Pallets for retail and small business in the Mid-South

BOX 01Where the stack comes from

Every delivery of shelf stock, fixtures or building material arrives on pallets. A grocery, hardware or home store takes a handful a day, and the empties stack up behind the building until someone needs the space. Suburbs like Germantown, Cordova and Hernando are full of this.

BOX 02Making the pile describable

1. Count them by stacks of ten.
2. Measure one: length first, width second.
3. Note anything broken, wet or oily.
4. Name the ZIP code and where the stack sits.

The result is a request a buyer can place: a count, a size, a damage note and a place.

BOX 03Which request

A one-time stack is pallet removal. A pile of sound standard pallets can be a sale; see who buys pallets. If you need a few, used pallets in small counts is a normal request.

BOX 04Why small piles still matter

One store's pile is small. A town's worth is not. Retail and small-business pallets together make a large supply, but each source is too small to justify a trip on its own. That is the reason small requests exist, and why a short, clear one is worth sending.

Do not wait for the pile to grow. A pile of 40 pallets is as easy to describe as 400, and a space cleared sooner is worth more than a count that looks impressive.

BOX 05Common retail pallet problems

• Pallets stacked against a fence and half buried by weeds.
• Pallets wet from a leaking dumpster court.
• Pallets belonging to a supplier that wants them returned.
• Pallets with a mix of local and out-of-state marks.

Each of these should be named. Pallets that a supplier owns are not yours to sell, and a good request says so.

BOX 06Using the checklist

The four-step count-and-measure routine above takes about ten minutes for a small pile. It is worth doing before sending a request, because it turns a feeling of "a lot of pallets" into a number that can be acted on.

BOX 07Shops in strip centers

A strip center has a common back lane, a shared dumpster enclosure and many tenants. Pallets pile up wherever there is a corner. Property managers often prefer a single removal to many tenants calling separately, and a request from the manager is clear and easy to act on.

FAQStraight answers