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Think one of these is your situation?
Describe your operation and we will tell you which of these six it most resembles, and what we would try first.
Portland, OR · email only, no phone
- −47%packaging spendbeverage co-packer
- −71%transit lossesnursery grower
- −66%handling labourdistribution centre
- 0export holds sinceelectronics exporter
The six
What changed, and by how much
- −47% spend
Beverage co-packer
Moved off new hardwood; freight weight and damage both fell.
Quoted todaywritten, 1 business day - −71% claims
Nursery grower
Nine years of the wrong deck gap, fixed by one question.
Quoted todaywritten, 1 business day - +$2,900/mo
Distribution centre
On-site sorting crew removed three FTE-hours a day.
Quoted todaywritten, 1 business day - 9 days held
Electronics exporter
A container stopped in Yokohama for one untreated bracing board.
Quoted todaywritten, 1 business day - 58% reclaimed
1962 printing press
Two tonnes of cast iron crated for Nagoya, tested on film.
Quoted todaywritten, 1 business day - 180 sq ft
Coffee roaster
Café cladding from an eleven-year-old hazelnut-dryer pallet.
Quoted todaywritten, 1 business day
Pattern
What these six have in common
Not one of them started as a pallet problem. Each one arrived as a cost, a damage rate, a blocked dock or a held container.
| Customer | Presenting problem | Actual cause | What we changed | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beverage co-packer | Packaging spend too high | Hardwood tare weight and ungraded fasteners | Grade A recycled fir on a fixed-price program | −47% spend, −58% damage |
| Nursery grower | Plants arriving with root rot | Closed-deck pallets holding water | 36×36 wide-gap nursery decks | −71% transit claims |
| Distribution centre | Blocked dock, rising disposal invoice | Three unmeasured FTE-hours a day | On-site sorting crew and bins | +$2,900/month net |
| Electronics exporter | Container held nine days in Japan | Untreated offcut bracing in the load | Pre-stamped HT dunnage with every order | Zero holds in 26 months |
| Letterpress restorer | Previous shipment arrived cracked | Shock transferred through crate walls | Cradle braced to the skid, tested on film | Arrived without a scratch |
| Coffee roaster | Wanted a wall with a story | Nothing — this one was for fun | 180 sq ft of reclaimed fir cladding | Customers ask about it first |
The pattern is diagnostic rather than commercial. In five of six cases the fix cost less than the problem, and in two of them we removed revenue from ourselves to get there.
“We thought we were buying a service. We ended up removing a job nobody had ever been assigned.”
Process
How a first project actually happens
No sales team, no discovery call, no CRM sequence. We have no telephone, so everything below happens in writing and stays searchable afterwards.
- What we need: footprint, grade, count, ZIP, and how the pallet is handled.
- Nice to have: a photo, your dock height, whether you run forklifts or jacks.
- Not needed: a purchase order, an account, or a phone conversation.
- 01
You send the form
Every form on this site is the same form and reaches the same yard team. Required fields are validated as you type, so a mistyped ZIP or email is caught before anything is sent.
- 02
We check today's stock
Used pallet availability moves daily. You get a real count and a real date rather than a list price that was true last quarter.
- 03
A written quote, within one business day
Price per unit by grade, freight itemised separately, delivery window, and any honest reservations we have about the specification you asked for.
- 04
Delivery, count, paperwork
Signed count sheet on arrival, weight ticket where relevant, and a diversion certificate for anything we collect for recycling.
Worked example
Cost per trip, calculated properly
A real comparison for a plant shipping 600 pallets a month on a weight-sensitive lane. Copy the method, not the numbers.
| Line | New pallet | Grade A recycled | Grade B recycled | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unit purchase price (index) | 100 | 50 | 35 | The only number most procurement systems compare |
| Trips before repair | 15–20 | 9–14 | 7–11 | New lasts longer; it also costs twice as much |
| Purchase cost per trip (index) | 5.6 | 4.3 | 3.8 | Price divided by trips |
| Tare weight | 36 lb | 35 lb | 33 lb | Recycled fir is often lighter than new hardwood |
| Freight weight penalty | Baseline | Neutral | −3 lb/unit | Only matters on weight-limited lanes |
| Expected damage rate | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.4% | Graded stock behaves; ungraded stock does not |
| Receiving rejections | Rare | Rare | Occasional | Graded + written tolerance removes most of this |
| End-of-life cost | 0 | 0 | 0 | We collect and pay or collect free — never a disposal fee |
| Documentation value | None | Diversion certificate | Diversion certificate | Reportable ESG outcome at no extra cost |
- Purchase price share of total cost5–15%
- Freight weight share~30%
- Damage & rework share~38%
- Handling labour share~20%
Build this yourself
One row per option, six columns: unit price, tare weight, expected trips, damage rate, rejection risk, disposal cost. Multiply out across annual volume. It takes an afternoon, the cheapest unit price almost never wins, and we will happily help build it — including with numbers that do not favour us.
