Pallet weight is one of those numbers everybody quotes confidently and nobody measures. Our twelve-month weighted mean for a 48×40 recycled hardwood deck is 33 pounds; our heaviest regular stock runs to 48. That is a 45% spread on an item people treat as a constant.
What moves the number
Species first: oak-dominant hardwood runs eight to twelve pounds heavier than softwood at the same dimensions. Board count second: a seven-board top deck is heavier than a five-board one by a predictable margin. Moisture third, and it is the one that catches people — the same pallet can gain four or five pounds after a wet week outdoors.
Repairs add weight too. A deck rebuilt with salvaged boards of slightly different thickness, plus a full-length stringer companion, can be several pounds above the pool average.
- Recycled 48×40 hardwood: 33–42 lb from covered storage.
- New hardwood 48×40: 37–48 lb depending on board count.
- Softwood 48×40: 25–33 lb.
- EPAL 1200×800 block pallet: 22–25 kg (49–55 lb).
- Add 10–15% for anything stored uncovered through a wet spell.
Where it costs you: trailer payload
Five hundred and sixty pallets at 33 pounds is about 18,500 pounds of tare before any product. At 42 pounds it is 23,500. If you are planning a load near a gross or axle limit, assuming the light figure is how you discover a scale house. Plan on the heavy end.
Where it costs you: buy-backs by weight
Some yards buy scrap wood by the ton. If your pallets have been sitting in the rain, you will be paid for water — which sounds advantageous until you realise wet wood is also downgraded out of the reuse stream, where the real value is. Dry cores sold per pallet are worth considerably more than wet cores sold per ton.
A practical habit
Weigh ten pallets from your pool on a pallet scale once a quarter and write the average on the wall. It takes fifteen minutes, it makes your load planning honest, and it gives you a number to challenge any supplier who quotes a convenient one.
Written at the Meeks Blvd yard, St. Louis, and published on October 17, 2023. 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
- October 17, 2023
- Category
- Economics
- 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, “What a pallet actually weighs, and why it matters at the scale”, Repallet Shop, October 17, 2023. repalletshop.com/blog/what-a-pallet-weighs