If you manage any business that requires you to ship goods either across the country or around the world, then you will understand the advantages of using pallets. Pallets allow you to combine a large number of items into a single pallet. With pallets, you can stack your goods neatly side by side with other pallets, allowing you to keep your shipping costs low and helping your goods to remain stable during transit so that they will arrive at their destination safely. The benefits of pallets may be obvious but you will still need to decide what type of pallets you should choose.

Which pallet material should you choose?

In some cases, you could use plastic pallets for your goods, but in the majority of cases, you will likely prefer to use either softwood or hardwood pallets. While softwood is most commonly used for pallets, there are a lot of advantages that come when you opt to try hardwood pallets. The key benefit of hardwood pallets is that they are considerably stronger than softwood pallets. This additional strength is vital if you are shipping particularly heavy loads that could cause a softwood or plastic pallet to break during transit. It is not just the load-bearing capacity of hardwood pallets that helps them to stand out. The durability of hardwood pallets also has cost-saving implications. While softwood pallets may need repair or even scrapping after a brief period of use, hardwood pallets are reusable and you can recycle them back into service multiple times, helping to keep your transportation costs lower than they otherwise would be.

What size pallet should you choose?

Your choice of pallet size will often depend on the final destination of the pallet. What a lot of people do not realise is that different pallet sizes are ideal for different things. If you have hardwood pallets built to the Australian standard size, then they are ideal for transporting items on the Australian railway network anywhere in the country, but if you want to send your hardwood pallets overseas, then using an ISO container would make more sense. Ultimately your pallet will need to be stored at its destination, and you will need to ensure that it can be comfortably accommodated wherever it is going. If you are not sure what size would be best, then your chosen shipping company may be able to suggest an appropriate size.