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Portland, OR · email only, no phone
01 · Buying
Buying questions
What is your minimum order?
There isn't a hard one for pickup at the yard — if you want four pallets, come and get four pallets on a Saturday morning. For delivery, 50 units inside Portland metro and 150 outside it, because the truck has to earn its diesel.
How quickly can I get pallets?
Standard 48×40 A and B stock is usually same day for pickup and next day for metro delivery. Block pallets run one to three days. Custom builds are five to nine business days, and engineered runs two to three weeks.
Do you really not have a phone number?
Correct, and it is deliberate. Verbal quotes get remembered differently by different people. Every price, date and commitment we make exists in an email you can search and forward. Most customers who dislike this at first come round within a month.
Can I see the pallets before I buy?
Please do. Email us and come to the yard. Bring closed-toe boots; we provide hi-vis. Nothing we claim on this site is true anywhere except at 3821 NW St Helens Rd.
02 · Selling
Selling questions
Will you pay for my used pallets?
Usually yes, depending on size, grade and volume. Send one photo of the pile from about fifteen feet away plus a rough count and your ZIP code, and you will get a per-unit price by grade band, in writing, usually the same day.
What if my pallets are in bad shape?
We still collect them free of charge in most cases, because the fibre has value to us even when the pallets do not. Genuinely rough loads carry a modest haul fee that still undercuts a dumpster.
Do I need to sort them first?
No. Sorting is literally our business and we are faster at it than your receiving crew. Just stack the pile where a truck and a forklift can reach it.
What can't you accept?
Methyl-bromide fumigated wood (look for an MB stamp), painted or chemically contaminated wood, fire-damaged material, and marked rental-pool pallets, which belong to their operator and are not yours to sell. We will tell you who can handle the first three.
03 · Specs
Specs questions
What does Grade A mean here?
Seven top boards, five bottom, three solid stringers, no plugs, no repairs, within a quarter inch on both dimensions and the diagonal, no protruding nails. Rated 2,800 lb dynamic and 2,200 lb racked. It is published on our standards page and we honour it.
Which load rating should I care about?
Racked, if you put pallets in beam racking. It is the smallest of the three numbers and the only one that matters when a pallet is supported at its edges. Anyone who will not give you a racked figure in writing should be asked why.
Can recycled pallets be export compliant?
Yes. ISPM-15 compliance comes from heat treatment and a registered stamp, not from the age of the wood. We treat and stamp recycled stock routinely.
Will recycled pallets work in our automated system?
Often yes, with screening. Automation failures are geometric rather than structural: dimensions, squareness, bottom flatness, protruding fasteners, missing boards. Send us your integrator's tolerance document and we will screen a pool against it.
04 · Sustainability
Sustainability questions
What does zero landfill actually mean?
No organic material that enters our yard leaves it in a dumpster. Every load is weighed in and every product stream weighed out, and the reconciliation is the basis of our reporting. In 2025 the landfill figure was zero pounds.
Can I get documentation for our ESG report?
Yes — a monthly certificate with measured weight diverted, units reused, and a CO₂e figure calculated using the method published on our carbon math page. Measured numbers beat modelled ones in audits.
How much carbon does reuse actually save?
We publish 11 kg CO₂e avoided per reused pallet, derived from a 14.2 kg new-pallet figure minus a 3.1 kg reuse cycle. The full derivation, including a leakage caveat we do not hide, is on the carbon math page.
05 · Logistics
Logistics questions
How far do you deliver?
Our own fleet runs a 180-mile radius from Portland, covering Oregon, SW Washington and parts of Idaho. Beyond that we quote through partner yards and freight — written quotes, all fifty states, with the grading done by whoever is nearest.
What is a closed loop and can we run one?
The same truck that delivers loaded pallets leaves with your empties and cores. It halves truck movements. It needs staged empties, space to work and roughly matched volumes, which is why we survey a site before proposing one.
Do you offer on-site sorting?
Yes, for sites handling roughly 2,000+ pallets a month. Our insured crews work in your yard against our published standard. The fee is offset against the value of recovered pallets, and at good sites the arrangement is net positive for you.
06 · Other
Other questions
What is the Pallet Passport?
Every pallet that crosses our scale gets an ID burned into a stringer. Type it into our passport page and you will see the species, size, grade, cycle count, repairs, miles and carbon ledger. No app, no login — a brand mark and a web page.
Do you build furniture?
