Pallet Repair

The four repairs that cover 90% of failures

Nail choice matters more than most buyers realise. We use helically threaded hardened shanks with a minimum 2.25-inch length on stringer work; smooth-shank nails back out under vibration and are the usual reason a "repaired" pallet fails again within a month.

What grade does a repaired pallet come back as

We publish this table because the single most common dispute in the recycled pallet business is a buyer expecting an A grade and receiving a competently repaired B. Knowing in advance what a repair does to a grade removes the argument entirely.

On-site repair for large distribution centres

Once a site is generating more than about 1,500 damaged pallets a month, shipping broken wood to us and sound wood back is pure transport waste. We will instead place a two- to four-person repair crew inside your building, in a bay you designate, with our own benches, nailers, compressors and harvested board stock delivered weekly.

• Crew works your shift pattern, including second and third shift
• Your damaged pallets never leave the building — repaired units go straight back to the floor
• Freight cost collapses to one inbound board delivery per week
• Full insurance, background-checked staff and your site safety induction observed
• Monthly throughput and grade reporting identical to our yard reporting

The six repairs, in full

Everything that happens at a bench is one of six operations. Here is each one at the level of detail a technician works to, including the failures we watch for in our own rework sampling.

1. Deck board replacement

The damaged board is pried with a bar rather than struck, so the stringer face is not chewed. Old fasteners are pulled, not driven through — a fastener driven through leaves a shank in the stringer that will foul the next repair. A harvested board of matching thickness is set with helically threaded hardened shanks, two per crossing, three on lead boards, staggered across the stringer width and never within three-quarters of an inch of a board end. Around two minutes; the highest-volume operation on the floor.

2. Stringer plug

A fork has punched through between the notches. The void is squared with a chisel, a shaped hardwood plug is cut oversize by a fraction and driven with PVA adhesive, then pinned with four fasteners through the plug into sound wood on both sides. Glue first, nails second — a dry plug is our most common repeat failure. Restores roughly 80–90% of original bending strength, which is comfortably inside the margin for floor and one-way use and is why we are cautious about racking plugged units.

3. Companion stringer

A full-length member is nailed alongside a cracked one, sandwiching the failure. Structurally excellent, visually obvious, and it drops the unit to #2 — which we state on the grade sheet rather than hoping the receiver does not look. Six fasteners along the length, staggered. Not recommended for racking, because the crack is bridged rather than healed.

4. Bottom deck and chamfer repair

The least glamorous and the most underrated. A pallet jack needs a chamfered leading edge to roll up rather than catch. Splintered bottom boards are the commonest cause of jack damage and of conveyor hang-ups, and they are invisible from above — which is why a grader turns every unit once rather than looking at the top deck and moving on.

5. Fastener rework

A shiner is refastened rather than hammered flat. Hammering a proud nail head compresses the wood beneath it and the fastener works proud again within a week. The nail is pulled and a fresh one driven in a new location. On automotive stock this is a separate final inspection pass on both faces.

6. Full teardown and jig rebuild

The unit is stripped to components, boards and stringers are trimmed back past the damage, sorted by length and thickness, and rebuilt on a fixed jig — frequently into a different footprint. A wrecked 48-inch stringer trims to a clean 42-inch member, which is why our odd sizes price near standard rather than near new. Structurally a new pallet made from old wood, with a calculated rating for the actual build.

Why we measure rework rate, not units per hour

A repair bench measured on units per hour will produce units per hour. It will also produce plated stringers, dry plugs, short fasteners and boards driven into old holes, because all four are faster than doing it properly and none of them fail on the bench. They fail at a customer dock, six weeks later, where the connection back to the bench has been lost.

We sample finished units from each bench and each shift, pull them apart, and record what we find. The measure is the rework rate — the proportion that would not have survived. Sampling is announced rather than secret, because the point is to prevent the behaviour, not to catch somebody at it.

On-site repair: what a bay actually needs

Once a site generates roughly 1,200 to 1,800 damaged units a month, shipping broken wood out and repaired wood back is pure transport waste. Here is what we need from a building before a crew can work in it.

• Roughly 800–1,200 sq ft of floor, clear, with a demarcated boundary. It does not need to be pretty; it needs to be ours for the shift.
• Compressed air, or space for our own compressor with a power drop. We bring the compressor if there is nowhere to tap in.
• A 110V circuit for lighting and a dismantler, and a 220V drop if the volume justifies mechanised teardown.
• Forklift access for weekly board-stock delivery — one inbound load a week replaces two pallet movements each way.
• Somewhere for a scrap container. What cannot be repaired goes back to Evendale for teardown rather than into your dumpster.
• A site induction and whatever PPE standard you run. Our crews observe your rules, not ours.
• A named contact on your side who can make a decision. Programmes fail when the crew is managed through a mailbox.

Common questions

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