Why Are Industrial Shelves Designed For Square Pallets?

Whilst modern industrial storage shelves are designed with the needs of any warehouse or storage building in mind, most of the time it is clear that a lot of warehouse shelving is used for goods stored on standardised pallets.

One of the most unusual aspects of palletisation is that whilst there are standards, unlike containerisation there are many different widely-used standards that may not necessarily be compatible with each other.

Given that, alongside industrial shelving, the shipping container and the forklift, pallets are a critical component of modern logistics, this is somewhat unusual. However, there is one aspect of wooden pallets that has become universal and that is their square lattice shape.

This design has become such a standard that even pallets made from other materials such as metal or plastic retain a very similar shape to the original wooden pallets, but this concept largely evolved into being alongside the ever-changing warehouse.

From Lengths To Lattices

The earliest theorised use of a pallet of any kind was the remnants of timber found in the construction sites of the Pyramids of Giza and certain Mesopotamian ruins.

Moving heavy stones was only possible in an age that predated heavy lifting machinery through 

not only the use of countless labourers but also the use of wooden timbers to reduce the friction of the stones as they were pulled along the ground.

However, the biggest use of pallets is not to move huge and bulky materials but to make it easier and less labour-intensive to move smaller cargo from one place to another, particularly as the world of shipping moved away from the time-consuming and slow process of break-bulk cargo.

Whilst it is difficult to determine for sure when the first pallet was ever used, the first relevant patent appeared to have been filed in 1924 for a slim wooden lift truck platform, and by 1931 a railway magazine noted that the time to move 13,000 cases of tinned goods had fallen from three days to just four hours.

Unlike the shipping container and forklift, which have more distinct and discrete inventors, the pallet was largely iterated into existence as a medium that allowed for rapidly evolving warehouse logistics to work.

The square shape was partly the result of forklift and pallet jack designs of the era and the greater storage flexibility of an equilateral shape, and by 1937 the design was starting to take shape according to relevant patent filings.

The other benefit was that a square pallet could theoretically be lifted in multiple directions rather than requiring the cargo or a lifting device to be moved around it.

Whilst the patent for this was first filed in 1945, it was used by the United States Army several years before this.

Military inventions can typically only be patented in peacetime after the conflict for which they were developed and the US Army innovated a lot of logistical innovations in containerisation, forklifts and pallets that made the warehouse and shelving as we know it today possible.

Ultimately, once the general shape was established, it became widely used and logistics operations were built around the square shape.

For more information on Why Are Industrial Shelves Designed For Square Pallets? talk to UK Shelving Ltd