The humble pallet - our global superstar

The humble pallet

Today is National Logistics day. However every day is logistics day when you’re a pallet manufacturer. Having a readily available supply of pallets is a vital part of a companies supply chain and making and supplying them to businesses up and down the country is a responsibility we’ve taken on for over 40 years.

So why do we call the humble pallet a global superstar? A basic definition of one would be the following:

“A Pallet is a horizontal platform that supports goods in a stable fashion.”

It’s hardly the all-singing, all-dancing description of a global sensation that we know and love. But then the average pallet isn’t one to make a big fuss, it doesn’t do interviews or fashion week but instead it works away quietly in the background, doing it’s duty and it doesn’t take holidays either.

With the average lifespan of a pallet being anything between three and seven years, their flame burns bright – sometimes too brightly and like some superstars they end up having to take time out for repairs and recuperation. We do the same thing for our pallets and naturally this is easier when they’re made out of wood. At Somerlap all our new pallets are made out of timber, or if they’re reconditioned then we recycle as much wood as possible in order to repair them. After all they may have seen a lot of action, travelling across continents on tour and then some.

On an average day at Somerlap we make around 3,000 new pallets. If you put each piece of wood together length ways that we use they would stretch all the way from our production facility in Mark, Somerset to Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast, around 35 miles away. That’s every day. Per week we use enough wood to reach all the way to Caen in Northern France.

With all this travelling you may ask what’s the glue that keeps a pallet together? Well it’s not glue, it’s nails. On average each of our pallets uses 102 nails weighing 204g in total or the same as your average smart phone. Over the course of day that adds up to 612kg and by the end of the week that’s over 3,000kg or the weight of a Tesla Cybertruck. That’s a lot of bling.

Going back to pallets not taking holidays, if they did get the chance to take a break they’d probably like to go somewhere hot. Very hot. 56°C to be more precise, which was the hottest temperature recorded in Death Valley, California back in 1913. It’s also the same temperature that we heat treat our pallets to in order to make them ISPM 15 compliant. This means that bugs, pests and fungal diseases are killed off and not spread about on its many journeys around the globe.

So these are just a few of the reasons why we celebrate the humble pallet. Why it doesn’t have it’s own special day we’ll never know and what would happen without it’s essential contribution to logistics doesn’t bear thinking about.

Need pallets? Look no further than Somerlap Pallets

If you’re in need of a pallet supplier you can trust, Somerlap Pallets can help. Alongside our new wooden pallets and reconditioned wooden pallets, we stock pallet collars, pallet cratespallet racking timber, and more

Contact us today for help with any and all pallet enquiries.

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