The perception we have of pallets is a lot like that of corrugated boxes. While not the glitzy high profile part of our jobs, they are critical to our operations and we have all seen the consequences when they do not perform as needed. It would be hard to find a company today that does not use pallets. Imagine today’s warehouses and shipping operations if products were still manually loaded one box at a time. However, while critical to today’s material handling operations, pallets are probably one of the least understood and overlooked components within these operations.
Product unitization and distribution systems consist of 3 interactive components: Packaging, pallets, and material handling equipment. Most components used to unitize, store, and ship products are carefully selected, but designers tend to work independently. Many packaging engineers carefully spec the packaging, but have a brief description for the pallet. The same holds true for material handling equipment designers. Pallets are the direct link between your packaged products and the handling environment. Packaging engineers are in a unique position to understand the tradeoffs in pallet design, performance, design and material options, and ultimate cost of use.
This article is intended as an overview of the pallet industry, the basic performance parameters that are necessary to optimize pallet design for your application, and current design and material options.
Today, there are about 450 million new pallets produced in North America each year. About 1.9 billion are in use at any given time. The 10 most common US sizes are given in Table 1, along with the typical industries that use these sizes. The 48×40-inch pallet is the most common pallet size in the U.S., representing about 30% of the pallets produced each year. This is typically called the GMA, or grocery pallet.
This list totals about 60% of the annual pallet production. The 10th most common size represents less than 2% of the market. The remaining 40% of the market includes hundreds of sizes, typically tailored to specific customers.
Internationally, there are 6 pallet footprints recognized by ISO. Even though we live in an increasingly global community, most of our pallet sizes are still different for different regions of the world. For example, the 800 x 1200 EuroPallet, a standard size throughout Western Europe for 50 years, is a rare size in the rest of the world. There are trends, however, towards domestic and global pallet size standardization. In the 60’s and 70’s, the US grocery industry began conversion towards the 48×40" standard footprint, and today this size is not only standard in the grocery industry, but in many other industries as well.
In 2002 the EIPS Computer Industry Pallet Task Group recommended the 1200 x 1000 mm size as its primary global footprint (the 800×1200 is also included). This size was selected due to its metric dimensions, current recognition in ISO, the ability to efficiently fill most transport vehicles, and similarity in size to the 48×40-inch US footprint. Previously, this industry worked with dozens of pallet sizes and designs. It is expected that in the future, new computer industry warehouses, distribution centers, and shipping practices will be aligned with the standard.
Imagine the efficiencies that will result for this industry over the coming decade. It is expected that these efforts will continue in other industries due to the wholesale long term benefits throughout supply chains that result from standardization.
There are two main types of pallet designs: block and stringer. This is true regardless of pallet material. Detailed pallet terminology can be found in the ASME Standard for pallets.
Stringer pallets are more common in the United States. With solid wood, block pallets cost more to manufacture than the equivalent strength stringer pallets. The principal advantage of block pallets is full access on all 4 sides for both forklifts and pallet jacks (full 4-way). Stringer pallets allow only forklift entry on the sides if stringers are notched (partial 4-way entry). If stringers are not notched, pallet jacks and forklifts can only enter on the 2 ends and they are called "2-way."
The size of wood pallets is specified as the stringer length, followed by the deckboard length. Therefore, since GMA pallets have 48" stringers, they are 48×40-inch pallets, not 40×48-inch pallets. The size of block pallets is specified as the top stringerboard length, followed by the deckboard length. Therefore, the EuroPallet is an 800 x 1200mm design. The size of non-wood pallets is typically listed as the longer length first, followed by the shorter dimension.
There are five basic interactive parameters that determine pallet suitability for a given application. These parameters are Strength, Stiffness, Durability, Functionality, and Purchase Price. These parameters are interactive, and optimizing just one (i.e. minimizing price) will impact the others. The proper balance of these five parameters will vary, depending on your specific product and distribution environments. They hold true regardless of the pallet material used. Each of the five parameters is discussed in more detail below.
Strength
Stiffness
We see many pallets in the marketplace that are strong enough to support the load weight, yet they create pressure points that cause package and product failure. For example, saving $1 on a pallet with thinner decks often requires every corrugated box stacked on that pallet to be stronger to resist damage.
Durability
Functionality
Price
These five parameters are interactive, and optimizing just one will significantly impact the others. The better your understanding of this interactive balance, the more likely you are to select the ideal pallet material and design for your product and material handling environment.