Yes, from clear boards recovered from retired decks: counters, shelving, cladding, planters and retail fixtures. Only heat-treated or untreated wood, never MB-stamped stock, and every piece carries the Passport IDs of its source pallets.
| Pallet | Static | Dynamic | Racked | Tare | Stack height |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 48×40 GMA Grade A | 8,000 lb | 2,800 lb | 2,200 lb | 33–37 lb | 3 high loaded |
| 48×40 GMA Grade B | 6,500 lb | 2,200 lb | 1,500 lb | 30–36 lb | 2 high loaded |
| 48×40 block, 4-way | 9,000 lb | 2,500 lb | 2,400 lb | 37–41 lb | 4 high loaded |
| EPAL / Euro 1 | 8,800 lb | 3,300 lb | 2,200 lb | 48–55 lb | 3 high loaded |
| 42×42 beverage | 7,500 lb | 2,600 lb | 1,900 lb | 35–39 lb | 3 high loaded |
| 48×48 drum | 9,500 lb | 3,000 lb | 2,300 lb | 40–45 lb | 2 high loaded |
| 36×36 nursery deck | 4,500 lb | 1,400 lb | 900 lb | 24–28 lb | 2 high loaded |
| 48×20 half pallet | 3,000 lb | 1,400 lb | 900 lb | 18–22 lb | 2 high loaded |
| Remanufactured 48×40 | 6,000 lb | 2,000 lb | 1,200 lb | 30–38 lb | 2 high loaded |
| Heavy skid 96×48 | 16,000 lb | 12,000 lb | Not for racking | 95–130 lb | 1 high |
Process
How a first order 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.
Receiving
What to check on delivery
Eleven minutes on the first three deliveries sets the tone for the whole relationship. Do this with any supplier, including us.
| Check | How | Pass | If it fails |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall size | Tape measure, both dimensions, one pallet in ten | Within 1/4" (Grade A) or 1/2" (Grade B) | Note it on the delivery ticket |
| Squareness | Steel square in two opposite corners | Within 1/4" on the diagonal | Reject the unit; we replace next route |
| Protruding nails | Palm flat across the top deck | Nothing catches | Reject — this is what tears packaging |
| Bottom boards | Flip one pallet in ten | No split through a nail line | Reject; it will fail in a rack |
| Moisture | Lift one. Wet pallets are 8–10 lb heavier | Feels dry, sounds sharp | Floor stack to dry, do not rack at rating |
| Mould or staining | Visual, both decks | Weathering only, no fuzz | Reject for any food-contact use |
| Grade mix | Count against the delivery note | Matches what you ordered | Ask for the count sheet to be corrected |
Write failures on the delivery ticket rather than calling — a written record is the only thing that reliably changes supplier behaviour, and we replace rejected units on the next route with no restocking charge.
Vocabulary
Terms used on this page
Defined the way a yard uses them, not the way a standards document does.
- Core
- Low-grade pallet material bought for board and fibre recovery rather than resale.
- Diversion certificate
- Documentation of measured weight kept out of landfill. Increasingly required in ESG reporting.
- Grade A / #1
- Premium recycled: no plugs, no repairs, tight tolerance, highest published ratings.
- HT
- Heat treated: 56 °C at the core of the wood for 30 continuous minutes, per ISPM-15.
- Pool
- A managed population of pallets, either a rental operator's or a customer's own.
- Racked load
- What a pallet can carry supported only at its edges in beam racking. The number that matters most.
- Tare weight
- The weight of the empty pallet — a real and rarely audited freight cost.
Long reads
From the journal · written in the yard
- 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 …
- Jun 11, 2024 · 6 min
How to turn the pallet pile behind your building into a cheque
Most businesses pay twice for pallets: once to buy them, once to have them hauled away. Breaking that loop takes one pho…
- 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 …
- Feb 18, 2025 · 6 min
The de-nailer: what happens to a pallet that cannot be saved
Four products come out of a pallet that failed its last inspection, and one of them ends up as a café counter in St John…
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
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
Diagnostics
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.
Storage
Keeping pallets usable through a wet winter
Portland takes about 36 inches of rain a year and most of it lands between November and March. You do not need a building to survive that — you need three habits.
- Off the ground
- Two spare pallets as a base. Anything touching soil wicks water and rots from the bottom layer up.
- Covered on top
- A tarp that actually reaches the sides. Rain enters a stack from above, not from the side.
- Air gaps, not a seal
- A sealed tarp traps condensation and produces the mould problem you were avoiding. Leave the sides open.
- Away from drip lines
- Anything under a roofline drip edge stays wet all winter, regardless of what you cover it with.
- Aligned with the wind
- Stacks oriented with prevailing wind dry noticeably faster. Free, and it works.
