Plastic Pallets are typically used in transporting fresh and frozen foods and pharmaceutical or other products with strict hygienic requirements. Plastic pallets aren’t porous and are easy to clean and more hygienic, wash or sterilize.
Plastic pallets are about 3 times more expensive than wooden ones and can last 10 times longer than wood pallets. They are lighter and more heavy duty, but their sleek surface also makes them slippery and less stable for stacking.
If you ship products overseas or outbound with no way to return and reuse them, pricey plastic pallets would unlikely be an economical business choice for you. It may change if you ship via air freight, or because of your hygiene requirements, or if you are shipping to countries that regulate and prohibit the import of wood pallets.
Plastic pallets are often promoted as eco-friendly and require little to no maintainance, . They must be melted down to be recycled when they are not operational. However, they have a significantly longer lifespan than wood and on long run, it's more economic to use plastic pallets.
The main benefit of plastic pallets is that they can be reused for a long time without breakage and are suitable to most industrial applications. They are perfect for storage and reuse in warehouses for racking use or flooring use. They are sleek, light and splinter-free, friendly for manual handling. The durability of plastic pallets makes them ideal for use on pallet wrapping machines and they are also compatible with standard forklift and pallet trucks. There are more types of plastic pallets than wooden pallets, there are three runners plastic pallets, six runners plastic pallets, hygienic plastic pallets, stackable plastic pallets and nestable plastic pallet etc.
Wood Pallets are about 3 times less expensive than plastic pallets and at least 10 times more widely used however the consumption for plastic pallets has been exploding. They hold more less weight than plastic.
They are however not ideal for fragile items. Fasteners used in wood pallets can damage the goods. They pose a puncture hazard. Imagine the punctured can of paint, for example, that would cause not just damage, but a clean-up and delayed arrival.
Wood pallets do not have the same fire safety rating as plastic and wood pallets are more likely to catch fire. Plastic pallets burn at a much higher temperature than wood, so manufacturers are advised to check the building fire codes when deciding what pallets to purchase.