Historically, pallets were made of solid wood. Many products experienced material conversions over time as innovations or market changes occur. Some examples are:
Boxes…Wood to Corrugated
Grocery bags…Paper to Plastic
Bottles…Glass to Plastic
It is interesting to note, however, that the pallet material of choice for the last 70 years remains solid wood. This is unusual for a commodity product. While pallet users today face a wide variety of material and design choices, wood pallets are still used to manufacture about 90-95% of the US market. However, since the wood market share is so large, it will likely not increase in the future.
While wood should retain the majority of the volume for many years, there are some global trends that could increase the use of other materials. These are trends such as standardization, improved retrieval operations, more reusable pallets, and pest regulations. Below are the primary pallet material choices and a brief discussion of each.
Wood was the original pallet material and remains the most common pallet material both in the US and around the world. Wood pallets are common because they represent a good balance of the five design parameters discussed above, many packaging and material handling systems are "built" around the performance of wood pallets, and they are readily available. Disadvantages are that they have fasteners that can damage products, they have splinters, they give off moisture, can harbor bugs, and there is a lot of variation between pallets.
Wood pallets are easy to prototype. The easiest, fastest, safest, and most economical method to design wood pallets is with a computer aided design procedure called the Pallet Design System, or PDS. PDS users describe the pallet specifications, load analog, support conditions. PDS then estimates pallet strength, stiffness, durability, and the cost to use pallets.
Users can then fine-tune the design by changing input variables. The end result is the most economical pallet that will safely support the load under the required conditions. Wood pallet specs can also reference the ASME standard for wood pallets to ensure conformance to industry best manufacturing practices.
It should be noted that the largest domestic and worldwide pallet pooling company, CHEP, continues to use wood as the primary material for the vast majority of its pallets. They are testing other materials, but so far continue to favor solid wood.
It is estimated that plastic pallets make up 2% of new pallet production in the US, or about 8 million new plastic pallets per year. The most common plastic materials for pallets are HDPE, PP, and PVC. Each of these is about 3-6 times the price of wood per pound, so a 50 pound plastic pallet is much more expensive than a 50 pound wood pallet.
The most common manufacturing process is structural foam molding, but other processes include injection molding, profile extrusion, rotational molding, compression molding, and thermoforming. Each process has its advantages and disadvantages. If you want high volumes of a standard design, your best choice would be foam or injection molding. If you needed 100 pallets in a unique design, you would probably choose extrusion or rotational molding.
General advantages of plastic pallets are durability, cleanliness, no fasteners, bug free, weather resistance, and design potential. Disadvantages include higher price, difficulty to prototype, low friction, low stiffness, lack of repair options, and fire safety ratings.
Plastic pallets are most common in captive or closed loop warehouse environments supporting 2000 pounds or less. Plastic pallets are common within the automotive, dairy, pharmaceutical, USPS, and beverage industries. Plastic pallets make up 50% or more of the reusable pallet pools in some Asian countries.
Composites represent 2-4% of the pallet market, including materials like plywood, Oriented Strand Board, particle board, and laminated veneer lumber. Beer pallets were a historical market for composite pallets. In the past few years, composites have found applications in import/export due to pest regulations. Composites are exempt from pest regulations and often have a lower price than plastic or metal pallets.
General advantages are that composite pallets have a smooth and 100% coverage deck surface, are bug-free, dry, durable, easy to prototype, and can be designed using PDS. Disadvantages are that they cost more than solid wood, are expensive to repair, less weather resistant than plastic or metal, and still require fasteners.
Paper pallets represent less than 1% of the market, and include corrugated, honeycomb, solid fiberboard, and molded pulp. It is interesting to see the shift in containers from wood to corrugated. Between WWI and WWII, the percentage of wood/corrugated shifted from 80%/20% to 20%/80%. We have not seen this shift in pallets. One of the major reasons is that while a corrugated box is less expensive than a wood box, a paper pallet costs more than the equivalent wood pallet.
Paper pallets continue to find acceptance mainly within niche markets. Recently, new markets have opened driven by international pest regulations and increased airfreight shipping with weight-based charges. General advantages of paper pallets are that they are lightweight, easily recyclable, have a smooth deck surface, are dry, and bug free. Disadvantages are a price higher than wood, susceptible to moisture, lack of stiffness with flexible loads, low durability, and low product protection.
