It’s easy to take for granted the retail progress that quite mundane objects have initiated. The pallet is a typical example. Wooden pallets, plastic pallets, metal pallets – all allow goods to be stacked and stored on them, to be lifted and moved around with relative ease.
Pallets are strong; they can carry loads of 1,000 kg, and as more goods are transported via container trucks and ships, the pallet industry has burgeoned.
An amazing half a billion pallets are made each year, with around two billion pallets apparently in use across the US alone. Once merchandise is stored on a pallet, it can be lifted by forklift trucks or by equipment called ‘pallet jacks’. Warehouse layouts are designed to enable the forklifts to weave in and out of the storage shelves that hold the pallets on them. Large discount stores and ‘sheds’ (for example DIY retail outlets) use pallets to store and display merchandise within the retail environment itself.
The use of pallets reduces retailers’ handling and storage costs by allowing ease of movement. Surprisingly, there is no single international standard for pallet sizes, but in principle, those pallets used in shipping have to be made of materials that won’t carry insects or plant diseases.
Contribution to Retail History
The pallet is the fundamental tool that enables the efficient and easy transport of merchandise through the retail distribution process from manufacturing plants worldwide, to warehouses, to store shelves. It also serves as a merchandising tool for major retailers, such as Aldi, Costco and Walmart, that use the pallet as an effective and labor-saving bulk display.