Industry: e-commerce and 3PL
Pallets for e-commerce and 3PL docks in Orlando
A fulfillment building takes in mixed pallets at one door and ships orders at the other. The job is to sort what comes in: reuse the sound 48 x 40s, send the cores out and keep the dock clear.
The pile
More than 20 major freight carriers operate at Orlando International Airport, and Amazon employs 1,000 to 5,000 people in the region. Fulfillment buildings turn pallets fast. What arrives mixed has to be sorted before it can leave again.
Two flows, both sorted
| Flow | What to do |
|---|---|
| Outbound | Buy sorted 48 x 40 Grade A or B, and heat-treated stock for export freight |
| Empties | Sort by size and grade, set cores aside, sell or clear the rest |
The standing arrangement
A building that sheds pallets weekly is a candidate for buyback rather than one-off sales.
The arithmetic of a fulfillment dock
A building that unloads ten trailers a day takes in about 260 pallets of 48 x 40 if each trailer carries 26, and 300 if they are laid in the turned pattern. Even if only a tenth are kept as empties rather than reused, that is 26 to 30 pallets a day, or around 130 to 150 in a five-day week. The numbers explain why an e-commerce dock has a pallet problem even when every individual load is tidy.
Habits of a clean 3PL dock
- One lane or rack for each size, set at the receiving door.
- A cull rule: a pallet with a broken stringer goes to cores immediately.
- A weekly count, so that the flow can be described in numbers.
A table for the weekly count
Ten trailers of 26 is 260 pallets a day, 1,300 over a five-day week, and a tenth of that is 130 empties. Sorted into sizes at the door, the 130 are a product; left in a heap, they are a disposal bill.
| Detail | Example | Why a buyer asks |
|---|---|---|
| Trailers received a day | 10 | Sets the volume of pallets entering the building |
| Pallets per trailer | 26 | A standard 48 x 40 laid in one layer |
| Share kept as empties | One in ten | Sets the weekly surplus to move |
| Share Grade A or B | Most of the rest | Decides what can be sold as stock |
Pooled pallets in a fulfillment building
Third-party logistics buildings handle freight for many brands at once, and some brands ship on rented pallets that belong to a pooling company, not to the warehouse. The blue CHEP pallet and the red PECO pallet are the best known; the owner's name or colour is branded on the block or stringer. A pooled pallet is returned to its owner through the owner's own channels, so it never belongs in a pile of empties offered for sale.
Receiving staff therefore sort three ways, not two: pallets that can leave with outbound freight, pallets that belong to a pool, and pallets that are plain wood with no mark of ownership. Only the third group is stock that can be sold or recycled.
Stretch wrap, corner boards and returns
Mixed-SKU pallets built for store replenishment are wrapped in stretch film and often finished with cardboard corner boards. When a pallet is stripped at the dock, the film and corner boards become waste and the bare pallet becomes a core or a reusable. A building that strips returns, rather than reselling them whole, creates a second stream of small pallets and broken boards.