Metal pallets make up less than 1% of the market. Materials include carbon steel, stainless steel, and aluminum. Of these, carbon steel offers excellent durability at the lowest cost. Stainless doesn’t need a paint coating, and is preferred for such applications as clean room environments. Aluminum offers the durability of metal at a lighter weight. Carbon steel units are relatively expensive compared to wood, and stainless and aluminum cost about 2-3 times that of carbon steel. The long term cost, however, can be lower than wood.
General advantages are strength, stiffness, durability, bug free, no splinters, sanitary, and recyclable. Disadvantages are higher initial price, weight, low friction, and susceptible to rusting (carbon steel).
Metal is primarily used in captive or closed loop environments where durability and product protection are key measures. Metal units today are increasingly price competitive and lighter in weight. Primary industries include automotive, pharmaceutical, lawn tractors, motorcycles, and tires.
This article is reprinted by permission from the PreShipment Testing Newsletter published by the International Safe Transit Association (www.ista.org).
Metal Pallets
Paper Based Pallets
Composite Wood Pallets
Plastic Pallets
Wood Pallets
Pallet Materials
is an important design criterion, and often given more consideration that the other factors. This leads to pallet designs that look economical up front, but end up "costing" much more as they are used. Balance the price of the pallet versus the value of the product delivered without damage to the customer. Balance the price versus potential savings in packaging and material handling savings.is the compatibility of the pallet with the packaging and material handling equipment. For example, we pay extra to cut notches in a stringer pallet, thereby reducing strength in half, so that forklifts can enter on the sides. Functionality also includes things such as exposure to pest regulations, fire safety, weight, etc. is the ability to withstand the rigors of the shipping and handling environments. If we don’t intend to recover the pallet, it just needs the integrity to withstand one trip. For returnable pallets, we need to design for a number of trips that is economically justified. The ideal life of reusables is a function of cycle times, recovery rates, distribution channels, expected ROI’s, and future expected changes to warehouses. is the resistance of the pallet to deformation under load. Sometimes a pallet won’t break under load, but is not stiff enough to protect the product or prevents proper handling. is the load carrying capacity throughout the shipping and storage environments. We must design pallets that are strong enough to support the required load.
Five Factors for a Balanced Design
Pallet Terminology
Packaged Paper
Today’s Pallet Industry
The perception we have of pallets is a lot like that of corrugated boxes. While not the glitzy high profile part of our jobs, they are critical to our operations and we have all seen the consequences when they do not perform as needed. It would be hard to find a company today that does not use pallets. Imagine today’s warehouses and shipping operations if products were still manually loaded one box at a time. However, while critical to today’s material handling operations, pallets are probably one of the least understood and overlooked components within these operations.
Product unitization and distribution systems consist of 3 interactive components: Packaging, pallets, and material handling equipment. Most components used to unitize, store, and ship products are carefully selected, but designers tend to work independently. Many packaging engineers carefully spec the packaging, but have a brief description for the pallet. The same holds true for material handling equipment designers. Pallets are the direct link between your packaged products and the handling environment. Packaging engineers are in a unique position to understand the tradeoffs in pallet design, performance, design and material options, and ultimate cost of use.
This article is intended as an overview of the pallet industry, the basic performance parameters that are necessary to optimize pallet design for your application, and current design and material options.
Today, there are about 450 million new pallets produced in North America each year. About 1.9 billion are in use at any given time. The 10 most common US sizes are given in Table 1, along with the typical industries that use these sizes. The 48×40-inch pallet is the most common pallet size in the U.S., representing about 30% of the pallets produced each year. This is typically called the GMA, or grocery pallet.
This list totals about 60% of the annual pallet production. The 10th most common size represents less than 2% of the market. The remaining 40% of the market includes hundreds of sizes, typically tailored to specific customers.
Internationally, there are 6 pallet footprints recognized by ISO. Even though we live in an increasingly global community, most of our pallet sizes are still different for different regions of the world. For example, the 800 x 1200 EuroPallet, a standard size throughout Western Europe for 50 years, is a rare size in the rest of the world. There are trends, however, towards domestic and global pallet size standardization. In the 60’s and 70’s, the US grocery industry began conversion towards the 48×40" standard footprint, and today this size is not only standard in the grocery industry, but in many other industries as well.
