The Mysterious Mystery of Pallets

[Mr Hammers]

Recently, we've been picking up pallets from local businesses for our woodburner, and without fail, every one of them is happy for us to take them away. Now, I know that they're not worth much and the wood is probably cheap, but add the cost of that, plus the nails, plus the making and it all has to mount up.

I don't understand why there isn't a recognised recycling system in place, not just from the environmental point of view, but there must be companies out there that are buying thousands and thousands of them every year to despatch their goods out, instead of reclaiming old pallets that are still good enough to use.

I also realise that pallets are awkward to transport, in that you can only carry so many and the value of them might be less than the cost of transport, but then again, there are plenty of empty trucks on the road and with a bit of organisation could return with a load of pallets rather than with nothing.

Does anyone have any idea of how much a pallet costs, or if there is some kind of recycling scheme that I'm not aware of?

On a side note, it's just occurred to me that if you had a truck with a pallet crunching onboard that mulched the wood and separated the nails, you could drive that around just picking hundreds of them up and then selling the wood for firewood or something, and the nails for scrap...?


https://www.luckyblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Pallet.jpg

A pallet, yesterday
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[N cee thirty]

a few companes hire pallets out,but have the epic ones that can withstand beig ran over by a forklift


most of the ones we'v have have been shite,the company asked for um back, but they were too knackered once we'd have unloaded all the bags
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[Kickstart]

Hi

Have seen places before now advertising to buy pallets, although thinking about it not sure I have noticed any for ages.

All the best

Keith
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[fatpies]

Wayy back and I mean about 13 years ago I worked in a warehouse. We used to keep them and every three weeks a bloke would come round and buy them off us. I forget it was either £6 or £8 for each one.

They were painted blue and you could drive a truck over them and they wouldn't break... I know he used to sell them on for more, but never told us who he sold them to

With 30 or so pallets a week stored we'd keep them and sell them on the sly for beer money and split it between the staff. The manager didn't know about it and we hid them above the massive freezer units where unless you were ontop of them you couldn't see them from ground level. It was easy as we had a fork lift.

They were valuable enough for scrotes to nick 'em if we left them outside if the manager didn't go home early, he used to go home early all the time to 'spend time with his family' (his wife had a fantastic rack).
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[Frost]

The place my dad works at has shit loads of pallets, they can often be sold back to distribution companies usually for about 3 quid per pallet. They save them all up then take a lorry load back every now and then and get a few hundred quid for their trouble.

[The Artist]

You see the blue ones being transported quite often. The normal plain ones are one use because they are so weak. Pick it up slightly off and it snaps.

[tatfan]

There are companies that buy used pallets, and either fix them if they're not to bad, or scrap them if they are beyond it. The euro pallet (the blue one) I think is guaranteed to hold a ton, so tend to be reused quite a lot.

[binge]

[truslack]

[Pete.]

YEah the blue ones are good quality pallets, even have a bevelled edge for pallet trucks to pass through easier.

I know a guy whose first ob was de-nailing pallets and sorting the slats for re-use. Must have been mind-numbingly boring work.
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a.k.a 'Geri'

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[Mr Hammers]

[Fisty]

Bloke comes and collects them by the lorry load from where I work, he pays £2 each for them!
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[Nai]

The blue pallets, GKN Chep pallets, are semi hired. If you don't return them you have to pay for them. GKN Chep are a bunch of tossers. They got a lot of corporate companies to use them exclusively some years back. The smaller companies that were forced to use them to send goods to the corporate companies got mauled with either buyers fees or paying the companies to return them (often costing £50+ for a stack of 12). Some of the bigger suppliers could of course swallow it easily or stand firm against Boots and Tesco types.

However, the whole thing caused a number of small brands to drop out of Boots and Tesco's and the like. A couple of companies lost so much sales they went pooficle.

GKN Pallets are awesome, but the company that made them and got them into all the corporate places suck balls.

As an additional note you need to be registered as a GKN pallet user to use GKN pallets. If you are caught sending out goods on GKN pallets and arnt registered you can cop a whopping fine.

Thankfully we have always been able to use Euro pallets (not blue, they are slimmer and usually have IPPC stamped on the side).

[elgard]

The blue ones are so good i bolted six together and used them for a raised decking area, put the decking boards on top and the sides,
After i gave it a coupe of coats of decking paint you couldn't tell they were pallets and saved myself shit loads of time and money.

