pallet shed

They can also be used as a supply of free or nearly free firewood, although for safety reasons, the amount of softwood pallets burned in a fireplace should be limited in order to prevent creosote buildup.

Additional Reading

• Rick LeBlanc and Stewart Richardson, Pallets: A North American Perspective (PACTS Management, Inc. 2003)

External links

• History of the Pallet

• Pallets 101: Industry Overview (PDF)

• Pallet Construction Overview

• Breaking News from 1945: Pallet Standardization Enhances Efficiency

• Pallet Systems of America: Maker of metal pallets, compliant with ISPM 15

• Rental Pallets International Providing plastic pallets for Latin America

• Harbor Pallet Company One of the first pallet companies in Orange County, California

See also

• ULD, lightweight pallet or container for aircraft.
• IPPC, Adoption of these guidelines impact the treatment of pallets used for international shipments.