In 2002 the EIPS Computer Industry Pallet Task Group recommended the 1200 x 1000 mm size as its primary global footprint (the 800×1200 is also included). This size was selected due to its metric dimensions, current recognition in ISO, the ability to efficiently fill most transport vehicles, and similarity in size to the 48×40-inch US footprint. Previously, this industry worked with dozens of pallet sizes and designs. It is expected that in the future, new computer industry warehouses, distribution centers, and shipping practices will be aligned with the standard.
Imagine the efficiencies that will result for this industry over the coming decade. It is expected that these efforts will continue in other industries due to the wholesale long term benefits throughout supply chains that result from standardization.
There are two main types of pallet designs: block and stringer. This is true regardless of pallet material. Detailed pallet terminology can be found in the ASME Standard for pallets.
Stringer pallets are more common in the United States. With solid wood, block pallets cost more to manufacture than the equivalent strength stringer pallets. The principal advantage of block pallets is full access on all 4 sides for both forklifts and pallet jacks (full 4-way). Stringer pallets allow only forklift entry on the sides if stringers are notched (partial 4-way entry). If stringers are not notched, pallet jacks and forklifts can only enter on the 2 ends and they are called "2-way."
The size of wood pallets is specified as the stringer length, followed by the deckboard length. Therefore, since GMA pallets have 48" stringers, they are 48×40-inch pallets, not 40×48-inch pallets. The size of block pallets is specified as the top stringerboard length, followed by the deckboard length. Therefore, the EuroPallet is an 800 x 1200mm design. The size of non-wood pallets is typically listed as the longer length first, followed by the shorter dimension.
There are five basic interactive parameters that determine pallet suitability for a given application. These parameters are Strength, Stiffness, Durability, Functionality, and Purchase Price. These parameters are interactive, and optimizing just one (i.e. minimizing price) will impact the others. The proper balance of these five parameters will vary, depending on your specific product and distribution environments. They hold true regardless of the pallet material used. Each of the five parameters is discussed in more detail below.
Strength
Stiffness
We see many pallets in the marketplace that are strong enough to support the load weight, yet they create pressure points that cause package and product failure. For example, saving $1 on a pallet with thinner decks often requires every corrugated box stacked on that pallet to be stronger to resist damage.
Durability
Functionality
Price
These five parameters are interactive, and optimizing just one will significantly impact the others. The better your understanding of this interactive balance, the more likely you are to select the ideal pallet material and design for your product and material handling environment.
Historically, pallets were made of solid wood. Many products experienced material conversions over time as innovations or market changes occur. Some examples are:
Boxes…Wood to Corrugated
Grocery bags…Paper to Plastic
Bottles…Glass to Plastic
It is interesting to note, however, that the pallet material of choice for the last 70 years remains solid wood. This is unusual for a commodity product. While pallet users today face a wide variety of material and design choices, wood pallets are still used to manufacture about 90-95% of the US market. However, since the wood market share is so large, it will likely not increase in the future.
While wood should retain the majority of the volume for many years, there are some global trends that could increase the use of other materials. These are trends such as standardization, improved retrieval operations, more reusable pallets, and pest regulations. Below are the primary pallet material choices and a brief discussion of each.
Wood was the original pallet material and remains the most common pallet material both in the US and around the world. Wood pallets are common because they represent a good balance of the five design parameters discussed above, many packaging and material handling systems are "built" around the performance of wood pallets, and they are readily available. Disadvantages are that they have fasteners that can damage products, they have splinters, they give off moisture, can harbor bugs, and there is a lot of variation between pallets.
Wood pallets are easy to prototype. The easiest, fastest, safest, and most economical method to design wood pallets is with a computer aided design procedure called the Pallet Design System, or PDS. PDS users describe the pallet specifications, load analog, support conditions. PDS then estimates pallet strength, stiffness, durability, and the cost to use pallets.
Users can then fine-tune the design by changing input variables. The end result is the most economical pallet that will safely support the load under the required conditions. Wood pallet specs can also reference the ASME standard for wood pallets to ensure conformance to industry best manufacturing practices.
It should be noted that the largest domestic and worldwide pallet pooling company, CHEP, continues to use wood as the primary material for the vast majority of its pallets. They are testing other materials, but so far continue to favor solid wood.
It is estimated that plastic pallets make up 2% of new pallet production in the US, or about 8 million new plastic pallets per year. The most common plastic materials for pallets are HDPE, PP, and PVC. Each of these is about 3-6 times the price of wood per pound, so a 50 pound plastic pallet is much more expensive than a 50 pound wood pallet.
