What You Need to Know About Pallet Deliveries – Choosing a Pallet

Choosing pallet deliveries for reliable shipping is the easy part, but there’s a lot you’ll want to know before sending your goods. In the following series we’ll hopefully be taking some of the mystery out of the process.

Before we get started, it’s important to note that these articles are geared toward the small to medium business or individual who requires a regular delivery service. If you only need to send your goods the once, we can provide a pallet for a minimal fee of £12.50. Please be sure to tick the appropriate box as you’re filling out your delivery form.

While you have probably seen the most common type of pallet, the standard wooden variety, there are a number of choices out there that may be better suited to your shipping needs. Let’s talk about wood versus plastic.

Wooden pallets

Wooden pallets are your trusty workhorse, do-all sturdy platform. They’re easy to find and cheap to buy and repair. While there are several wooden varieties we recommend the bog standard pallet. It can carry loads of up to 1000kg and is perfect for shipping anything from engine parts to retail goods.

What you will have to look out for is weathering. Damp environments can encourage fungi and wood-eating insects to eat away at boards. Old nails, splinters and staples are also a frequent cause of minor injury when lifting these heavy pallets.

That said, handle the pallet with a pump truck, buy new pallets every once in a while, and you’ll be good to go. You can use the old ones to build a wall garden in your home.

Plastic pallets

These pallets are less common, but are an excellent choice for many reasons. They’re much lighter, meaning that they’re also a better choice for air freight if you’ll be shipping overseas. Plastic pallets can still hold a substantial load of 750kg. Plastic pallets are easy to keep clean, and they’re a good choice for shipping produce that has stricter regulations.

Plastic pallets are a little harder to be recycled; they have to be melted down before they can be reused. Some warehouses are only designed to store standard wooden pallets, so if you keep goods in more than one warehouse, keep this in mind.