Every order that leaves your dock takes a pallet with it, and nothing on the paperwork says that pallet is yours. Customers stack them behind their warehouse, drivers swap a good one for a broken one, and the plastic pallets you paid proper money for end up carrying someone else’s stock. This guide is for businesses that own their pallets and want them back - what to record, how to label timber and plastic that lives outdoors, and how a check-out habit turns “pallets go missing” into a chase list with names on it.
What you will learn
- Why pallets disappear
- Which pallets are worth tracking
- The pallet record
- Labelling pallets that live outdoors
- Check-outs: treat deliveries as loans
- Tools that make this easier
- FAQ
Why pallets disappear
Pallets leave the building constantly, look like packaging rather than property, and are useful to everyone who ends up holding one.
- The customer sees packaging, not an asset. Once your product is unloaded, the pallet joins their stack - reused, sold to a recycler, or burnt.
- Driver exchanges are uneven. “One for one” swaps quietly become a broken pallet for a good one, and over a year the fleet degrades without a single pallet being “lost”.
- Nothing on the pallet says it should come back. No name, no ID, no return date - so nobody feels accountable.
- The yard hides the problem. A pile of damaged pallets by the fence looks like plenty, right up until dispatch runs short on a Friday.
Which pallets are worth tracking
Not every pallet justifies a record. The practical split:
- Track as counted stock: cheap whitewood pallets. Record quantities dispatched and returned per customer, plus a yard count - no individual identities.
- Track as individual assets: plastic and aluminium pallets, euro-spec stock you own outright, hygienic pallets for food production, and above all custom skids built for specific machinery - weeks of lead time to replace, and usually out with exactly one customer who “probably still has it”.
The same split applies to returnable totes and crates, which leak through the same gap between “ours” and “packaging”.
The pallet record
For the pallets you track individually, a useful record covers:
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Asset ID | The number on the label - what the chase email and the yard count both quote |
| Type and spec | Size, material, load rating - a euro pallet and a custom machinery skid are very different losses |
| Purchase date + unit cost | What a non-return actually costs you, and the input for depreciation if you capitalise them |
| Condition or grade | Decides whether it can carry food-grade product or rejoin heavy rotation |
| Current holder | Your yard, a named customer, a carrier, or a site - the field that answers “where is it” |
| Expected return date | Turns “out there somewhere” into “overdue since March” |
| Notes and photos | Settles damage disputes with customers and carriers before they become arguments |
Labelling pallets that live outdoors
Pallets are forked, dragged, rained on and stacked, so labelling them is mostly a placement problem:
- Label the end blocks or stringers, not the deck. Deck boards take fork tips, knives and sliding loads; the blocks are the most protected surfaces.
- Label both ends. In a stack you only ever see one face, and it is never the one you labelled.
- Use laminated polyester labels or riveted plates. Paper laminates fail in the first wet month outdoors.
- Pair the QR code with a big printed ID and an ownership mark. The QR code opens the record from a phone; the painted company name makes your pallet awkward to absorb into someone else’s stack.
Tip: photograph loaded pallets at dispatch, labels visible, and attach the photo to the check-out. When a customer disputes quantity or condition, the picture ends the conversation.
Check-outs: treat deliveries as loans
The habit that changes everything is recording dispatch as a check-out rather than a farewell:
- Out: when an order ships, check the pallets out to that customer (or site, or carrier) with a return date matched to your collection cycle.
- Back: when pallets return, check them in and note condition - cracked blocks and missing boards recorded now are not your word against theirs later.
- Balance: review what each customer holds - the running balance per account is the most useful pallet report there is.
- Chase: work the overdue list monthly. Customers return pallets to suppliers who ask; the ones who never ask fund everyone else’s pallet stock.
Tools that make this easier
A spreadsheet can hold a pallet count, but it fails exactly where pallets live: in the yard and on the dock, where nobody opens a laptop. Counts drift, the “sent to customer” column goes stale, and the register stops describing reality within a quarter.
An asset register like AMPthilly fits the workflow instead: each tracked pallet or skid gets a record with photos, cost and condition notes; printable QR labels are generated in batches and scanned with a normal phone camera - no app to install; check-outs assign pallets to a customer, site or location with a due date; and the overdue list is your chase list. The free plan covers 3 users and 25 assets - enough to put your custom skids and best plastic stock under control before paying anything.
FAQ
How do you keep track of pallets sent to customers? Record every dispatch as a check-out to a named customer with a return date, and log returns. The per-customer balance shows who holds what and who to chase.
Is it worth tracking every individual pallet? No - count cheap whitewood as stock, and give individual records to plastic, aluminium, euro-spec and custom skids, where each unit has real replacement cost.
What is the best way to label a pallet? Durable laminated labels or riveted plates on the end blocks, on both ends, with a QR code, a large printed ID and a painted ownership mark.
How do I know how many pallets I am actually losing? Count a baseline, then record dispatches and returns. The per-customer gap after a month or two is your loss rate.
What about rented or pooled pallets? The pool operator tracks those; this guide covers pallets you own, where nobody chases returns unless you do.
The takeaway
Pallets disappear because they leave constantly and nothing ties them to a name. Decide which ones deserve individual records, label the blocks not the boards, and treat every dispatch as a loan with a return date. Once each customer has a running balance, pallet loss stops being a mystery line in the budget and becomes a short list of accounts to chase.