A wood pallet should be taken out of service when damage, contamination, or the wrong pallet specification creates a reasonable risk that it will no longer safely support, protect or move the load through the intended handling and storage system. Broken or missing components, exposed fasteners, serious splits, decay and contamination are among the most obvious warning signs.
Now for the immediate challenge: in a fast-paced frontline environment, the decision often has to be made in seconds.
It might be an order picker grabbing the next empty pallet from a stack, a warehouse worker sorting returned pallets, or a receiver looking over an inbound palletized load. A forklift operator may get the best view of the bottom of a pallet when lifting it toward a rack position. At a dairy or other production facility, a palletizer operator may be the last person to catch a bad pallet before thousands of pounds of product are placed on it.
Those quick decisions matter. A damaged pallet can contribute to an unstable load in a rack, jam or hang up in material handling equipment, damage product or, in the case of a dairy load, result in a great deal of spilled milk.
What should you look for?
Start with obvious structural damage. On a stringer pallet, look for badly split or broken stringers, missing or broken deck boards, and particularly missing bottom end boards, which play an important role in pallet integrity and handling. On a block pallet, look for missing, badly split or displaced blocks.
Inspect the lead deck boards as well. Significant missing wood or breakage can reduce support for the load and create problems when the pallet is handled. Unsound wood, off-square geometry, and questionable previous repairs are additional reasons to pull a pallet aside. Some damaged pallets can be returned to service after proper repair, but whether that makes sense depends on the damage and the pallet. See Can a Broken Wood Pallet Be Repaired and Safely Reused?
Protruding nails and other exposed fasteners deserve particular attention. So do sharp wood shards and heavy splintering. Even when the pallet remains capable of carrying weight, these defects can damage cartons, bags or other products and create an injury hazard. For some palletizers, uneven deck board thickness can cause an expensive jam-up.
Industry pallet specifications reinforce many of these basic checks. For example, EPAL identifies missing boards, badly damaged blocks, broken boards, exposed nail tips, severe splintering, decay and contamination among conditions that can make an EPAL pallet unfit for use until properly repaired.
Sometimes the pallet isn’t broken. It’s simply the wrong pallet.
Condition is only part of the decision. Check that the pallet is the correct size and style for the application. A pallet that works perfectly well for floor storage may not be suitable for a particular pallet rack, conveyor or automated storage and retrieval system. Load capacity also matters, although determining whether a pallet is adequately rated can be more complicated than simply looking at it. Our guide to how much weight a pallet can hold explains the differences between static, dynamic and edge-rack capacity.
Markings can provide another warning. Pool pallets such as CHEP, PECO and iGPS pallets are proprietary assets and should be handled according to the pool operator’s requirements and your company pallet policy rather than casually using them for what might not be an authorized use. Similarly, export applications may require appropriate ISPM 15 markings on wood pallets. If the certification mark is damaged or difficult to read, see What If the IPPC/ISPM 15 Stamp on a Pallet Is Unreadable?
Finally, look for contamination. Oil, chemicals, strong odours, unknown substances, and significant mold should trigger closer scrutiny. A structurally sound pallet isn’t necessarily suitable for carrying food, pharmaceuticals, or other sensitive products. Visible mold doesn’t automatically mean that a pallet has lost its structural integrity, but condition and intended use matter. See Can Moldy Wood Pallets Still Be Used?
What if the questionable pallet is already loaded?
Don’t ignore a damaged pallet simply because it arrived under product. A questionable loaded pallet should be identified and handled according to the facility’s safety and material-handling procedures. Depending on the load and the nature of the damage, product may need to be transferred or reboarded onto a structurally sound pallet of the correct size and specification.
In some situations, a load may be placed onto another pallet, but double-palleting should only be used where it is appropriate for the load, handling equipment and storage system. Likewise, placing another loaded pallet on top introduces a different set of considerations involving pallet capacity, packaging strength and load stability. See Can Loaded Pallets Be Double-Stacked?
The basic rule is simple: if there is reasonable doubt about the pallet’s structural integrity, cleanliness or suitability for the application, don’t put it back into service just because it is handy, or just because you don’t have time to deal with a questionable pallet under load.
A pallet is inexpensive compared with a collapsed load, damaged product, jammed conveyor or workplace injury.
Find answers to more pallet-related questions at our Pallet Problems hub.
Have a pallet problem we haven’t covered? Send us your question. We may answer it directly or use it as the basis for a future Pallet Problems article.
Rick LeBlanc, EMBA, is the founder and editor of Reusable Packaging News (subscribe to the free newsletter) and editor of Western Pallet Magazine. A supply chain journalist with more than 30 years of experience, he specializes in pallets, reusable packaging, material handling and related operations. Rick is co-author of Pallets: A North American Perspective and Pallets & Progress: A Collected History of Pallets and Palletized Handling 1922–1945. He is also an advisory board member of the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design. Read Rick’s full bio.