HOME > English > ENGLISH Palletization

What is "Total Palletization"?

There are many advantages in the"total palletization transport."

When loading goods to a truck or a container, physical labor is often performed and goods in large boxes or bags are loaded one by one. This is called "shoulder" loading. On the other hand, a large quantity of goods, such as 50 or 100, can be put on a pallet at first, and can be loaded to a truck or container by forklift for the transport to a final destination. This method is called the "total palletization system." In industrialized countries, goods are transported based on this system. Loading/unloading work is necessary before and after transport, and this has often been done by manual labor, carrying goods one by one. But if pallets are used, labor and time are reduced to about one-tenth; namely, one forklift driver can accomplish the work for ten persons. This will naturally free workers from traditional hard physical labor. There are additional advantages such as decreased cargo damage, less quantity errors, and tidy work environment - all of these will bring improved working conditions to the freight forwarding industry which is often referred to as a typical example of hard, dirty and dangerous work.

Further, if goods on pallets at the initial consigner are transported to the final consignee without unloading/reloading even if there is a change of vehicle or temporary storage of goods at a halfway point, the costly and time-consuming unloading/reloading labor can be eliminated, making the transport speedy and efficient.

On the other hand, there are almost no disadvantages except for some reduction of loading space due to the volume of pallets. But this is hardly worth consideration in view of the great advantages noted above. The transition from traditional time-consuming loading/unloading work by physical labor to the up-to-date method using pallets is the trend of the times.

Although the "total palletization" offers many advantages described above, it is unfortunately not yet widespread. The reason lies in the treatment of pallets after use. It is troublesome to collect pallets after use. In order to carry out "pallet transport," a consignor has to provide pallets. The collection of "empty pallets" after use will also entail additional expenses because separate vehicles will be necessary. Moreover, pallets are stacked at consignee's yard until collection, and this will help deteriorate pallet quality. Sometimes these are mixed with other consignor's pallets, often resulting in the loss of pallets. Therefore, a consignor tends to hesitate to carry out pallet transport because it eventually costs higher.

If pallets are disposable, there will be no collection problem. But if disposable pallets are used for daily shipments of goods, costs will become very high. So, these pallets are not desirable in view of the disposal problem and the waste of lumber resources.

The way to enjoy advantages of pallet transport at inexpensive costs is not to return the pallets used for transport. The best way is that another consignor near the consignee uses the empty pallets for transport again. Therefore, if consignors utilize pallets like public properties in a circular manner without possessing them privately, efficient pallet use can be realized, eliminating waste. In order to materialize this, it is necessary to unify pallet standard. The unification is a key point to increase the rate of circular use operation among different industry sectors.

Pallet standard is unified in industrialized countries. Pallets with the same specification are commonly used in foodstuff, agricultural and manufacturing industries. The unification of pallet standard and the common use are the current of the times from the viewpoint of environmental protection and reuse of lumber resources. In the case of export, it is also important to ship goods on common-standard pallets that can be re-utilized at the country of destination.

In Japan, T11 (1100 x 1100 x 144mm) is the standard pallet. Japan Pallet Rental Corporation (JPR) is offering JPR 11 rental pallets to Japanese industries to help promote the "total palletization at inexpensive costs" by establishing the circular use system among different industry sectors.