Guide: Plastic pallets in the cold
Freezing can make some pallet materials brittle. A rating taken at room temperature says little about a pallet that lives in a freezer, so ask for the cold figure.
Why cold matters
Nelson Company's guide to pallet materials notes that freezing can make some of them brittle. A pallet that bends and recovers in a warm dock can crack when struck in a freezer. The resin, the additives and the design all change how it behaves.
Refrigerated warehouses are a large part of storage in the United States, and USDA reports on cold storage capacity every year. A pallet bought for a cold room has to be bought for that room.
What to ask the maker
- The lowest temperature the rating was taken at.
- Whether the pallet has been tested for impact at that temperature.
- Which resin it is: HDPE and polypropylene behave differently.
- Whether recycled content changes the cold behaviour.
If the maker cannot give a temperature, treat the cold rating as undefined. The usual claim, "suitable for freezers", is a sales line unless a number comes with it.
Handling in a freezer
- Warm a pallet slowly if it has been frozen, and do not drop it.
- Use forks that enter squarely; a scraped deck cracks first at the scratch.
- Retire any pallet with a crack, however small.
Cold rooms and fire listings often meet: a freezer full of plastic is a sprinkler question as well. See the fire rated hub.
Trailers for your volume
Suppose 2,560 empty pallets come back in a month. At the maker figures on file that is 3 trailers of Rehrig Pacific heavy-duty nestables (1,200 each), 2 of PHS Plastic's EXP 100 (2,340 each) or 5 of a rackable (540 each). The table runs the same sum for 6 volumes, from 2,560 to 13,460.
| Pallets to return | Rehrig Pacific Heavy-duty nestable (1,200 per trailer) | Rehrig Pacific Standard-duty nestable (1,260 per trailer) | Nelson Company Nestable, stackable, rackable (1,800 per trailer) | PHS Plastic EXP 116 nestable (1,260 per trailer) | PHS Plastic EXP 100 nestable (2,340 per trailer) | Rackable (540 per trailer) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,560 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 5 |
| 4,740 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 9 |
| 6,920 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 13 |
| 9,100 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 17 |
| 11,280 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 21 |
| 13,460 | 12 | 11 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 25 |
Testing in your own cold
A rating taken at room temperature says little about a freezer. Ask whether the maker has data at your temperature and, failing that, run a handful of loaded pallets through a full cold cycle, watching the corners and the deck centre. A small trial costs an afternoon and answers a question no sheet can.
Words on this page
- Stretch wrap
- Elastic film wound around a loaded pallet to hold the load together.
- Cube utilisation
- How well loaded freight fills the volume of a trailer or container. Taller or wider-than-floor pallets waste cube.
- Dynamic load
- The weight a pallet holds while it is moved by a forklift, pallet jack or conveyor. It is lower than static because motion adds shock.
- Nest increment
- The extra height each additional empty pallet adds to a nested stack, measured in inches. A small increment means a short stack.
- Racking load
- The weight a pallet holds when it rests on two rack beams with an open gap between them. It is usually the lowest rating and only exists for pallets built for racks.
- Nest ratio
- How many empty pallets fit in the height of one: pallet height divided by nest increment.
- Polypropylene
- Another common pallet resin, lighter and stiffer than some others, with its own behaviour in the cold.
- Closed loop
- A route where pallets return to the sender after delivery, so the empty trip is a standing cost.
Tell us the footprint and how many stacks you move.
We work out the empty trailer, then take the request for a load.