[gig3m]

1) There are plenty of standards in the pallet industry, especially in the EU. (http://www.palettes-cp.com/welcome-en.html) The US has the 48x40 GMA which for many years was used almost exclusive in the grocery chain. These standards were born of similar or exactly the same needs from different customers. Things like 2x2 barrels, poly supersacks, square and octagonal boxes, etc. All those things are standardized and so the pallet that goes underneath them is largely the same.

2) Customization is a factor of efficiency. Why would someone shipping a product want to buy a standard size pallet that doesn't fit or hold the weight requirement for his use case? Instead, he consults with either internal packaging specialists (in big companies) or a manufacturer directly to design a pallet to fit his load. By doing this he actually knows the limitations of the packaging (stacked x high, racked, weight distribution, unstacker and rollerbed compatibility, etc) and also has some general idea that the product he is receiving is correctly priced for his requirements. Many times those requirements are customer driven, meaning my customer's customer.

Source: I make pallets, lots of them.

[dustin1114]

That's pretty neat: I discuss an interesting subject with someone on Hacker News that directly affects my current industry, but I am a few levels down in the supply chain. I deal more with product distribution and logistics, while you deal with the actual manufacturing of the pallets they sit on. Thank you for your expertise and insight!

[gig3m]

Believe me, the last thing I ever thought to see on HN was pallets! Glad to have the conversation!

[gumby]

> Source: I make pallets, lots of them.

Thanks for weighing in!

>2) Customization is a factor of efficiency. Why would someone shipping a product want >to buy a standard size pallet that doesn't fit or hold the weight requirement for >his use case?

This surprises me. I certainly understand the fact that each product class will have different needs, but since transport is containerized I am astonished that the world hasn't converged on a pallet that maximizes container footprint, with the special cases being rare. I.e. people would adapt the number of units per pallet in order to optimize for the rest of the supply chain (warehouse footprint, ubiquity of available availability of etc etc). Clearly this is what Walmart et al are trying for.

But instead, to use a software analogy, abstraction is frozen at the container level but below that everything is largely bespoke. I don't know if there is some path dependency for this or if it's simply that the other parts of the supply chain are still highly fragmented and/or specialized.

Thanks again for your comment!