Pallet repair: keeping a damaged pallet in service

What repair is

A repaired pallet keeps most of its original wood. A worker removes cracked or missing boards, replaces them with boards salvaged from scrap pallets or with new lumber, and re-nails or plates damaged stringers. The pallet keeps its size and design.

Repair is the step between reuse, where nothing changes, and remanufacture, where pallets are taken apart and rebuilt into different ones.

Who does it

Repair is mostly done by pallet recyclers on a line: sort, cut out the damage, re-board, grade. Pooling companies repair their own pallets at their service centres. Some large distribution centres run in-house repair for pallets they own.

Counting it

In a pallet-flow report, count repaired pallets with reused ones. If you buy repaired pallets back, the purchase sits in scope 3 category 1; see purchased pallets. The replacement boards from salvaged wood avoid new lumber, which is the same effect WARM's reuse factor describes.

The USDA Forest Service LCA of US wooden pallets included a repair-and-reuse module (B2) in its cradle-to-grave scope (FPL-RP-707). Use it when you need a life-cycle figure rather than an end-of-life one.

What stops a repair

• Broken blocks or stringers beyond what plates can fix.
• Chemical spills or mould that would contaminate the next load.
• Painted or marked pallets owned by a pooler, which only the owner or its agents may repair.