How do we make pallets?

I have to start off with a funny story before I get into the nitty gritty of how to make a pallet. When I first started down the rabbit hole of wanting to make my own vertical vegetable pallet garden (which my full tutorial can be seen on World Market’s blog), I had zero clue that there were 2 options when it came to pallets. Chemically Treated pallets and Heat Treated pallets. The pallets you see everyone using (the more popular pallets) are the chemically treated ones. What distinguishes the two? Heat Treated pallets have a “HT” stamped on the side of them. Heat Treated pallets would be safe for veggie/herb gardens. Chemically Treated pallets would not be safe.

After learning this tidbit of information, I decided there was still not going to be a way for me to know, without a shadow of a doubt, where a Heat Treated pallet had lived it’s life or what it might have been exposed to. And not wanting to contaminate my own food source, I decided it was going to be smarter for me to make a pallet myself.

I do want to point out that it’s probably smarter to make your own pallet for projects you plan on putting in your home. Who wants to be exposed to harmful chemicals??

So back to the funny story. I made a trip to my local lumber store and knew I wanted a lighter weight wood like pine to build my pallet. Once you fill an already sturdy/heavy pallet with soil and transplants, it’s going to get quite heavy. Here’s my conversation with the local lumber “specialist”…
Me: I’m looking for pine to build a veggie garden.
Man: Oh the pine is right here.
Me: Yes, but that’s treated wood. I don’t want treated wood, I’m making a veggie garden.
Man: This is what people use to build their gardens because the wood will last longer.
Me: Yeah, but I don’t want the treated kind.
Man: Well, it’s going to fall apart after one season if you don’t use this wood.
Me: But it’s been treated.
Man: It’s only harmful when you cut on it.
Me: (leary) Well, I don’t want it falling apart after one season, so I guess I’ll get this.

After I built my pallet, my husband came out to inspect my work. Here’s our ensuing conversation:
Husband: Wow, babe. That looks really good.
Me: (beaming) Thanks!
Husband: But you can’t put veggies in that.
Me: (face falling) Why not?
Husband: Because you’ll contaminate your food from that treated wood.
Me: WHAT???? The lumber man told me this is what everyone uses for their gardens.
Husband: Wasn’t the entire point of you building your own pallet, so that you knew where it came from and wasn’t treated with chemicals??
Me: Yes.
Husband: Sorry, babe. That one isn’t going to work.

So, in the end, I built my husband a really nice pallet for an engine we have at our car lot. LOL And I learned my lesson to stick to my guns and push for the wood I was in the store to shop for. The images you see in my tutorial are of the treated lumber I used in my first pallet. DO NOT USE TREATED WOOD. I don’t care if it falls apart after one growing season. I went to a different lumber store and bought untreated wood for my 2nd pallet. I’m becoming a pro on building pallets. The next one I’m making is going to be completely made out of cedar. My 2nd pallet base was made out of white wood (I honestly don’t know the variety) and the top slat part was made out of cedar.

Okay, on to the tutorial!

What You’ll Need for a 32″ Square Pallet
2 – 2x4s [8 foot boards] (cut into 1/3rds…most 2x4s aren’t exactly 8 feet in length…you want all your boards 32″ long)
2 – 1x4s [8 foot boards] (cut into 1/3rds…most 1x4s aren’t exactly 8 feet in length…you want all your boards 32″ long)
Box of Screws 3 1/2″ in length
Drill
Drill Bit
Tape Measurer

What You’ll Do
1. If your local lumber store will cut your boards for you for free (or a small fee), have them cut them for you. Pay attention to their work though! Otherwise, cut all of your boards down to 32″.
2. Take 3 2×4 boards and set them up parallel to each other (you want the skinny side down). You want the outside of the boards to be exactly 32″ (measured from outside edge to outside edge. Your middle board needs to be exactly center.
3. Take 3 2×4 boards and lay them on top, in the opposite direction, the width side down. Make sure it all lines up correctly. 32″ measured from the outside 2 boards. Your middle board needs to be exactly centered.
4. Drill pilot holes into both ends of these 3 boards and then screw 2 screws (per end/per board) into the outside ends. Drill pilot holes in the middle boards and then secure with screws.
5. After all boards are secured by screws, flip the pallet over.
6. Take 5 1×4 boards and lay them on top (width side down). Measure the 2 outside boards to make sure you are 32″ exactly. Secure these 2 boards like you did with the others by drilling pilot holes and then drilling in 2 screws in each end. Drill pilot holes in the middle boards and then secure with screws.
7. Line up your middle 1×4 board, exactly in the middle, and drill pilot holes and then secure with screws.
8. Evenly space your 2 remaining boards (of the 5…you’ll have one left over) and drill pilot holes, then secure with screws.
9. You’re FINISHED!

So many different projects using pallets!! Want to learn how to make your own Vertical Pallet Vegetable/Herb garden? Head to the World Market Blog to see my step-by-step tutorial!!

