Field key
Whose pallet is this?
Answer one question at a time about the pallet in front of you. The key ends with who most likely owns it and whether it's yours to sell, recycle or return. Nothing is stored.
Scrap: yours to recycle
You, if it's unpainted and unmarked.
Broken pallets are taken apart for usable boards, and the rest is ground into mulch, animal bedding or biomass fuel. Very little needs to go to landfill.
Scrap pallets aren't bought. We collect them as recycling or waste removal, usually with sellable pallets from the same dock.
Your answers so far:
- What is the pallet made of? Wood: boards and nails
- Are the blocks or board ends painted one solid color? Not painted: bare wood
- Is there a stenciled or branded owner mark? No owner mark
- How is it built: blocks, or long runners? Blocks: 9 short posts under the deck, forks enter on all four sides
- What shape is it in? Cracked stringers, crushed blocks, rot or many boards gone
How the key decides
Ownership is marked on the pallet. Rental pools paint their pallets a solid color and stencil or mold their name on them, because they need strays to be recognized and sent back. A pallet with no paint and no owner mark is almost always a white-wood pallet, bought and sold outright. Construction and condition don't change who owns a pallet; they decide whether it's reused, repaired or recycled.
What the key won't tell you
It can't read a pallet you can't see, and colors fade. When a stencil names an owner, the stencil wins over the color. When in doubt, treat a painted pallet as someone else's and ask the company named on it.
All the outcomes
- A rental pallet. It goes back to its owner
- A rental pallet. It goes back to its owner
- A plastic rental pallet. It goes back to its owner
- Probably yours: a plain plastic pallet
- Someone else's pallet: contact the company on the mark
- A white-wood pallet, and it's yours to sell
- A repairable white-wood pallet, yours to sell or recycle
- Scrap: yours to recycle