What The Tech?! The Pallet

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2 Jan 2026

Sometimes, the most humble inventions can have the biggest impact.

In the last few articles, we’ve taken a walk back through some of the things that helped us enable globalisation. As part of this, we explored the Shipping Container, the Container Ship and later, things like Stainless Steel that have helped us produce products like medical goods that have global benefits.

Sometimes, though, the less glamorous parts of this journey are relegated to the background. No less important than a container ship, they’ve still played an important role in enabling the efficiency that we see in the modern world. It’s hard to picture a world where a few planks of wood and some nails can end up being the star of the show, but it’s where things are at for the latest What the Tech?! Today is all about the shipping pallet.

You’ll find pallets stacked sky high in transport yards all over the world. Some are simple. Some are not. Source: Wikipedia.

The Beginnings

It’s fair to say that the pallet is pretty unglamorous. Prior to its invention, cargo was often unwieldy, bulky and difficult to handle thanks to the system of using barrels, sacks and crates for transport. While skids existed to help make movement easier, they were typically only useful in storage situations and weren’t particularly helpful when it came to further transportation.

The other problem came from transportation itself. With little in the way of common standards, it made the loading of both trucks and rail cars difficult as well, causing a flow-on effect that would work its way down the line.

From trucks through to ships and at every part of the handling process in between, standardisation was desperately needed, and while it would take time to agree on a concept which could be standardised, things would slowly start to happen behind the scenes in the early 1900s.

While various concepts were experimented with during this time, it would take the invention of another modern machine to kick off the whole concept in earnest.

The development of the forklift would invoke the first real changes. Source: Wikipedia.

The Forklift

Sometimes we have solutions looking for problems, and while the forklift was identified as being a way of handling cargo in bulk, the usage of the twin forks meant that to get the most out of the design, some form of development would be needed. It would be 1915 when early pioneers of industrialisation would also recognise the potential of the forklift to provide high-mounted, platformed storage systems that were able to be used in warehouses.

While the first experimentation would focus on providing a lift system to help stabilise the lifting capacity of the twin forks, it didn’t take long for users to realise that the addition of planks in between would make the whole system work even better. Just five years later, by the 1920s, the bottom deckboard would be added to create the instantly recognisable pallet frame, which later would become commonplace.

This simple feature would enable the pallet’s versatility. The addition of the deckboard meant that the fork supports could be open on both sides, providing a true, multidirectional warehousing system that could be independently stacked and moved. While the system wasn’t entirely standardised at this point, the foundations had now been laid for a whole new global logistics system.

Pallet jacks would also be used in industrial applications. Here’s one in use at Bowling Iron Works in England, circa 1918. Source: Wikipedia.

Going Global

While the system would face rapid adoption in industry, the reality was that there was one critical event that would lock the pallet's legacy in as a historical piece of equipment. Like most things, World War II would play a hugely influential role in developing the modern logistical system.

With goods being moved across the globe by sea, air and rail at levels that were ever increasing, the implementation of the pallet was just one of the reasons the US was able to implement large-scale lend-lease programs successfully. The United States Army, which would be responsible for shifting much of this material, recognised the value that the pallet brought to logistical operations.

Not only was it quicker to load and unload at speed, but the addition of the pallet reduced the materials' “time on dock”, leaving it less vulnerable to the perils of warfare. By the time the war would come to an end in 1945, millions of pallets were already in use across the world. At this point, it was only natural that manufacturing and industry would continue to use the new standard that had been implemented.

Australian company CHEP would provide the world’s first pallet pool. Source: Wikipedia.

The Era Of Standardisation

As the global transport network would continue to evolve, work was underway to make the whole concept official. While the initial systems would focus on “military spec” systems, by the time the 1960s arrived, an official ISO standard would be set.

This would primarily be addressed to help solve the issue of compatibility that would surface when cargo is moved into different regions of the globe. With different areas using different standards, this would create bottleneck productivity issues, similar to the ones that existed when break-bulk cargo was being used.

This would be a stepped process that would continue over the decades, which would culminate in the most modern standard, ISO6780. While this wouldn’t solve all the issues around sizing, it did make them much less troublesome than they had been prior.

We’d also see the broad-scale introduction of the pallet pooling system. Originating in Australia in the late 1940s, the system would continue to grow over the following decades until it was one of the world’s largest pallet pooling suppliers. Here, distributors could rent pallets directly from the pool before returning them at the other end to obtain a credit. This would provide a huge boost to productivity as it meant that manufacturers could now book a true “one-way” journey without any logistical problems at the other end.

Modern designs aim to improve environmental efficiency and be even more standardised. Here’s the EuroPallet concept. Source: Wikipedia.

Modern Iterations

While it’s hard to get exact numbers on the exact number of Pallets in circulation, it’s reasonably well accepted that the number is in the billions. And when freight is often measured by weight as well as volume, it comes as no surprise that research around environmental footprint, weight and smart pallets has been a key feature of the modern pallet. With the basic design remaining relatively unchanged, one thing that has changed is the availability of different types of pallets to meet consumer needs.

Modern Palletised systems are often used for Humanitarian airdrops. Source: Wikipedia.

Like sea containers, IOT and RFID/NFC devices exist for tracking purposes, while the implementation of plastic pallets has given end users a product that is often more durable than the initial designs. There’s also a range of lightweight pallet designs that have been optimised for both air cargo and air dropping.

Modern systems aim to automate stacking and transportation. Source: Wikipedia.

Interestingly enough, some modern research now focuses on the role that the modern pallet might play in fully automated warehousing and storage systems. Robotic and commercial systems that are currently being conceptualised use modern smart pallets to achieve high-volume storage and transportation.

An Interesting Fact

For most people, the concept of fraud invokes images of high-value items and criminals lurking in the shadows, but the reality is that the humble pallet has also been subject to large-scale fraud in the past.

The existence of Pallet pools, as mentioned earlier in the article, has created a black market of sorts, where pallets are sold, rented and transported via unofficial sources. While it sounds harmless enough, the fact that there are billions of pallets in circulation across the globe means that large-scale fraud can cost the industry significantly.

So, the idea of a smart pallet doesn’t just have value to the end consumer. Manufacturers also see the value in implementing such systems in an attempt to stamp out black market transactions of their assets.

The humble pallet gets a lot more attention than most people realise.

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