- Rotate the pile
- First in, first out. The bottom of an untouched stack is where pallets go to die.
| Condition | Weight | Stiffness | Rack it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kiln dried (≤19% MC) | 33 lb | Full rating | Yes |
| Air dried, covered | 35 lb | Full rating | Yes |
| Damp, uncovered 2 weeks | 39 lb | Reduced | Floor stack |
| Rain-soaked | 45 lb | Materially reduced | No — let it dry |
| Frozen wet | 45 lb+ | Unpredictable | No |
Nine pounds of water per pallet is nine pounds of freight you pay to move. Across 600 units that is more than two and a half tonnes of water on a truck. Field notes on moisture
If you are selling
Six things that raise what your pile is worth
None of these require you to sort anything. They just make the pile faster for a driver and a grader to deal with, and that difference lands in the price.
- 01
Get it off the dirt
The bottom layer of a stack sitting on soil is the layer we have to write off. Two spare pallets underneath prevents it.
- 02
Stack square and to one height
Even stacks load faster, count accurately and travel without shifting. Leaning piles get counted conservatively.
- 03
Keep sizes together
You do not need to grade, but separating 48×40 from everything else takes minutes and raises the per-unit price.
- 04
Pull out the obvious non-wood
Carpet, foam-backed board, metal frames and the occasional bicycle. Composites cost us money to separate.
- 05
Leave truck and forklift access
A pile behind a locked gate at the end of a narrow alley is worth less than the same pile on a loading apron.
- 06
Photograph it once
One picture from fifteen feet tells a grader footprint, grade mix, moisture exposure and count within about 15%.
| Material | We take it | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| 48×40 GMA, any grade | Yes | Paid per unit by grade |
| Euro / EPAL branded | Yes | Paid per unit, market dependent |
| Block pallets, odd sizes | Yes | Paid per unit |
| Broken cores, mixed piles | Yes | Usually collected free |
| Crates, bins, dunnage | Yes | By weight |
| Wet or unsortable stock | Yes | Free, or a small haul fee |
| Marked rental-pool pallets | No | They belong to their operator |
| MB-stamped (fumigated) | No | Cannot enter our streams |
| Painted or contaminated | No | Would degrade mulch and bedding |
| Fire-damaged | No | Unsafe to process |
Reference
Standards, bodies and who decides what
Pallets sit under a surprising number of overlapping rules. Here is who writes them and what they actually govern.
| Reference | Who maintains it | What it governs | Does it bind a used pallet sale? |
|---|---|---|---|
| ISPM-15 | IPPC, under the UN FAO | Treatment and marking of solid wood packaging in international trade | Yes, for export |
| GMA footprint (48×40) | Industry convention, originally grocery manufacturers | A footprint, not a quality level | No — it is a size |
| EPAL / EUR | European Pallet Association | Euro pallet construction, repair and branding | Yes, if sold as EPAL |
| ISO 6780 | International Organization for Standardization | Principal pallet footprints worldwide | No |
| ASTM D1185 / D1083 | ASTM International | Test methods for pallet performance | No, but ratings reference them |
| PDS (Pallet Design System) | Virginia Tech / NWPCA | Engineering-grade load modelling | No — a design tool |
| NWPCA uniform standards | National Wooden Pallet & Container Association | Common grade vocabulary | Voluntary |
| OSHA 1910.176 | US Dept of Labor | Safe storage, stacking and housekeeping | Yes, in your building |
| Oregon EPR (SB 582) | Oregon DEQ | Producer responsibility for packaging; wood is in scope for reporting | Increasingly, yes |
| FSMA / food safety plans | US FDA | Packaging as a food-contact hazard consideration | Via your audit, yes |
The gap in that list is the interesting part: no authority grades used pallets. That is why a written supplier specification — ours is published here — is the entire quality system in this industry.
Safety
Pallet safety, the short version
OSHA 1910.176 covers storage and housekeeping in your building. These are the specifics that actually cause incidents.
- 01
Never rack on an unknown rating
If nobody can produce a racked (edge-support) figure in writing, treat the pallet as unrated and floor stack it. This is the single most common serious incident in warehousing.
- 02
Empty stack height
Keep empty pallet stacks to a sensible, stable height — commonly capped around 15 units or 6 feet by site policy — on level ground, away from exits and sprinkler heads.
- 03
Empty pallets are a fire load
Idle wooden pallets burn fast and hot. Most fire codes limit indoor idle storage and require separation from other combustibles. Outdoor storage needs clearance from buildings.
- 04
Never climb a stack
Obvious, routinely ignored, and the cause of most pallet-related injuries. Use equipment, not a foothold.
- 05
Mind protruding fasteners
Gloves, and reject units with nails standing proud. A nail that tears a case will also tear a hand.
- 06
Do not burn treated wood
Never burn MB-fumigated, painted or chemically treated wood. Untreated offcuts are fine as fuel; everything else goes to a proper stream.
This is general guidance rather than a compliance document. Your local fire code and your own risk assessment govern; we are happy to supply load ratings and treatment records to support yours.
Next step
Ask us the awkward one
We would rather lose an order than win it by being vague about what we can do.