Stringer
A long board running the length of a pallet that carries the deck boards.
A stringer is one of the long timbers, usually three, that run under the deck boards of a stringer pallet and carry the load between the forks or the rack beams. Deck boards are nailed across the stringers top and bottom.
Stringers matter at end of life because a cracked stringer is the most common reason a pallet can't simply be reused. A recycler can plate or replace a stringer in repair, or take the pallet apart and salvage its boards in remanufacture. A stringer that is split along its length usually sends the pallet to the grinder.
Notched stringers let a forklift enter from all four sides at the cost of strength. When you weigh a sample for the Pallet Fate Report, weigh stringer pallets separately from block pallets: the USDA life-cycle study's 48×40 stringer designs average 31 and 41 lb, its block designs 44 and 67 lb.
Sources
- Cradle-to-grave life-cycle assessment of wooden pallet production in the United States (Res. Pap. FPL-RP-707) USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory (Alanya-Rosenbaum and Bergman, 2020). Accessed October 27, 2026. Table 2 (p. 8): average weights of 48×40 in. designs.