Pallet Grades Explained

The vocabulary problem

There is no legally binding grading standard for recycled wood pallets in North America. There are conventions, and they are widely shared, and they are also applied loosely enough that one yard's A grade is another yard's B. This causes more disputes than price does. The way through it is not to argue about names; it is to agree on rejection criteria in writing before the first trailer moves.

The grades in detail

A Grade / Premium / #1

The best recycled pallet available. No plugged stringers, no companion stringers, no cracked members. All seven top deck boards present and full width. Consistent colour, which in practice means the wood is of similar age and species. No staining, no residue, no odour. Structurally equivalent to a new pallet for almost every application, and approved for racking.

B Grade / Standard

Structurally sound with visible evidence of repair or wear. Plugged stringers are permitted. Deck boards may be mixed in width and colour. May have six top boards rather than seven. Suitable for general distribution, inbound raw material and most racking applications where the repair is a plug rather than a companion.

#2 Grade / Economy

Repaired more than once, often with companion stringers. Mixed species and board widths. Visibly used. Still rated for around 2,000 lb static and entirely appropriate for floor-stacked storage, internal movement and one-way shipments where the pallet is not coming back. Not recommended for racking.

Remanufactured

Built on a jig from recovered components. Grade depends on the build spec, not on the history of the wood. A well-built remanufactured pallet can be A grade. This is the category most buyers misunderstand and most often under-value.

Grade selection matrix

Over-specifying grade is the most common and most expensive habit in pallet purchasing. Buying A grade for internal movement that never leaves the building can easily double a pallet budget for no operational benefit whatsoever.

Repair types and their grade impact

Metal plating deserves a specific warning. It is fast, it is cheap, and it introduces a hard steel edge into a wood structure. Plates catch on conveyor systems, damage product, and are explicitly rejected by most grocery and automotive receivers. We do not plate.

Our posted rejection criteria, verbatim

These are printed and mounted at both grading stations at Evendale. We wrote them down in 2011 after a third argument about what A grade meant, and customer complaints fell by roughly two thirds inside a quarter. The criteria themselves did not change — they simply stopped being remembered differently by different people on different days. Copy them, adapt them, or use them to test another supplier.

Universal — applies to every grade

• No cracked or split stringer longer than 3 in on any load-bearing member.
• No protruding or shiner nails on any deck surface, top or bottom.
• No metal plates. We do not apply them and we do not accept them inbound.
• No mould bloom, chemical staining, odour, pest damage or exit holes.
• Deck gaps within 3.5 in for fork and conveyor compatibility.
• Moisture content below 19% for stock going to indoor storage or export.
• No bark anywhere on stock destined for export.

Additional for A / #1

• No plugged stringers. No companion stringers.
• All seven top deck boards present and full width.
• Five bottom deck boards present, chamfered.
• Uniform colour across the deck — no heavily weathered board against a fresh one.
• No residue, no labels, no staining of any kind.

Additional for B grade

• Plugged stringers permitted. Companion stringers permitted, at #2.
• Six or seven top deck boards; mixed widths and colours accepted.
• Light wear and weathering accepted. Structure must be sound.

Additional for automotive and automation stock

• Zero shiners, inspected on both faces as a separate final pass.
• Height sorted to ±1/4 in with a gauge, not by eye.
• Footprint tolerance ±1/4 in — jig-built or remanufactured stock only.
• Build date, jig number and grade recorded per lot and supplied with the shipment.

Why units actually leave the reuse stream

Twelve months of grading decisions, by reason. This is the distribution behind the abstract discussion of grades, and it tells you where to look first when a unit is failing in your own building.

Writing a grade into a purchase specification

Skip the letter. A letter is not enforceable and it means different things at different yards. Write the rejection criteria instead — these are the clauses that actually give a receiving clerk something to act on.

1. State the construction: stringer or block; number of stringers; notched or not.
2. State minimum deck board counts, top and bottom, and minimum board width.
3. State the maximum permitted deck gap.
4. State which repairs are acceptable: plugs yes or no, companions yes or no, plates never.
5. State the maximum moisture content and where it is to be measured — stringer, mid-bundle.
6. State appearance requirements only if they are genuinely audited downstream. If they are not, do not pay for them.
7. State height tolerance if anything is automated, with the measurement method.
8. State the treatment requirement, with the accredited facility number to appear on the mark.
9. Require a grade sheet per lot, including the rejection percentage pulled from that lot.
10. State the remedy: collect and replace within a stated period, not credit notes and argument.

Common questions

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