Nestable Pallets, 48 x 45 in Footprint

What rides on a 48 x 45 in pallet

• North American automotive plants
• Heavy-duty auto parts bulk containers
• Closed loops between a supplier and an assembly line

A 48 x 45 in pallet matches the bulk containers used for heavy-duty auto parts. Its odd width comes from the container, not from a pallet standard, which is why it appears in automotive and almost nowhere else.

Automotive loops are closed and fixed, so the question is less which pallet and more which pallet this customer will accept. The container sets the size and the heaviest part sets the rating.

Shape and size

• Perimeter: 186.0 in (4,724 mm).
• Diagonal corner to corner: 65.8 in (1,671 mm), which is the room a pallet needs to turn in an aisle.
• Area: 1.393 square metres, 15.00 square feet.
• Aspect: the long side is 1.067 times the short side.

In practice

A 48 x 45 in pallet is a pallet defined by its customer. The size is only one number away from the common 48 x 40 in, which tempts a buyer to substitute one for the other, and that is exactly the mistake the footprint exists to prevent: a container built around 45 in will not seat a pallet that is 40 in on the short side without play.

Because automotive loops are closed and long-lived, the choice here is made once and lived with for years. That favours a heavy-duty nestable with a documented dynamic rating and a nest increment you can price, and it argues for confirming both with the customer before the first order.

Ask the customer for the container drawing. The pallet needs to clear its walls by the amount the customer sets, and the drawing shows it, along with the stacking pattern and the maximum height the container allows.

Against its nearest footprints

The table orders the closest four by area. A 48 x 45 in pallet is 2,160 sq in; the nearest listed footprint differs by 135 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 48 x 45 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, 2,400 returning pallets would need 2 trailers, 5,000 would need 4, and 10,700 would need 8. Use the maker's real figure, not this one.

48 x 45 in against every other footprint

Questions for the maker

• Dynamic load for the heaviest part
• Whether the customer specifies a model or just a size
• The empty-return figure for the loop

From the dock

• Warehouses with low ceilings find nested stacks fit under sprinkler lines that tall un-nested stacks would hit.
• Nesting pays only when pallets come back. A one-way shipment gains nothing from a deep nest except cheaper freight out.

Words on this page

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.

HDPE

High-density polyethylene, a tough resin used in many plastic pallets, valued for strength against its weight.

Cube utilisation

How well loaded freight fills the volume of a trailer or container. Taller or wider-than-floor pallets waste cube.