Pallet cores from Orlando docks: what happens to them

Why cores matter

Pallets are not made once. A pallet comes off a delivery, goes into the dock's stock, and eventually either ships again or sits in a corner. Those that sit are cores. For a dock that moves freight every week, they pile up as fast as trailers empty.

To a recycler, a core is raw material. It can be repaired and resold, taken apart for sound boards, or ground when it is past saving.

Three fates of a core

Repair

Sound frame, broken boards: fresh boards go on and it comes back as Grade B, sometimes A.

Remanufacture

The good parts of several cores go into a combo pallet with new lumber where needed.

Grinding

Irreparable wood may be chipped for mulch, composite products or biomass.

What a recycler will look at

• The size and the build.
• The count, and whether it comes once or every week.
• How the stack was kept, wet cores are harder to work.
• Whether it is one pile of one size or a mix.

Cores against clearing

If nothing in the stack can be saved, it is a disposal job rather than a sale. The dividing line is whether the frame is sound.

What a core is, in the study

The Virginia Tech survey took its repaired pallets from recyclers at 20 locations, and it treats the repair as the end of a three-step chain: the pallet is inspected, sorted into a repair grade, and mended with one of six methods. Those are replacing a stringer, fitting a full or half companion stringer, nailing a plug, fastening a metal connector plate or driving corrugated fasteners across a crack. A core is the pallet that enters that chain.

Core or broken?

The test a recycler applies is whether a repair method can bring the pallet back to a sound frame. A split deck board is a quick repair. A stringer broken through along its length can be mended with a companion stringer. A pallet with rotted blocks, several broken stringers, or mould through the frame is broken and goes to grinding.

Species in a core pile

Pallets are built from softwood or hardwood. Hardwood, usually oak or a similar dense species, is heavier and holds nails better. A hardwood core is worth sorting out because it survives repair and repeated use longer than a pine one, and a stack that mixes the two is easier to price once they are separated. A buyer will ask which the stack holds.

What comes out of a dismantled core

Taking a stringer pallet apart yields lumber of two lengths: stringers as long as the pallet, and deck boards as wide as it. A 48 x 40 gives three 48-inch stringers and a set of 40-inch boards. Sound ones go to repair stock; boards with a split at one end can be trimmed to a shorter length and used where a short piece will do. Nails are cut or pulled and the metal is recovered with magnets, which is why a core with a lot of loose steel is handled more slowly.