Pallets by the truckload, on a schedule you set
A truckload order is one size and one grade, repeated on a rhythm: the shape most plants and warehouses actually buy pallets in.
- Size
- One size per load
- Build
- Stringer or block
- Grade
- One grade per load
- Trades
- Plants, 3PLs, food docks
- Towns
- Kent and Ottawa counties
Why recurring beats one-offs
A plant that goes through a few hundred pallets a week does not want to reorder every Monday. It wants the same size and grade to keep showing up. A warehouse that ships out as many as it receives wants the same thing from the other side. Recurring supply is a request that says size, grade, count and rhythm once.
Words to use in the request
| Say this | It means |
|---|---|
| Pallets per week | How many your dock goes through, or collects, in a week |
| Trailer count | How many pallets fit a 53-foot trailer; depends on size and loading pattern |
| One size, one grade | No mixing; a trailer of 48x40 Grade A, not half and half |
| Surge | A short season with a spike, like a harvest |
The trailer guide works out how many pallets of each size fit by simple geometry, with the method shown. Weight can cap a load below the geometry, so the number is a ceiling.
Weighing a recurring order
- The count per week or month, and whether it rises and falls
- The size and grade, kept the same on every load
- Whether the empties go back out, so the same dock both buys and sells
- The dock itself: height, whether a trailer can back in, hours it can receive
A dock that both buys and sells can send one request covering both. Say what you need coming in and what you have going out. Selling surplus and clearing a stack share the same form.
Small and mid-size plants run most of West Michigan's manufacturing. About four in five manufacturers in the greater Grand Rapids region have fewer than 250 employees, according to Colliers in 2017. A weekly truck suits that scale better than a national pallet-management contract.
A trailer's worth, in numbers
A 53-foot trailer with an interior of 636 by 100 inches takes 26 pallets of 48x40 laid straight and 30 when turned, for one layer on the floor. Weight is the second limit. A load of used pallets weighs far less than a load of anything on them, so a trailer of empty pallets is usually limited by height, not weight, and stacks of used pallets can go several high.
That makes the count in a truckload request a matter of how high pallets stack in the trailer, which depends on what the trailer is, and on whether stacks are tied. The honest answer is a range, and the number to write in a request is the one the receiver wants: a count of pallets per week or per month, not a count of trailers.
Questions a standing order should settle
- Who unloads, and at what hour?
- Does the same trailer return empty or take backhaul?
- What happens when a load contains pallets below the agreed grade?
- How is a miscount handled?
These are matters between buyer and seller, and a request can ask them. For the pallets themselves, see used pallets and Grade B.
Why a truckload is described in pallets
Two loads of the same trailer can contain very different numbers of pallets. An empty-pallet load stacks high and can carry several hundred, while a loaded-pallet delivery fills the floor at 26 or 30. The count is the number that matters to a dock's plan, so write it as pallets.