The most common manufacturing process is structural foam molding, but other processes include injection molding, profile extrusion, rotational molding, compression molding, and thermoforming. Each process has its advantages and disadvantages. If you want high volumes of a standard design, your best choice would be foam or injection molding. If you needed 100 pallets in a unique design, you would probably choose extrusion or rotational molding.
General advantages of plastic pallets are durability, cleanliness, no fasteners, bug free, weather resistance, and design potential. Disadvantages include higher price, difficulty to prototype, low friction, low stiffness, lack of repair options, and fire safety ratings.
Plastic pallets are most common in captive or closed loop warehouse environments supporting 2000 pounds or less. Plastic pallets are common within the automotive, dairy, pharmaceutical, USPS, and beverage industries. Plastic pallets make up 50% or more of the reusable pallet pools in some Asian countries.
Composites represent 2-4% of the pallet market, including materials like plywood, Oriented Strand Board, particle board, and laminated veneer lumber. Beer pallets were a historical market for composite pallets. In the past few years, composites have found applications in import/export due to pest regulations. Composites are exempt from pest regulations and often have a lower price than plastic or metal pallets.
General advantages are that composite pallets have a smooth and 100% coverage deck surface, are bug-free, dry, durable, easy to prototype, and can be designed using PDS. Disadvantages are that they cost more than solid wood, are expensive to repair, less weather resistant than plastic or metal, and still require fasteners.
Paper pallets represent less than 1% of the market, and include corrugated, honeycomb, solid fiberboard, and molded pulp. It is interesting to see the shift in containers from wood to corrugated. Between WWI and WWII, the percentage of wood/corrugated shifted from 80%/20% to 20%/80%. We have not seen this shift in pallets. One of the major reasons is that while a corrugated box is less expensive than a wood box, a paper pallet costs more than the equivalent wood pallet.
Paper pallets continue to find acceptance mainly within niche markets. Recently, new markets have opened driven by international pest regulations and increased airfreight shipping with weight-based charges. General advantages of paper pallets are that they are lightweight, easily recyclable, have a smooth deck surface, are dry, and bug free. Disadvantages are a price higher than wood, susceptible to moisture, lack of stiffness with flexible loads, low durability, and low product protection.
Metal pallets make up less than 1% of the market. Materials include carbon steel, stainless steel, and aluminum. Of these, carbon steel offers excellent durability at the lowest cost. Stainless doesn’t need a paint coating, and is preferred for such applications as clean room environments. Aluminum offers the durability of metal at a lighter weight. Carbon steel units are relatively expensive compared to wood, and stainless and aluminum cost about 2-3 times that of carbon steel. The long term cost, however, can be lower than wood.
General advantages are strength, stiffness, durability, bug free, no splinters, sanitary, and recyclable. Disadvantages are higher initial price, weight, low friction, and susceptible to rusting (carbon steel).
Metal is primarily used in captive or closed loop environments where durability and product protection are key measures. Metal units today are increasingly price competitive and lighter in weight. Primary industries include automotive, pharmaceutical, lawn tractors, motorcycles, and tires.
This article is reprinted by permission from the PreShipment Testing Newsletter published by the International Safe Transit Association (www.ista.org).
Metal Pallets
Paper Based Pallets
Composite Wood Pallets
Plastic Pallets
Wood Pallets
Pallet Materials
is an important design criterion, and often given more consideration that the other factors. This leads to pallet designs that look economical up front, but end up "costing" much more as they are used. Balance the price of the pallet versus the value of the product delivered without damage to the customer. Balance the price versus potential savings in packaging and material handling savings.is the compatibility of the pallet with the packaging and material handling equipment. For example, we pay extra to cut notches in a stringer pallet, thereby reducing strength in half, so that forklifts can enter on the sides. Functionality also includes things such as exposure to pest regulations, fire safety, weight, etc. is the ability to withstand the rigors of the shipping and handling environments. If we don’t intend to recover the pallet, it just needs the integrity to withstand one trip. For returnable pallets, we need to design for a number of trips that is economically justified. The ideal life of reusables is a function of cycle times, recovery rates, distribution channels, expected ROI’s, and future expected changes to warehouses. is the resistance of the pallet to deformation under load. Sometimes a pallet won’t break under load, but is not stiff enough to protect the product or prevents proper handling. is the load carrying capacity throughout the shipping and storage environments. We must design pallets that are strong enough to support the required load.
Five Factors for a Balanced Design
Pallet Terminology
Packaged Paper
Today’s Pallet Industry
