A closed-loop programme means the same wood keeps coming back: you buy graded stock, we collect your empties, and the two transactions net off against each other on one invoice. It is not complicated, but it does require about ninety days and three conversations that most sites have never had.
Weeks one to two: count and read
We count what is on site and grade a sample, and somebody in your finance team pulls six months of pallet purchases and six months of waste removal invoices. Both halves are necessary. Sites almost always know one number and not the other, and the programme case lives in the sum.
Weeks three to four: write the standard
This is the conversation that matters and the one that gets skipped. We write a grade definition — board counts, permitted repairs, moisture, named defects — and your receiving team redlines it. Then both sides sign it.
Every grade dispute we have ever had with a programme customer was traceable to a standard nobody actually read. Twenty minutes of argument in week three prevents two years of friction.
Weeks five to six: the reset run
One clearing operation. Scrap removed, sound cores bought and paid for, strays sold off, reserved stock of a single footprint delivered. This is the week the yard looks different and people start believing the programme is real.
Weeks seven to eight: rhythm begins
A named delivery day and a named collection day, usually the same day on the same trailer. Weekly counts by grade start arriving by email. The first two weeks of this always need adjustment — the collection volume is never what anybody estimated.
Weeks nine to twelve: the part that stalls
Not logistics. Housekeeping. The programme only works if empties are sorted at the point of generation, which means two painted lines on the dock floor and a rule that every operator knows. Sites that do this hold their grade; sites that do not find the collection trailer filling with mixed material and the buy-back rate dropping accordingly.
- Two lines on the dock: repairable and genuinely dead.
- One named person who owns the weekly count.
- The grade standard printed and posted at receiving.
- A quarterly review that is allowed to change the standard.
What the numbers usually do
Across our managed accounts, net pallet spend falls 18 to 34 percent in the first year, emergency purchases approach zero after the first quarter, and the sustainability team discovers a diversion tonnage they previously had to estimate. None of that comes from a cleverer price. It comes from the same wood going round more times.
Written at the Meeks Blvd yard, St. Louis, and published on August 13, 2024. Markets and specifications move; if a figure here no longer matches what you are seeing, tell us and we will update it. Our model constants live on the Carbon Ledger.
How this was written
Drafted at the grading line from our own weighbridge records, line notes and customer correspondence. Figures quoted as ours are measured; figures quoted from the wider industry are labelled as estimates. Nothing here was written to rank for a search term, and we correct articles rather than quietly deleting them.
- Author
- Yard desk
- Published
- August 13, 2024
- Category
- Operations
- Reviewed
- Annually, with the model constants
- Corrections to
- sales@repalletshop.com
What to do with this
- Check the figures against your own invoices before acting on them.
- Ask us for the underlying scale tickets if you need audit evidence.
- Send the article to whoever owns your pallet spec — most of this is their decision.
- Disagree in writing. Several of these pieces exist because a customer corrected us.
How to cite
Yard desk, “Moving to a closed-loop pallet programme in ninety days”, Repallet Shop, August 13, 2024. repalletshop.com/blog/closed-loop-in-90-days