A1 term
- A-clean
- A Grade A structural sort with an added appearance screen — no stain, mould shadow, paint or raised splinters on the top deck. Costs roughly $1.40 more per pallet and eliminates most retail rejections.
B3 terms
- Block pallet
- A pallet using nine solid blocks instead of stringers, giving genuine four-way access for both forklifts and pallet jacks. Stronger and more durable than a stringer pallet, and 15–25% dearer.
- Bottom deck
- The boards on the underside of a pallet. Three boards is standard; five is specified where the pallet will be racked.
- Butted deck board
- A deck board that ends flush with the outer edge of the stringer, rather than overhanging it.
C3 terms
- Chamfer
- A bevelled edge cut into the lead board to help pallet jack wheels ride up onto the deck without catching.
- Companion stringeralso: Sister stringer
- A second stringer nailed alongside a cracked original during repair. Structurally sound, adds 3–5 lb, and disqualifies a pallet from Grade A.
- Core
- An as-collected used pallet — unsorted, unrepaired and ungraded. Raw material rather than a product, and priced accordingly.
D6 terms
- Deck board
- Any of the boards forming the top or bottom face of a pallet. Typically 5.5 inches wide and 0.5–0.75 inches thick.
- Deck coverage
- The percentage of the pallet face covered by boards. A seven-board 48x40 top deck is roughly 87% coverage.
- Double-face
- A pallet with boards on both top and bottom. Non-reversible has a fuller top deck; reversible has identical faces.
- Drive screwalso: Helical nail
- A helically threaded fastener that resists withdrawal roughly three times better than a smooth-shank nail. Our standard.
- Dunnage
- Loose wood used to block, brace or separate cargo. Covered by ISPM-15 and the single most commonly forgotten item on an export shipment.
- Dynamic load
- The maximum weight a pallet carries while being moved by a forklift or jack. Typically 35–45% of static load.
E1 term
- EPAL
- European Pallet Association — the licensing body for the Euro pallet. Genuine EUR-1 pallets carry an EPAL brand on the corner blocks.
F2 terms
- Flush pallet
- A pallet whose deck boards end level with the stringers, with no overhang. The opposite of a wing pallet.
- Four-way entryalso: Partial four-way
- Access from all four sides. True four-way requires block construction; a notched stringer pallet is only four-way for forklifts, not for pallet jacks.
G4 terms
- GMA pallet
- The 48x40 inch stringer pallet standardised by the Grocery Manufacturers Association in 1968. Roughly 30% of pallets in circulation in North America.
- Grade A
- Our top recycled tier: no companion stringers, two or fewer replaced deck boards, one plug maximum, squareness within 0.5 inch.
- Grade B
- Companion stringers permitted, up to five replaced boards, up to three plugs, squareness within 0.75 inch. The most commonly traded recycled grade.
- Grade C
- Structurally sound but cosmetically rough. Suitable for floor-stacked storage and one-way freight; never for racking.
H1 term
- Heat treatment (HT)
- Raising the core temperature of wood to 56°C for 30 continuous minutes to satisfy ISPM-15. Also drops moisture to 15–20%.
I2 terms
- IPPC mark
- The stamp showing compliance with ISPM-15: wheat symbol, country code, facility number and treatment code. Missing any element invalidates it.
- ISPM-15
- International Standard for Phytosanitary Measures No. 15, governing treatment of solid wood packaging crossing international borders.
K1 term
- Kiln dried (KD)
- Lumber dried in a controlled kiln to a specified moisture content, typically ≤19%. Not the same as heat treatment, though the processes overlap.
L1 term
- Lead board
- The outermost deck board at each end of the pallet. Takes the most abuse from fork tines and is the most frequently replaced component.
M1 term
- Mend plate
- A metal plate fastened across a split stringer. A repair of last resort; disqualifies a pallet from Grade A and usually from Grade B.
N2 terms
- Nestable
- A pallet design, usually plastic, that stacks 4:1 or better when empty. Saves return freight; cannot be racked.
- Notch
- The cut-out in a stringer allowing fork entry from the side, typically 9 inches long by 1.5 inches deep. Also the most common point of structural failure.
O1 term
- Overhang
- Product extending past the pallet edge. Two inches of overhang cuts corrugated compression strength by roughly a third.
P3 terms
- Pallet collar
- A hinged four-sided wooden frame that converts a flat pallet into an open box and folds to about two inches for return.
- Plug
- A wooden insert fitted into a broken notch to restore stringer material. One is permitted in Grade A; three in Grade B.
- Pooling
- A rental model where a third party owns the pallets and charges per trip. CHEP, PECO and iGPS are the major North American pools.
R3 terms
- Racked load
- The weight a pallet carries spanning two rack beams with nothing beneath the centre. Always the lowest of the three load ratings.
- Remanufactured pallet
- A pallet rebuilt from recovered components, often to a different size than the original. Distinct from a repaired pallet.
- Reversible pallet
- A double-face pallet with identical top and bottom decks, so it can be loaded either way up.
S4 terms
- Skid
- A pallet with no bottom deck — two or three runners with a deck on top. Lighter and cheaper; cannot be jacked from underneath.
- Slip sheet
- A thin kraft or plastic sheet with a gripping lip, used with a push-pull attachment to move loads without a pallet at all.
- Static load
- The weight a pallet supports at rest on a flat, continuous surface. The highest of the three ratings and the least useful.
- Stringer
- The board set on edge that separates the top and bottom decks of a stringer pallet. Usually 1.5 x 3.5 inches nominal.
T2 terms
- Top cap
- A protective lid placed over the top tier of a stacked load to prevent crush damage from the pallet above.
- Two-way entry
- Fork access from two sides only, because the stringers are unnotched. The strongest stringer configuration.
W1 term
- Wing palletalso: Overhang pallet
- A pallet whose deck boards overhang the stringers, adding strap surface and improving edge-rack support.
Questions
The terms people ask about most
What is the difference between a stringer and a block pallet?
A stringer pallet runs three or four solid boards on edge between the decks, so a forklift enters from two sides properly and two sides only partially. A block pallet sits on nine blocks, which gives true four-way entry and is what the European and ISO systems are built around.
What does it mean when a quote says plugged or companioned?
A plug is a short piece of stringer glued and nailed over a crack or notch break. A companion is a full-length stringer fastened alongside a damaged one. Both are legitimate repairs, but a plugged pallet is not Grade A — if the quote does not say which, ask.
HT, KD, DH, MB — which stamp abbreviations actually matter?
HT means heat treated to 56°C core for thirty minutes and is the ISPM-15 mark you want. DH is dielectric heating, also compliant. MB is methyl bromide, now banned in most jurisdictions. KD means kiln dried and is a moisture claim, not a phytosanitary one.
Why do static, dynamic and racked load capacities differ so much?
They describe three different situations. Static is a pallet on the floor, dynamic is a pallet being moved by a truck, and racked is a pallet unsupported between beams. Racked capacity is frequently under a third of static, and it is the only figure that matters if the load ever goes in a rack.
Is GMA the same thing as a 48x40 pallet?
Almost, but not quite. GMA is the Grocery Manufacturers Association specification, which sets a 48x40 footprint plus board counts, deck thicknesses and a four-way partial entry stringer build. A 48x40 pallet that misses those construction details is a 48x40 but is not GMA.
Put it to work
Where these terms show up in practice
Vocabulary is only useful attached to a decision. These are the pages where each cluster of terms actually matters.