01 Runway
The pallet arrives overnight, with the parcels
Memphis International Airport handled 3,754,236 metric tons of cargo in 2024, which made it the busiest cargo airport in North America that year, according to ACI North America 2024 rankings. Most of that lands at night.
The wood under a parcel load is mostly clean 48 x 40 stock, and the docks around the field both shed it and need it back. Anything leaving the country needs heat-treated pallets with the ISPM 15 mark burned on a block.
The airport district02 Rail
The pallet comes off a container at the ramp
Memphis is served by five Class 1 railroads, per the Greater Memphis Chamber. Union Pacific runs a 600-acre intermodal terminal at Marion, Arkansas, and Norfolk Southern opened an intermodal facility at Rossville, Tennessee, in 2012.
Containers unload onto trailers, and what stays on the dock is a blend of block pallets and stringer pallets that no one loaded to match.
Intermodal and rail docks03 Road
The pallet rides a trailer down I-55 into the fulfillment belt
The Chamber ranks Memphis the No. 3 busiest trucking corridor in the country. South of the state line, DeSoto County, Mississippi, is home to more than 150 fulfillment centers, and I-55, I-40 and Lamar Avenue carry the trailers in.
A building that takes in loads all week ends up with a weekly pile of mixed inbound pallets: one size here, another there, some repaired, some cracked. That pile is what selling and clearing are about.
Distribution and fulfillment docks04 River
The pallet reaches Presidents Island and the port
Presidents Island is a river port industrial park with about 200 companies and 4,000 employees, and the Port of Memphis handled about 8.2 million short tons of waterborne cargo in 2022. Steel, chemicals and grain move here, and heavy loads call for heavier pallets: 48 x 48 and 48 x 45 as well as the standard 48 x 40.
Broken pallets are more common where loads are heavy, and they are cores, not trash.
Presidents Island05 Your dock
The pallet lands on your dock, and splits into grades
Whatever the freight rode in on, the pallets end up stacked at your dock, and they are not all the same. A used pallet is sorted into grades by what has been repaired and what is left. Tap a grade to read what it looks like and who buys it.
- Grade ANo repairs, none needed. The grade food lines and outbound retail loads ask for.
- Grade BRepaired with new deck boards, plates or plugs. Sound, and a step down in price from A.
- Grade CPoor appearance, several repairs, boards that may not be whole. For loads that do not care.
- ComboRebuilt from recycled and new lumber: steadier than used, cheaper than new.
- NewAll-new lumber, built to a spec sheet instead of pulled from a stack.
- CoreA pallet your dock is done with, handed on to be repaired, rebuilt or ground.