What do pallets cost a distributor a year? Put your numbers in.

Pallets sent out each week, less the share that comes back usable, is the number you replace. Multiply by 52 and by the price of a replacement and you have the year. A distributor sending 150 pallets a week with 60% coming back usable replaces 60 a week, 3,120 a year; at the B grade from-price of $18.99 ex GST that is about $59,200 a year, or $7.60 on every pallet shipped. Most operations guess a third of that, because the invoices arrive in lots of fifty and nobody adds them up.

The second half of the sum is the inbound dock. Raw material and imports arrive on pallets the outbound product never reuses; the sound standard 1165s in that pile are bought, and the broken ones are a clearance line. An operation receiving 120 pallets a week with 40% sound stock has about 2,500 saleable pallets a year sitting behind the dock.

• Return rate. Every ten points of pallets that come back usable is worth about a seventh of the spend at a 60% return rate; a return rule written into customer terms is the cheapest pallet you will ever buy.
• Grade choice. A grade for customer-facing loads, B grade for general warehousing, C grade for one way shipments; paying A grade prices for pallets that never come back is the most common leak: the grades explained.
• Damage at the dock. Forklift tines through the lead board and overhanging loads crushed in transit turn a reusable pallet into a core; packing a pallet properly cuts both.
• The inbound pile. Sorted and counted, it is sold on a schedule and the pickup is free from sixty in Greater Sydney; left mixed, it is a clearance charge: the 60 pallet rule.
• Pooling. Pooled pallets move the cost from purchase to daily hire and transfers; whether that wins depends on where the pallets go: hire against buying.