Journal category
Wood, plastic, species, construction types and the trade-offs between them.
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The subject
The material argument in this industry is usually conducted at the wrong altitude. People compare wood against plastic as though it were a values question, when it is an arithmetic one that turns almost entirely on how many trips the pallet completes and whether it comes back at all.
The same is true one level down. Stringer against block is not a quality debate — it is a question of whether a pallet jack has to enter from the long side, and what happens in the repair shop when something breaks. Hardwood against softwood is mostly a freight-weight decision that people have turned into a strength one.
What is filed here works through those comparisons with numbers attached, including the places where the answer goes against our own commercial interest.
Recurring figures
Where to start
One question settles stringer against block. Start here.
It is always shrinkage. Always.
The repair economics, from the shop floor.
Regional species mix, and what it costs in freight.
The problem nobody specifies against until an audit.
7 articles
The strength argument is real and it is not the important one. What decides block versus stringer over a fleet's life is what happens when something breaks.
It is a wooden frame with four hinges. It is also, for a lot of closed loops, the cheapest packaging decision available and almost nobody considers it.
The species of a recycled pallet is decided by whatever sawmill was nearest when it was built, sometimes a decade ago and four hundred miles away.
The spreadsheet says 80 trips. The operation delivers 42. That single variable is the difference between a good decision and a hundred thousand dollars of moulded polyethylene in somebody else's yard.
The strongest part of a corrugated box is its corners. Overhang is the practice of asking those corners to hold up the box while standing on nothing.
I have watched this argument run for an hour in a conference room when it could have been settled in ten seconds on the warehouse floor.
Mould on a pallet is almost never a structural problem and almost always an audit problem. The fix is moisture, and moisture is a storage question as much as a supply one.
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