The most common type of pallet you’ll find is a called a standard wooden pallet. Shipping your goods on these has many advantages. They’re durable, cheap to make and also to break down for recycling.
What they’re less good at is resisting damage. Humidity and rain invite pests to occupy the nooks and crannies of these pallets once they get a little older, while splinters and rusty nails may cause injury.
So let’s look at the benefits of plastic construction; plastic pallets might just be best suited to meet your pallet shipping needs.
Plastic pallets
Keep them outside, wash them, melt them down and stack them high. Plastic pallets are extremely versatile.
Benefits
- Timber regulations can mean bad news for your pallet delivery. Some countries enforce strict timber regulations, which means if your pallets are made of the wrong type of wood, your driver will be left with no choice but to unload and reload goods – a process that can cause serious delays, and even end in damaged goods
- Plastic pallets are anti-slip due to a grooved surface
- Plastic pallets don’t suffer from water damage which keeps them pest free
- No sharp edges, nails, or splinters make plastic pallets safer to handle
- Plastic pallets are easy to wash, a simple rinse does the job
- Plastic pallets are very shock-absorbent
- Unlike their wooden counterparts, plastic pallets can be used for all weather conditions
- Toxic spills won’t linger on or damage a plastic pallet
- The plastic can be ground up, melted and shaped for reuse as a new product
- Plastic pallets have a long life span of over 10 years
Shortcomings
- Because wooden pallet parts can simply be replaced by new panels, wooden pallets are easier to fix. A broken plastic pallet has to be melted down
- Plastic pallets cost more to make than their wooden counterparts
Plastic pallets present very few disadvantages. Use them outdoors, ship them overseas or stack them into 53 pallet-high skid towers in the back of your lorry.
Image: Shutterstock
