The yard · May 21, 2024

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 gun.

Marguerite Okonjo — Yard manager 6 min · 446 words

Stacks of reclaimed pallets standing in a grass field under a clear blue sky — Seasonal overflow storage

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The chalk mark decides everything

Every pallet that comes off a recycling truck gets flipped, sounded and chalk-marked within a few hours of arrival. Sounded means struck with the flat of a hand near each stringer: a solid pallet rings, a cracked one thuds. Graders develop this reflex within about a month and then cannot unlearn it.

Four marks exist in our bay. A single slash means companion stringer. A cross means deck board replacement. A circle means re-nail only. A line through the whole pallet means core — it goes to the de-nailer and its useful boards become somebody else's repair.

The companion stringer, step by step

The repairer cuts a replacement stringer from kiln-dried stock to within an eighth of an inch of the original length. It is positioned hard against the damaged stringer, flush with the top deck so the deck height does not change, and fastened with helical nails through both the top and bottom deck boards.

Helical nails matter. A smooth shank nail withdraws under vibration; a helical nail rotates as it enters and locks into the fibre. The difference in withdrawal resistance is large enough that it changes how long the repair lasts, which is why we do not keep smooth shank nails in the building.

Re-squaring is not optional

After fastening, the pallet goes onto a jig and gets checked corner to corner with a steel square. Our tolerance is a quarter inch. A pallet out of square by more than that will not sit correctly in a rack, will not stack reliably four high, and will eventually drop something.

Roughly one in twelve repairs fails the square check and gets reworked on the spot. That rework is the least glamorous and most important part of the operation.

Then it gets a new name

Every repaired pallet leaves the bay with a fresh Passport ID burned into a stringer and its repair count incremented. Anybody can type that ID into our site and see the cycles, the repairs, the species, the carbon ledger and where it is likely headed next.

We built the Passport partly because customers asked for traceability and partly because it changed how our own crew thinks. When a pallet has a name and a history, nobody wants to be the person who scrapped it unnecessarily.

What this costs, and what it saves

A customer-owned repair run typically costs 40 to 55% of buying replacements. Each repair avoids roughly 11 kg CO₂e and keeps 35 pounds of wood in service. Across a 300-pallet run that is a tonne of avoided emissions and a five-figure saving.

About 14% of incoming repair stock turns out to be beyond economic repair. We tell customers that figure up front, because a repair quote that assumes a 100% success rate is a repair quote that will be revised later.

Terms used on this page

Defined the way a yard uses them, not the way a standards document does.

Block pallet: A pallet supported by nine solid blocks rather than stringers, giving true four-way entry and better racked performance.
Bolster: A squared timber used to block and brace loads inside trailers and containers. We re-saw ours from retired stringers.
Chamfer: The bevelled edge on a bottom deck board that lets a pallet jack roll on without catching.
Companion stringer: A second timber nailed alongside a cracked stringer to span the damage and restore the load path.
Core: Low-grade pallet material bought for board and fibre recovery rather than resale.
Closed loop: A pallet population circulating between known points and returning. Cycle time, not consumption, governs pool size.
Deck board: The boards nailed across stringers or blocks forming the top and bottom surfaces of a pallet.
De-nailer: The machine that separates deck boards from stringers and removes fasteners before fibre recovery.

The full glossary, 36 terms

Process

How a request after reading this 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.

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

Questions

What people ask about working with the yard

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.

Everything else on this site

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.

Indicative figures for a 48×40 footprint in the Pacific Northwest, 2026. Rental pool economics vary by contract and are deliberately shown as a range.
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.

Next step

Put this into practice

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