The full articleDiagnostics
Read the damage, fix the cause
Damage patterns are not random. Each one points at a specific handling behaviour, and fixing the behaviour is worth more than fixing the pallets.
| What you see | What it almost always means | What to change | Cost to fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Split lead boards at one end | Forks driven in too fast and too high | Operator training; dock lighting. Usually one shift is responsible | Free |
| Torn stringer notches | Pallet jacks entering notched stringers at an angle | Specify block pallets with true four-way entry | Spec change |
| Bottom boards ripped off cleanly | Pallets dragged rather than lifted, or frozen to a cold-store floor | Floor condition, forklift capacity at peak | Low |
| Crushed corner blocks | Stacks higher than the rating, or uneven loads on one corner | Stack-height policy; centre the load | Free |
| Out of square, nothing broken | Racking loading pallets diagonally — beams at different heights | Rack survey. This one is worth chasing | Medium |
| Mould in the middle of a stack | Wet pallets stacked tight with no airflow | Store off the ground, cover the top, leave side gaps | Low |
| Protruding nails tearing cases | Ungraded stock, or units repaired without re-checking | Buy graded; reject on the ticket | Free |
| Deck boards cupping | Moisture cycling between a freezer and a humid dock | Kiln-dried pool; helical fasteners | Spec change |
Keep thirty of your own broken pallets aside for a month and photograph the damage. Patterns appear quickly. We do this analysis free with any repair quote, because a customer whose damage rate halves buys from us for a decade.
Decision table
Five ways to get a pallet, compared honestly
Including the two we do not sell. Cost index is against a new wooden pallet of the same footprint.
| Option | Cost index | Trips | Repairable | Carbon per use | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grade A recycled | 45–55 | 9–14 then repair | Yes | 3.1 kg | Almost everything | Colour varies; tare varies by a few pounds |
| Grade B recycled | 30–40 | 7–11 then repair | Yes | 3.1 kg | One-way, floor stacking, closed loops | Lower racked rating (1,500 lb) |
| Remanufactured | 25–35 | 5–8 | Yes | 4.8 kg | One-way on a budget | Visibly mixed boards; 1,200 lb racked |
| New wooden | 100 | 15–20 then repair | Yes | 14.2 kg | Tight tolerances, audits, odd sizes | Pays for appearance you may not need |
| Plastic | 500–1,000 | 30–100 | No | High embodied, low per-use | Wash-down, deep freeze, pharma | Cracks end its life; not repairable |
| Rental pool | Per-trip fee | Managed | By operator | Operator's figure | Exchange networks, retail mandates | Pallets are not yours; losses are chargeable |
We sell the first four and supply plastic where a wash-down line genuinely needs it. We do not operate a rental pool, and we will not buy marked pool pallets from you — they belong to their operator. Full comparisons
- 01
Published specifications
Grade definitions, dimensional tolerances and racked load ratings in writing. Most yards will not publish a racked figure at all.
- 02
Hand graded, four-hour triage
Two graders per line, flipped and sounded. Every inbound load is triaged within four working hours so nothing rots in a mystery pile.
- 03
Zero landfill, measured
Weighed in, weighed out, reconciled monthly. Zero pounds landfilled in 2025, with a certificate you can hand to an auditor.
- 04
Everything in writing
No phone line by choice. Every price, date and commitment lives in an email you can search, forward and hold us to.
- 05
Repair before replacement
A repair bay, a kiln, a de-nailer and a grinder on site. Repairing a pallet avoids roughly 11 kg CO₂e and costs you half of new.
- 06
Traceable by stamp
Every unit carries a Pallet Passport ID burned into a stringer. Type it in and read its species, cycles, repairs and carbon ledger.
