It answered a question we could not
A Willamette Valley winery asked where the wood had been. We knew the grade and roughly where the truck came from, and nothing else. That bothered us for six months before we did something about it.
Request a quote
Want your own stamped pool?
Every unit we sell carries an ID by default. Tell us the volume and we will include the record set with your first delivery.
Portland, OR · email only, no phone
No ID to hand? Pick one of the samples above, or look at the end grain of anything we have built for you — the Passport IDs of the source pallets are burned in at eye height, deliberately.
Why bother
Naming a thing makes people reluctant to waste it
We expected customers to like the Passport. The unexpected part was what it did inside our own yard.
It changed the scrap decision
When a pallet has a name and a visible history, scrapping it becomes a decision somebody has to justify. Our scrap rate on repairable stock fell in the first year. Nobody was told to repair more.
It deliberately avoids technology
No app, no login, no RFID, no blockchain. All four were suggested. A brand mark burned into Douglas fir is readable by a human with a flashlight in a wet yard in 2046.
How to read a stamp
Anatomy of an ID
- PL
- Our facility prefix, burned on every unit that crosses the scale.
- Four characters
- The unit reference — letters and digits, assigned at grading.
- Check character
- Catches a misread digit when somebody types it in.
- Location on the pallet
- Always a stringer, never a deck board. Deck boards get replaced; stringers persist through repair.
- If the stamp is worn
- Email a photo of the stringer. We can usually read it, and we will re-stamp on the next visit.
- 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 the Pallet Passport
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.
Vocabulary
Terms used on this page
Defined the way a yard uses them, not the way a standards document does.
- 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.
- HT
- Heat treated: 56 °C at the core of the wood for 30 continuous minutes, per ISPM-15.
- IPPC mark
- The stamp proving treatment: wheat symbol, country code, facility number and treatment code.
- Remanufactured (reman)
- A pallet rebuilt from salvaged components onto a sound frame, re-squared and re-stamped.
- Stringer
- The timber running the long dimension of a pallet, carrying load in bending. Three is standard.
- Stringer plating
- A metal plate reinforcing a cracked stringer. Cheaper than a companion and less durable.
- Tare weight
- The weight of the empty pallet — a real and rarely audited freight cost.
Long reads
From the journal · written in the yard
- Dec 10, 2024 · 7 min
Why we gave every pallet a name: the thinking behind the Pallet Passport
We stamp an ID into every unit that crosses our scale. It started as a traceability request and changed how our own crew…
- May 20, 2025 · 7 min
Reading a pallet like a document: stamps, brands and what they tell you
Pallets carry more written information than most people realise. Here is how to read the marks on the one under your des…
- Sep 15, 2026 · 6 min
Reading forklift damage: what the marks on a returned pallet tell you
Damage patterns are diagnostic. A yard can tell you what is happening in your warehouse from a pile of your own empties.…
- Aug 18, 2026 · 9 min
A pallet glossary for people who have to buy them
Forty terms you will hear from a pallet yard, defined in the way a yard actually uses them rather than the way a standar…
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
Lifecycle
Eleven years in the life of one pallet
A composite built from real Passport records. Individual units vary enormously; the shape does not.
Year 0 Built
Douglas fir from a mill inside 180 miles. Seven top boards, five bottom, three stringers, helical nails, 2,800 lb dynamic.
Year 0–2 Trips 1–4
Beverage route work. Loaded, racked, unloaded, returned. Colour starts to grey; nothing structural changes.
Year 3 First inspection failure
A lead board splits at a nail line. Twenty-minute fix: replacement deck board, re-square, re-stamp. Graded B from here.
Year 3–6 Trips 5–9
Nursery and agricultural work, where deck gaps matter more than appearance. Spends two winters partly outdoors.
Year 7 Companion stringer
A stringer cracks. A second timber is fitted alongside, spanning the crack. Measurably stiffer than before.
Year 7–10 Trips 10–13
Local one-way freight. Tare weight has drifted up a pound from accumulated moisture cycling.
Year 11 Retired from carrying
Two bottom boards gone, deck softening. Economic repair ends here. Chalk line through the whole pallet.
Year 11 Dismantled
De-nailed board by board. Clear boards to the fabrication shop; structural stock back to the repair bay as donor material.
Year 11 Recovered
What is left goes through a magnet and a grinder: mulch, bedding shavings, biomass fuel. The nails go to a scrap partner four miles away.
Year 11+ Still working
The best boards are now shelving in a bottle shop, carrying its Passport ID burned into the end grain.
Thirteen trips, two repairs, roughly 143 kg CO₂e avoided against building thirteen new pallets, and nothing landfilled at the end. Look up a real record
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.
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
Next step
Want every pallet you buy to have a name?
It is standard on everything we sell, at no extra cost. Tell us your volume and we will include the record set with the first delivery.