Reading a pallet at a glance

Spend enough time at a yard and you start reading pallets the way a mechanic reads tires. Wear patterns, marks, stamps — it all tells a story. Most of us never have to learn this, but it's useful when you're deciding whether the pallet under a stack of gaylords is going to make the trip.

The block-vs-stringer tell

Look at the pallet from the side. Three or four big rectangular blocks holding the deck boards up? That's a block pallet — 4-way forklift entry, generally stronger. Long boards (stringers) instead of blocks? That's a stringer pallet — 2-way forklift entry, usually slightly weaker per dollar.

The wear pattern

Deck boards that are scraped clean along the centers but darker around the edges have ridden under load a long time — that's healthy use. Deck boards with deep gouges or splits running along the wood grain are nearing end of life. Deck boards that are sagging visibly between the supports are already past it.

The IPPC stamp

If the pallet has an IPPC stamp with "HT" inside the symbol, it's been heat-treated for international shipping. "MB" means methyl-bromide treated, which is rare now and largely phased out. No stamp at all? Domestic only — fine for most uses, not legal for international.

The nail check

Pallet nails should sit flush. If you can see nails sticking up above the deck board surface, the pallet has flexed under load and the nails have backed out. That pallet is on borrowed time. Replace it before you load it again.

Why this matters for box buyers

If your boxes are riding bad pallets, your boxes are going to fail too. We see this on inbound regularly — boxes that grade A, on pallets that grade D. The boxes don't survive a forklift trip if the pallet collapses under them.

We grade the pallets too. If the pallets coming in are unusable, we send them to a regional repair operation and the customer's invoice reflects only the box value. That's our way of separating the two grades and not punishing a seller for a bad pallet under good boxes.