Half the confusion in pallet buying is vocabulary. Two people describing the same defect with different words will not reach agreement, and a purchase order written in approximations will be filled in approximations.
Structure
- Deck board — any board on the top or bottom face.
- Lead board — the outermost deck board at each end; takes every fork entry.
- Stringer — the long member running the length of a stringer pallet, usually three.
- Stringer board — on a block pallet, the board connecting the blocks.
- Block — one of the nine supports in a block pallet.
- Top deck / bottom deck — the load-bearing face and the floor-bearing face.
- Double-face — boards on both top and bottom. Non-reversible means only one face carries load.
- Flush — deck boards level with the stringer ends. Overhang means they project beyond.
- Wing — a deck board that projects past the stringer, as on a winged pallet.
Entry and access
- Two-way entry — forks from two opposite sides only.
- Partial four-way — notched stringers admit forks from four sides, jacks from two.
- Full four-way — block construction; forks and jacks from all four faces.
- Notch — the cut-out in a stringer that creates fork access.
- Chamfer — a bevel on the bottom edge of a lead board, to ease fork entry.
Condition and repair
- Core — a used pallet bought for grading; the currency of the industry.
- Companion — a full-length board nailed alongside a damaged stringer. A strong repair.
- Plug or scab — a short piece over a break. A weaker repair; #2 grade in our yard.
- Re-nail — restoring fastener pattern on a loose but intact pallet.
- Regrade — moving a pallet between grade lanes after inspection.
- Down-cut — re-cutting a larger deck into a smaller footprint.
Load and compliance
- Static load — capacity at rest on a flat surface.
- Dynamic load — capacity while being lifted and moved.
- Racked load — capacity spanning beams with no deck support. Always the smallest figure.
- Unit load — pallet, product and wrap considered as one structure.
- ISPM-15 — the international phytosanitary standard for wood packaging.
- HT — heat treatment: 56 °C at core for 30 minutes.
- IPPC mark — the wheat-sheaf stamp evidencing treatment.
A purchase order that uses these terms gets filled accurately. One that says "standard pallets, good condition" gets filled with whatever the seller has, and both parties will be surprised.
Written at the Meeks Blvd yard, St. Louis, and published on December 10, 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
- December 10, 2024
- Category
- How-to
- 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, “Deck boards, stringers, chamfers: the vocabulary, properly”, Repallet Shop, December 10, 2024. repalletshop.com/blog/pallet-vocabulary