Sustainability
A pallet's résumé: tracking one core through seven lives
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In March 2017 we put a small stencil on the centre stringer of an unremarkable 48" x 40" GMA pallet and wrote its number in a notebook. This is what happened to it.
We did it partly out of curiosity and partly because we were arguing internally about how many lives a pallet really gets. The industry figure people quote is “up to ten”, which sounded optimistic. It turned out to be optimistic for most pallets and roughly right for this one.
The résumé
| Life | Dates | With | Work done on return |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mar 2017 – Nov 2017 | Grocery DC, Commerce City | Inspected only. Grade A. |
| 2 | Dec 2017 – Sep 2018 | Beverage packer, Denver | One lead board replaced. Grade A. |
| 3 | Oct 2018 – Aug 2019 | Same beverage packer | Two deck boards, shiners sheared. Grade A. |
| 4 | Sep 2019 – Mar 2021 | Building products yard, Aurora | Stringer plug after notch damage. Grade B. |
| 5 | Apr 2021 – Feb 2022 | 3PL, Henderson | Re-squared, one bottom board. Grade B. |
| 6 | Mar 2022 – Jan 2023 | Machine shop, Longmont | Companion stringer. Grade B. |
| 7 | Feb 2023 – Jun 2024 | Cut down: two half pallets | Retail display, Front Range grocery |
| End | Jul 2024 | Dismantled | 9 boards recovered, rest to fibre |
What it carried
Tinned goods, canned beverages twice, roofing fasteners, mixed 3PL freight, machined steel components, and finally seasonal produce in a supermarket. Roughly — and this is an estimate from the customers involved — 41 tonnes of goods over seven years.
What it cost and earned
| Event | Cost to us | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Original purchase as a core, 2017 | $4.10 | — |
| Seven sales across seven lives | — | $58.40 |
| Four repairs | $9.85 | — |
| One remanufacture into two half pallets | $8.90 | $29.00 |
| Freight, allocated across 14 movements | $11.20 | — |
| Lumber recovered at end of life | — | $2.40 |
| Total | $34.05 | $89.80 |
A $4.10 core generated $89.80 of revenue over seven years. That is the whole argument for a repair-first yard in one line, and it is why grinding a repairable pallet is not merely environmentally worse — it is commercially illiterate.
The environmental side
Six avoided manufactures rather than seven, because the first life was the pallet doing its original job. Everything after that is a pallet that did not have to be built.
Where it is now
Nine deck boards were recovered at the end and went into our workshop, where eventually they became part of a bar front for a taproom in Lakewood. The remainder — split stringers, block fragments and the boards with too many nail holes left — was ground, screened and sold as landscape mulch in the spring of 2024.
Which means that a pallet bought as a broken core in 2017 is currently, in part, a piece of furniture and, in part, keeping water in a Denver garden bed. There is no tidier summary of what this business is for.
What it made us build
The notebook became the Pallet Passport. Every batch through the yard now gets an RPC reference recording source, intake weight, the disposition split, repairs performed, lumber recovered and the avoided-carbon figure. Customers cite the references in their own reporting; auditors like them because they are records rather than estimates.
We would never have built it from a strategy document. We built it because somebody wanted to settle an argument about whether pallets really get ten lives. They get seven, if you look after them.