- 14kpallets graded monthlytwo hand-grading lines
- 1,100heat treated per dayISPM-15, chart recorded
- 4.1M lbwood diverted last year68% reused whole
- 0 lblandfilled in 2025weighed and reconciled
Timing
The pallet year in the Pacific Northwest
Supply and price both move with the seasons. Knowing the shape of the year is worth more than negotiating hard in October.
| Month | What the region is doing | Pool depth | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | Everything quiet; recycling inflow steady | Deep | Best buying window of the year. We stockpile now |
| February | Repair bay catching up | Deep | Lock quarterly pricing; book spring nursery stock |
| March | Nursery season begins | Tightening on 36×36 | Spring stock should already be reserved |
| April | Nursery peak; landscaping starts | Tight on nursery decks | Mulch and bedding demand rises sharply |
| May | Nursery winding down | Normalising | Good month for custom builds and crate projects |
| June | Berry harvest | Normal | Watch for short-notice agricultural requests |
| July | Berries, early stone fruit | Normal | Forecast your October number now |
| August | Pre-harvest build-up | Normalising down | Harvest slots allocated this month |
| September | Hazelnut and grape harvest begins | Tight | Reserved stock only. Spot buyers struggle |
| October | Peak harvest; cider apples | Tightest of the year | Do not start here. Everyone calls at once |
| November | Harvest ends; rain begins | Recovering | Grading gets stricter; covered storage fills |
| December | Retail peak, agriculture stops | Deep again | Mulch demand collapses, biomass rises |
Questions
What people ask about working with us
What is the minimum order or pickup?
No hard minimum for collection at the yard — come and take four pallets on a Saturday morning if you like. For delivery it is 50 units inside Portland metro and 150 outside it, because the truck has to earn its diesel. Outside our 180-mile fleet radius we quote through partner yards and freight, with the lane itemised.
How fast can this happen?
Standard 48×40 Grade A and B stock: same day for pickup, next day for metro delivery. Block pallets one to three days. Custom builds five to nine business days; engineered runs two to three weeks. Heat treatment is same day for booked batches and 48 hours standard. Written quotes always come back within one business day.
Why is there no phone number anywhere?
Because verbal quotes get remembered differently by different people. Since 2018 every price, date and commitment we make exists in an email you can search and forward. Most customers dislike it for about a month and then prefer it. Everything else happens in person at 3821 NW St Helens Rd, Portland, OR 97210.
Can I inspect before committing?
Please do. Visit the yard by email arrangement — closed-toe boots required, hi-vis provided — or ask for photographs of the actual pool your order would come from. We would rather lose an order than have a customer discover a surprise on their dock.
What documentation comes with it?
A written quote, a signed count sheet by grade, a weight ticket where material is weighed, heat-treatment certificates for treated batches (archived seven years), and a monthly diversion certificate for anything we collect for recycling — measured pounds kept out of landfill, which is the figure your ESG report actually needs.
What will you refuse to do?
Take methyl-bromide fumigated, chemically contaminated or fire-damaged wood. Buy marked rental-pool pallets, which belong to their operator. Promise same-day delivery outside the metro. Or quote a grade we do not think will survive your handling — we will specify downward and explain why.
Long reads
From the journal · written in the yard
- Oct 7, 2025 · 8 min
Crating a 1962 printing press: a case study in design-and-build
Two tonnes of cast iron, an awkward centre of gravity, a destination in Nagoya, and a customer who had already had one s…
- Mar 25, 2025 · 7 min
One truck, two problems: the economics of closed-loop pallet logistics
Delivering loaded pallets and leaving with empties halves the truck movements. The hard part is not the idea; it is the …
- May 21, 2024 · 6 min
Twenty minutes in the repair bay: how a written-off pallet goes back to work
A cracked stringer looks like the end. In our bay it is a twenty-minute job with a chalk mark, a jig and a helical nail …
- Mar 14, 2024 · 8 min
What “Grade A” actually means, and why half the industry disagrees
There is no federal pallet grading authority. There is only what each yard writes down and whether they honour it. Here …
Everything else on this site
- The size library Twenty footprints, both measurement systems, tolerances and stock depth
- Grades explained A, B, C and reman written out, including what each costs us
- Load capacity Static, dynamic and racked without hand-waving
- Published standards The whole quality system, and our rejection remedy
- Pallet Passport Type in a stamped ID and read that pallet's life
- Carbon math Line-by-line derivation with the leakage caveat
- Journal 33 long articles from the grading line
- Glossary 36 terms, yard definitions
- All locations 51 states and DC, 323 city pages
- Contact us 3821 NW St Helens Rd, Portland, OR 97210 — email only, no phone
Next step
Your operation, measured honestly
We will quantify what your pallets actually cost you, including the labour nobody has counted. There is no charge for the arithmetic.