When it comes to the use of pallets for the shipment of fast moving consumer goods in sea containers, the common thinking has been that given the high price of international shipment, floor loading is the most cost-effective option. While this indeed may be, there are a number of factors to weigh in determining whether the best solution involves floor loading or palletization of sea container shipment. There are trade-offs between the cost of manually floor loading and destuffing containers, for example, versus the cost of pallets and palletized handling, in conjunction with pallet cost, etc. Rather than automatically assuming that floor loading is most efficient, it is well worth going through the exercise of considering those trade-offs.
It is useful to review considerations that should be made with respect to palletize or not to palletize sea container shipments. They are well worth contemplating for enlightened logistics professionals wishing to optimize their decisions whether or not to palletize sea container shipments. See for example, http://www.epal-pallets.de/downloads/09_11-13%20container.pdf, posted at the EPAL website, as well as the work of Alex Halgedorn, Peter Hamner and Ralph Rupert: http://www.materialshandling.net/articledatabase/view.asp?articleID=2965.
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