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The fields below reach the same yard team that wrote this page. Tell us the size, the count and the grade you think you need — we will confirm it or correct it, in writing, within one business day.
Portland, OR · email only, no phone
The Grocery Manufacturers Association settled on 48 inches by 40 inches in the 1960s, and the footprint stuck because it fits: 30 of them tile a 53-foot trailer floor with almost nothing wasted, and two fit side by side across a standard 96-inch trailer width.
Because the pool is so big, the secondary market is liquid. That is why a Grade A recycled GMA is the single best value in packaging: the same footprint, the same racking behaviour, half the price and a fraction of the footprint.
Specifications
Published, honoured, and quoted back to you in writing on every order.
| Attribute | Grade A / #1 | Grade B / #2 | Remanufactured |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall size | 48" × 40" ± 1/4" | 48" × 40" ± 1/2" | 48" × 40" ± 1/2" |
| Top deck boards | 7, no plugs | 6–7, plugs allowed | 6–7, mixed stock |
| Bottom deck boards | 5 | 4–5 | 4–5 |
| Stringers | 3 solid, no cracks | 3, one companion allowed | Salvaged, re-nailed |
| Deck thickness | 5/8" – 3/4" | 1/2" – 3/4" | 1/2" – 3/4" |
| Entry | 4-way notched | 4-way notched | 4-way notched |
| Dynamic load | 2,800 lb | 2,200 lb | 2,000 lb |
| Static load | 8,000 lb | 6,500 lb | 6,000 lb |
| Racked load | 2,200 lb | 1,500 lb | 1,200 lb |
| Tare weight | 33–37 lb | 30–36 lb | 30–38 lb |
Comparison
Trailer geometry decides pallet geometry. A 53-foot dry van has roughly 630 inches of usable floor length and 98 inches of width. Place GMA pallets 40-inch side across and you fit two abreast with an inch to spare; run them 15 deep and you have 30 positions.
Switch to a metric Euro pallet and you lose floor area on every trailer. That single fact keeps the GMA footprint dominant in North America regardless of fashion.
A stringer pallet has three parallel 2×4-ish timbers running the 48-inch direction, with deck boards nailed across them. Notches cut into the outer stringers create partial four-way entry — a pallet jack can enter the 40-inch side but only into the notch.
A block pallet replaces the stringers with nine blocks and perimeter boards, giving true four-way access for both forklifts and pallet jacks. Block pallets cost more, weigh more and survive automated handling better. We stock both; if your facility runs rail-style racking or AS/RS, tell us before you order.
Measure one in ten with a tape: 48 and 40, plus or minus a quarter inch. Lay a steel square in two corners. Look for protruding nail heads on the top deck — the most common cause of torn packaging. Flip one and check that no bottom board is split through at a nail line.
If anything fails, call it out on the delivery ticket. We replace rejected units on the next route, no argument and no restocking charge.
Roughly a third of all pallets in the United States share this footprint, which makes the secondary market unusually liquid. Liquidity is what makes a Grade A recycled GMA the best value in packaging: the same footprint, the same racking behaviour, roughly half the price of new, and a fraction of the embodied carbon.
It also means the pool has a quality distribution rather than a quality level. The difference between suppliers is not the wood — it is where they draw the line between A and B, and whether they honour it when the yard is busy.
Deck thickness, notch condition and bottom-board integrity. Thin decking deflects between stringers and crushes product corners. Torn notches mean the pallet has been fighting a pallet jack and will keep doing so. A split bottom board at a nail line is the most common cause of a rack failure.
None of those three is visible from a photograph of a stack, which is why measuring one in ten on your first three deliveries is worth eleven minutes of somebody's morning.
Process
No sales team, no discovery call, no CRM sequence. We have no telephone, so everything below happens in writing and stays searchable afterwards.
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.
Used pallet availability moves daily. You get a real count and a real date rather than a list price that was true last quarter.
Price per unit by grade, freight itemised separately, delivery window, and any honest reservations we have about the specification you asked for.
Signed count sheet on arrival, weight ticket where relevant, and a diversion certificate for anything we collect for recycling.
| 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 |
Grade definitions, dimensional tolerances and racked load ratings in writing. Most yards will not publish a racked figure at all.
Two graders per line, flipped and sounded. Every inbound load is triaged within four working hours so nothing rots in a mystery pile.
