Clear the pallets you don't need

Where a pile goes

If the pile has sellable stock in it, say so; the same request can become a sale. See what pallets are worth.

Which piles are a good fit

• Receiving docks with weekly inbound pallets.
• Plants with a back lot of broken stacks.
• Mill-building tenants with a pile that has outgrown the corner.
• Warehouses clearing a lease before a move.

Pallet recycling

Pallet recycling means a used pallet gets repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, taken apart or ground, and whatever lumber is left goes back to use. Combo pallets are remanufactured from a mix of recycled and new lumber for greater strength and consistency, and a core is the used pallet that starts the process.

Chipped pallet wood becomes mulch, an ingredient in composite boards or fuel for biomass boilers. A clean, unpainted stream is worth more than a stream carrying plastic, paint or metal, which is the main reason for sorting at the source.

What a business can do

• Sort by size and grade so sound pallets can be sold as stock.
• Never mix pooled pallets in with your own stock.
• Keep pallets dry. Piled wet against a wall they rot and breed mould, and wet wood loses its value fast.
• Keep them clear of dock doors and fire lanes.
• Do not burn them; treated wood and nails make poor fuel.
• Name the goal in the request: removal, income, or a record that the wood was diverted from disposal.

A one-off pickup

A one-off pickup clears a single pile from a dock, from a few dozen pallets to a trailer-load. Lead with the count, where a range such as forty to sixty is fine, and the footprint. Then the condition: stacked or loose, dry and under cover or not, any sellable stock on top and any painted pooled pallets in it. Then the access. A dock with a loading door at truck height is a different job from a back lot reached through a gate or under a low wire, and in the Blackstone Valley mill towns, where loading zones are tight and streets are narrow, a note on the approach saves a second question.

Some things change the answer without stopping the request, so state them early: chemical spills or stains, pallets glued together by melted wrap or banding, scattered nails and loose boards, and a wet pile that has begun to rot. A short request might read: "about 120 pallets, mixed size, mostly 48 x 40, some broken, behind our building in Woonsocket, one time".