Grade A pallets: no repairs, none needed

BOX 01What you see on a Grade A pallet

Pick one up and check four things. Every deck board is whole, with no splits that run to an edge. The stringers or blocks are unrepaired: no plug, no extra board alongside. Nothing is stained, wet or smelling of past cargo. The pallet sits flat on the floor without rocking.

• Whole deck boards, no plates or patches.
• Stringers or blocks original, not plugged.
• Dry, clean and free of residue.
• Flat: it does not rock on a level floor.

A pallet that fails any one of those is a Grade B at best.

BOX 02Who buys Grade A

Food lines buy it because a pallet that touches product has to be clean, and a patched pallet is harder to keep clean. Retail outbound buys it because the retailer's dock often rejects visibly repaired pallets. Pallets that carry packaged goods to a store, through a cold chain or to a customer who sees them are the market.

On the Memphis side, food and beverage docks and the medical supply side are the heaviest users. A Southaven medical-supply distribution building is the kind of dock that asks for it.

BOX 03If you are selling Grade A

A pallet that was used once for a clean product and never repaired is Grade A, whatever its age. Counted, stacked and dry, a pile of them is the easiest to sell. Say the size, the count and whether the pile has been protected from weather. See the sell hub and 48 x 40.

If you are buying, a request that says Grade A or B opens more stock than Grade A alone, so use it only when the load needs it.

BOX 04What disqualifies a pallet from A

Any one of these usually drops a pallet out of Grade A: a cracked or repaired stringer, a board with a split running through a nail, a board of a different wood or thickness, a stain from oil or a spill, a smell of damp. A pallet with a sticker residue or a printed mark is still A if the wood is sound.

Looking from the fork side is the quickest check because stringer damage shows at the entry. An A pallet should lift on forks with no flex in the deck. If the deck sags, the pallet is a B or lower no matter how it looks.

BOX 05Photographing a Grade A stack

A stack of clean pallets photographs well, and a photograph can carry most of the request. Stand at a corner, far enough back to include the whole stack, and take a second shot close to the fork openings where stringer faults show. A third, under raking light, shows scuffs and stains on the deck.

Write the count of the stack in the picture caption in your notes: for example, "12 stacks of 10, 120 pallets."

BOX 06Seasonal effects on A stock

Clean wood left outside in a Mid-South summer darkens, picks up pollen and sometimes grows a film of mold on the lower pallets. A stack that was Grade A in April may be Grade B by August. That is why dates matter in a request: state when the pallets were last checked.

BOX 07Matching Grade A to its buyers

Customers who see the pallet are the main buyers of Grade A: retail floors, display programs, food stores and clean-room-adjacent docks. They want sameness as well as soundness, so a pile of 100 pallets that are all the same size, wood and age is better than 100 that are individually fine but different.

If your Grade A pile is uniform, say what makes it so: same supplier, same year, same size. If it was gathered from several sources, say that too.

BOX 08Pairing A with a build and a size

Grade A tells a buyer about condition, nothing more. A buyer who wants Grade A 48 x 40 stringer pallets will be disappointed by Grade A 48 x 45 blocks. Always attach the size and the build to the grade, so the sentence reads as a complete specification: grade, size, build, entry.

BOX 09Why uniformity beats a perfect average

Two piles can have the same average condition and read very differently. One is 100 pallets all in the middle of the Grade A range. The other is 50 near-new and 50 barely A. A buyer who picks from the second pile will find a mix, and may feel the pile was oversold. Describing the range is part of describing the pile.

FAQStraight answers