PalletTrader is shaking up the industry by changing how pallets, a necessary commodity in the logistics industry, are traded and sold. Pallets are usually bought and sold through “pallet recyclers” — many of which are smaller, mom-and-pop businesses driving pickup trucks around town, picking up pallets and refurbishing them for sale.
“Pallets are this tremendous and unrecognizable platform that goes underneath all freight and shipments,” said John Vaccaro, president of Bettaway Supply Chain Services and founder of PalletTrader. “What we’ve seen in the past few decades is how overall freight processes have evolved — online marketplaces, load boards, TMS, all types of things — and yet the pallet industry is just as large and its processes have remained basically unchanged and incredibly outdated.”
The pallet trade needed an update, thus PalletTrader was born and is the first online marketplace exclusively for buying and selling wooden as well as other makes of pallets — connecting those who have pallets to sell with those who need to buy.
“We are all for the pallet industry, we’ve been in it for awhile, we understand its dynamics and needs, so we’re the right ones to bring it to this next level,” Vaccaro said.
As a collaborative online platform open to all users, PalletTrader provides a resource and market reach that wasn’t previously there. When you bring market reach, you bring intelligence, Vaccaro added.
In the logistics industry, there are several ways to see multiple shipping/carrier options, making it easier to shop around. As it stands, there is no one location to look through all pallet depots in the country. PalletTrader is bringing a user-friendly, fluid, online “warehouse” and information source to the logistics space for all things pallets that will allow users to see and act upon all pallet options available to them.
“We find a lot of these technology-rich, updated methods for doing business in the trucking industry — they’re absolutely needed there but they are also really needed in the pallet industry and that’s what we’re bringing to the table,” Vaccaro said.
The concept of PalletTrader is also highly economical, according to Vaccaro. Understanding the need for something real and affordable, Vaccaro created PalletTrader as an open platform as opposed to a brokerage site and kept fees at a minimum — both buyers and sellers pay a 1.5% fee. There will be a subscription cost as well, but it is suspended for the first year, he added.
Bringing ideas to life often comes with challenges. For Vaccaro and the folks at PalletTrader, the biggest challenge is that of customer hesitancies — the “wait-and-see group,” Vaccaro called it.
“Outside of that, there’s really been nothing but opportunities. We’ve been approached since we launched by a lot of different industries across a handful of other countries, which is really exciting,” he said. “I think the ‘challenge’ now is deciding which to pursue first.”
According to Vaccaro, this year at PalletTrader will be dedicated to building its user base and platform density with a focus on growth, and national marketing to continue to raise awareness among pallet industry players of all types.
To learn more about PalletTrader, visit its website.