Weighed in, weighed out, reconciled monthly. Zero pounds landfilled in 2025, with a certificate you can hand to an auditor.
No phone line by choice. Every price, date and commitment lives in an email you can search, forward and hold us to.
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.
Every unit carries a Pallet Passport ID burned into a stringer. Type it in and read its species, cycles, repairs and carbon ledger.
Receiving
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.
Avoid these
Every one of these has cost a customer real money in front of us.
Purchase price is 5–15% of total cost per trip. Tare weight, damage rate and receiving-dock rework are usually larger line items, and none of them appear on a quote comparison.
A load extending even an inch past the deck transfers weight into the packaging instead of the pallet. Case compression strength drops sharply and the damage appears three handling events later, in somebody else's warehouse.
Dynamic is what a pallet carries while being moved. Racked — supported only at its edges — is smaller and is the only number that matters in beam racking. Ask for it in writing.
For one-way shipping, floor stacking and closed loops, Grade B does the same job for roughly 20% less. Over-specifying is paying for appearance.
Two spare pallets as a base and a tarp that reaches the sides will keep a stack usable through a Portland winter. A soaked pallet gains nine pounds of paid freight weight and loses stiffness.
On export loads the bracing, blocking and chocks are solid wood packaging too. One untreated board can hold an entire container at a foreign port.
The yard
Reuse is the cheapest emissions reduction available in logistics, and it is also the easiest to document. We model a new 48×40 softwood pallet at 14.2 kg CO₂e — lumber production, fasteners, assembly and delivery — and a reuse cycle at 3.1 kg, covering collection, repair materials, yard overhead and redelivery. The difference, 11 kg CO₂e per reuse, is the figure we publish.
We also publish the caveat: that figure assumes a reused pallet genuinely displaces the manufacture of a new one. Economists call the gap leakage, and nobody in this industry can honestly claim it is zero. We think displacement is high because the pallet market is regional and price-responsive, but we will not pretend it is perfect.
Which is why we lead with the number that needs no assumptions: measured landfill diversion. Landfilled wood decomposes anaerobically and releases methane, roughly 28 times worse than CO₂ over a century. Keeping four million pounds of wood out of a hole in the ground is a benefit you can weigh.
Per-unit figures
Questions
Pallet jacks or automated handling: block, for true four-way entry and better racked performance. Forklift-only floor stacking in a closed loop: stringer, and keep the money.
Thirty positions on the floor with the 40-inch dimension running fore-and-aft, two abreast. Double-stacking depends entirely on your load height and whether the lower unit can carry it.
Yes. Notched stringers are usually same-day; block pallets run one to three days because the used supply is thinner.
Questions
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Defined the way a yard uses them, not the way a standards document does.
Long reads
The GMA footprint is not a design triumph. It is the answer to a division problem involving a 53-foot trailer and a 98-i…
Damage patterns are diagnostic. A yard can tell you what is happening in your warehouse from a pile of your own empties.…
Forty terms you will hear from a pallet yard, defined in the way a yard actually uses them rather than the way a standar…
A short, honest list of the decisions that cost us money, and the three that saved the company.…
Decision table
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
Worked example
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 |
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
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
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.
| 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
Timing
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 |
Lifecycle
A composite built from real Passport records. Individual units vary enormously; the shape does not.
Douglas fir from a mill inside 180 miles. Seven top boards, five bottom, three stringers, helical nails, 2,800 lb dynamic.
Beverage route work. Loaded, racked, unloaded, returned. Colour starts to grey; nothing structural changes.
A lead board splits at a nail line. Twenty-minute fix: replacement deck board, re-square, re-stamp. Graded B from here.
Nursery and agricultural work, where deck gaps matter more than appearance. Spends two winters partly outdoors.
A stringer cracks. A second timber is fitted alongside, spanning the crack. Measurably stiffer than before.
Local one-way freight. Tare weight has drifted up a pound from accumulated moisture cycling.
Two bottom boards gone, deck softening. Economic repair ends here. Chalk line through the whole pallet.
De-nailed board by board. Clear boards to the fabrication shop; structural stock back to the repair bay as donor material.
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.
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
Next step
Email reaches the same yard team that graded the stock. Written quotes, one business day, no phone tag.
