Journal category
How pallets are sorted, what the grades mean, and why definitions drift.
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The subject
There is no federal, ANSI or ISO standard defining recycled pallet grades in the United States. Every yard writes its own, which means two truckloads of nominally identical Grade A stock can look like different products, and neither supplier has done anything dishonest.
Grading is also a labour cost. Sorting tightly means rejecting more from the same intake, so there is constant commercial pressure to loosen a definition by one borderline pallet at a time until a customer calls. That drift is not a conspiracy; it is what happens to any judgement made four seconds at a time, eight hundred times a shift, without a published number to check against.
These articles cover what a grader actually assesses, why we publish our criteria despite the yield it costs us, and the purchase-order language that turns a marketing tier into something measurable at a receiving dock.
Recurring figures
Where to start
Why the vocabulary drifts, and nobody is lying.
What a grader checks, in what order, and why twice.
What it cost us in yield, and what it bought.
3 articles
There was a real argument internally about this. Publishing a number means you have to hit it every time, including on the Friday when the load has to go.
Four seconds to sort, ninety seconds to repair, four seconds to check. Here is what happens in each of them, and why the last four seconds are the most important.
Two truckloads of Grade A 48x40 from two suppliers can look like different products. Neither yard is being dishonest. The problem is that nobody outside your purchase order defines the word.
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