Nestable Pallets, 43 x 43 in Footprint

What rides on a 43 x 43 in pallet

• Bulk bags, sometimes sold as Super Sacks
• Food additives, feed and pharmaceuticals
• Asian-standard shipments

A 43 x 43 in pallet, 1100 x 1100 mm, is the Asian standard and a common size for bulk bags. Food additives, animal feed and pharmaceutical ingredients all ship in bags that are filled to a square footprint.

The pallet is nearly square, so a bulk bag sits on it without overhang, and a stack of bags is stable in either axis.

Shape and size

• Perimeter: 172.0 in (4,368 mm).
• Diagonal corner to corner: 60.8 in (1,545 mm), which is the room a pallet needs to turn in an aisle.
• Area: 1.192 square metres, 12.84 square feet.
• Aspect: the long side is 1.000 times the short side, so the deck is square.

In practice

The 43 in square is built around a bag. A bulk bag filled to a square footprint sits on a square pallet with its corners inside the deck, so there is nothing hanging over to snag on a fork or tear on a rack. That is a small thing until a bag tears, which is why the deck and the entry matter more here than in cartons.

It is also the size most exposed to substitution. A buyer who has used 48 x 40 in for years may be tempted to put a bulk bag on it; the bag then overhangs one side and sits on the open slots of the other. Match the pallet to the bag, not the bag to the pallet you have.

A practical test is to fill one bag, set it on a sample pallet, and push it with a forklift across the dock. If the bag slides, bulges over the edge or settles into the slots, the pallet and the bag are not a match, whatever the sheet says about rating.

Bulk bags are filled by weight, so a bag of a dense powder is small and heavy while a bag of a light one is tall and soft. The pallet rating suits the first, and the pallet deck and edge condition suit the second.

Against its nearest footprints

The table orders the closest four by area. A 43 x 43 in pallet is 1,849 sq in; the nearest listed footprint differs by 11 sq in. Footprint is the choice the container makes for you, and a small difference in area is a large difference to a rack beam or a drum.

Counting the empty trailer

Few makers print per-stack or per-trailer figures for a 43 x 43 in nestable, so this site does not invent them. Ask for the two numbers, enter them in the calculator under another footprint, and the trailers follow.

As an illustration of the arithmetic only: if a maker printed 1,500 per trailer, 3,000 returning pallets would need 2 trailers, 5,000 would need 4, and 10,310 would need 7. Use the maker's real figure, not this one.

43 x 43 in against every other footprint

Questions for the maker

• Static load for a full bulk bag
• Whether the deck is closed so a torn bag does not drop through
• Entry type

From the dock

• Hollow legs collect meltwater and grit; a rinse before nesting keeps stacks from sticking together.
• Count empties by stack height against a mark on the wall, not pallet by pallet, and the tally takes seconds.

Words on this page

Dunnage

Loose material used to support or secure cargo inside a trailer or container.

UL

Underwriters Laboratories, a safety testing body that publishes fire test standards, including one for storage pallets.

Bulk bag

A large woven bag, often sold as a Super Sack, that holds a ton or so of powder or granules and sits on a square pallet.

Stretch wrap

Elastic film wound around a loaded pallet to hold the load together.