If you’re not familiar with the commercial wood packaging industry, you may be wondering how are pallets made.  Some people imagine that pallets are produced in some kind of automated, mass-production plant where machines do all the work.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

While complete automation is certainly on the horizon for industrial packaging, it isn’t quite here yet.  It may seem like a simple thing to automate, but there are several reasons why automation in wood packaging is a difficult nut to crack.

Every Packaging Product Is Different

Here at Conner, our customers often require a custom solution to solve their packaging problems.  While sometimes a standard pallet will do the trick, it’s much more often that manufacturers need a crate or pallet that fits the exact specifications for their product.

In many cases, trying to use an off-the-shelf pallet increases in-transit damages and negates any savings a manufacturer might gain from using a standard 48×40 GMA pallet, or even a recycled pallet.  That’s where a custom-designed packaging solution comes into the picture.

Design engineers and packaging designers take a look at what a manufacturer needs to successfully and safely move their product to its final destination.  They design a packaging solution, and then we put it into production.

Production Run Size

Now think about other manufacturing industries that have highly automated production plants.  For most other types of manufacturers, a production run is equal to millions of identical items.  When they change the product, they have to retool and adjust all the automation equipment to produce a different product, a process that can take weeks in some industries.  Once done, they will produce millions of identical products with the new specifications.

It’s a major effort to retool a plant to produce a different or changed product.  Now imagine trying to do that in the industrial packaging industry.

In a highly automated production plant, all the equipment would have to be adjusted and retooled for each customer’s product.  On top of that, manufacturers don’t generally buy millions of pallets or crates at one time.  They purchase them throughout the year, as they manufacture and ship out their own products.

Those two factors combined mean that wood packaging manufacturers, using that type of technology, would be retooling automation systems and reprogramming robotics several times each day.

It’s simply not feasible.

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The Cost of 100% Automation

So once you know what goes into building a pallet, it becomes pretty clear that using a highly automated system to make them is simply too expensive.  Here’s why:

1. Adjusting the equipment in a plant after every production run several times each day would cost significant labor hours and time.
2. You would lose production time, where nothing else was being built while making those adjustments.
3. Automation equipment, computer systems, and robotics can cost millions of dollars, and it would take a very long time before they paid for themselves.

Imagine an industrial packaging company making the investment into a completely automated system to build custom pallets.  They would have no choice but to pass the added costs on to their customers.  This would make the cost of pallets go up significantly.  As a manufacturer, what would that do to your supply chain?  Your company would need to drive the prices of its own manufactured products up just to recoup the expense of packaging.

That would be ridiculous.

While more and more automation is coming to the industrial wood packaging industry, total automation hasn’t evolved enough to meet the needs of our industry yet.

So How Are Pallets Made Then?

So, how are pallets made?  Pallets, crates, and other wood packaging solutions are made in a combination of methods.  The video above represents one of the methods that we use to build pallets.  In this case, a pallet machine is being used to manufacture custom pallets from pre-cut lumber.

Cutting Lumber 

Our first step in manufacturing a customer’s pallet order is to pre-cut the pallet parts into the sizes needed.  We have several different types of machines that cut or rip lumber to the specific sizes needed.  Some of our machines cut a single piece of wood at a time, and others can cut bundles of lumber all at once.  In some situations, the best solution is to have employees use a chop saw and cut dimensional lumber to size manually.

Regardless of how the lumber is cut, it is not a completely automated process.  Employees may have to feed lumber into the machines, stack it, or move it to assembly areas.  It all depends on the machine they are using and how the pallet will be assembled.

Assembling Pallets

Once we have the lumber cut to the specifications we need for a custom pallet production run, we may use a pallet machine, or we may assemble them manually.  That decision depends on a variety of factors:

• It may be quicker and more efficient to build them manually.  This is especially true for very large custom pallets or pallets made from hardwood.

• A pallet machine may already be in use producing pallets for another customer.

• A specific type of machine may be needed to produce the pallet, but that machine is unavailable at that plant location.

Regardless if a machine is used to produce pallets or not, the process isn’t truly automated, as you can see from the video above.  Workers are needed to place the wood in the machine.

Assembling Crates

There really isn’t any standard size crate, the way there are standard size pallets.  When it comes to crating, every crate solution is a custom size.  That means there really aren’t any type of industrial machines that build commercial crates.  In this case, automation is not really possible yet.

Commercial and industrial crates are built manually.

Wrapping Up

If you’re wondering how are pallets made, hopefully, this gave you a little insight into the process.  While a lot of people think that it’s a completely automated process, it’s much more manually driven than most people realize.  This is especially true of pallets and crates built to custom dimensions.

Hopefully, the industrial wood packaging industry will reach the point of 100% automation someday, but we’re not there yet.

*Updated 6/28/2022*

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