Top tip there, You can have that one for next summer

[Mr Hammers]

Had to buy a couple of lengths of 3x2s as the solid bits weren't tall enough for what I wanted, but even so, I got a big woodstore for just £6

https://www.planetash.net/bcf/woodstore.jpg
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[andyscooter]

use euros a lot at work

we have abloke pick them up with a trailer and take them away

bit like a pikey but is the owners dad who just happend to own the company before hand
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[Pete.]

They must have gone downhill a long way since I had to handle them then (over 20 yrs ago) coz GKN blue were about the best timber pallets you could get. You could wreck them by putting a pump-truck in from the side - it would pump the bottom bar off. Maybe they only make cheep chinese ones now
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a.k.a 'Geri'

132.9mph off and walked away. Gear is good, gear is good, gear is very very good

[Graprilia]

we get loads over the year , we either chuck them in the skip or cut them up for staff to take home.
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[WildGoose]

I worked as a subcontractor for CHEP (blue pallets) for a few months a while back. CHEP pallets are in a thing of their own, as they are hired out and all accounted for. Refurbished regularly etc.

Normal unfucked pallets are worth more than the sum of their parts (just about). There are trucks trundling about, solely with the intention of picking them up and dropping them off.

Their value goes up and down rapidly, depending on current circumstances, much like the scrap metal market.

There is a pallet yard near every major industrial park. Finding it can be troublesome, but they are there, and they pay cash and don't ask questions.

In other jobs, whilst I was doing general haulage for example, pallets were a nice bonus for me. Occasionally I would end up with a stack or two on my trailer after a delivery, and nobody had accounted for them (some deliveries don't want the pallets, for example if the load is carried off without a forklift).

So you trundle into a random yard with a sign outside stating "pallets wanted". There are lots around big industrial parks, like Trafford Park, Manchester for example. Extra £40-50 to your days wages, thank you very much.

Your next load specified an empty trailer anyway, so nobody is expecting the empties, and you simply neglect to tell your boss, who assumed they would have been taken away at the delivery point anyway. Everyone is a winner. Pays for exotic lunches for the next few weeks.

Never underestimate the money in pallets. Companies like CHEP (the blue pallets) don't exist for charity. If you ever deal with big distribution centres like Tesco/Asda etc, you will see how seriously they take it. There is a huge financial consideration for them.

"Euro" refers to a size, and not a brand. A Euro is 1200x800, a standard pallet size is 1200x1000.

Generally, from what i've seen. Broken pallets are a result of sloppy forklift driving (which is understandable, if you are driving a forklift all day, every day) but shouldn't be put down to bad quality pallets.

However, to suggest that "a bit better organisation" could sort the pallet problem, would be having a laugh. Most "sustainable transport solutions" (stobart et al) can barely make it pay to run the normal shit around, never mind caring about the pallets.

Muppets, there are many out there, and lots of them work in a transport office.
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[Kwaks]

a more recent cproblem comes up with the classification of the pallet. when i was offshore i waould have to remove perfectly good empty pallets from returning containers as the recieving depot was not registered to recieve "waste"
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[The Artist]

Some of you obviously are using shitty pallets. The proper blue ones you could build a small house out of.

[Ted]

There are some fake Chep pallets out there... usually where someone has managed to loose a proper Chep and has quickly sprayed up a lesser-quality pallet of the same dimensions (usually previously red or yellow for some reason?) in a near-matching blue paint.

Obviously the Chep ones still break if miss-used or left to rot.

The proper Euro pallets are made well, but there are tacky ones made to the same size as well...

There is another pallet that needs to be returned too, can't remember the maker, but its about 1.5 x the length of a standard pallet, and is fully planked on both sides, so can only be moved by a forklift.

Once place I worked at just broke and incinerated the non-returnable ones, another place I've worked for sold them for about 50p a pallet...

The problem is, they soon mount up, look an eyesore, and encourage rodents. If you're busy trying to deal with orders sometimes its not worth the hassle of a guy with a transit having to do a dozen loads, nicking metal while your not looking! Even if he is paying for pallets...

[hellbound]

Every local scout camp site are crying out for pallets.

And last year we were at a scout camp in november with no wood so off we went in the transit visiting local industrial areas trying to get pallets, no one would let us touch their huge pile of spare pallets regardless of the colour (looking back this may be because we were in a transit van!)

We ended up in epping forest collecting fallen wood instead.
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[Wafer_Thin_Ham]

+1 to Goose really.

CHEP pallets (Red/Blue) are pure awesome. Seen a few come back with a couple of plastic slats in place of the wood as well.

However I've found euro spec pallets to consistently be pretty aweful. CHEP's we send back because we get billed. Euros we just bin usually. Only tend to get one every few months. All of our stuff is CHEPed in.
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