Nothing in a truck is stored or moved without a pallet under it. With more than 500 million units in circulation, pallets are often bought and sold throughout the industry by pallet recyclers — many of which are smaller, mom-and-pop businesses driving trucks around town picking up pallets and refurbishing them for sale.
There are also small vendors that can supply limited quantities for home projects or inventory for small warehouses; however, if the demand is on a larger scale, pallet companies often step in and take care of business.
Whatever the demand — big or small — many of these individuals and companies still operate inefficiently, by email, phone or fax, or use the internet to look up pallets nearby. Until recently, there has been no accessible, universal location to conduct pallet business.
Open to everyone, PalletTrader is the first online marketplace built exclusively for buying and selling pallets — connecting those who have pallets to sell with those who need to buy — and eliminating any supply chain bottlenecks the pallet industry may have contributed to in the past.
“PalletTrader is an upcoming platform that I believe can and will change the industry and positively affect pallet companies,” said George Eroza, director of business development at San Fernando Valley Pallet Co. (SFVP), a devout user of the PalletTrader platform. “It allows for pallet loads to be on demand and increases efficiency to quickly move products. SFVP is one of many companies that are part of the launch for this new e-commerce platform that is leading the way and innovating the industry.”
Over a decade ago, eBay set the tone by establishing an online marketplace where anyone could sell and trade items and take bids, all at their computers. Since then, others, like Etsy, Shopify, LinkedIn and now PalletTrader, have followed suit, mimicking this marketplace-like environment for trading, selling and bidding in the U.S. The platform serves a wide variety of constituents, from individuals in pickup trucks stacked high with pallets to large corporations with dozens of sites using pallets and everything in between.
Don Vultaggio, chairman of Arizona Beverage Co., which buys hundreds of thousands of pallets annually to ship its iconic iced tea products, believes the industry has long needed a platform solution like PalletTrader.
“Pallets are a necessary cost of doing business,” he said. “There’s been this dilemma in the market for years around how pallets are purchased. Where do I find them? Am I getting a fair price? How do I recover and reuse them?”
Vultaggio said with PalletTrader, “now you can go to a single market online, see supply and pricing in one place — anywhere in the U.S. If it’s where you need it at a good price, you take it. Simple, clean and efficient — and everyone in the supply chain benefits.”
With the mammoth scope that is the pallet industry come inefficiencies surrounding the actual supply, available inventory and the return and reuse of pallets. Used pallets often end up wasted, sitting in piles on a dock or behind a retailer’s store, waiting to be picked up by pallet recyclers and sold as cores. Pallet cores are broken pallets that can be fixed and reused.
“The recycling/reuse of pallets is an essential part of the pallet supply chain,” Eroza said. “Many times our customers don’t think about the recycling aspect, but repairing and reusing broken pallets allows for there to be more inventory flow.”
This process, as fragmented and disconnected as it is, has been off the radar for as long as the industry has existed, contributing to more wasted pallets — and higher costs for shippers.
“There are a lot of independent folks that are going around collecting pallets in the back of stores. They are picking up these used pallets, which stores were just throwing away,” Vaccaro said. “Our platform connects all of the small pallet collectors on that side with all of the pallet users on the other side.”
The platform is available to pallet businesses, large and small, with no development and marketing costs. For the first six months, businesses that sign up on PalletTrader will get the service for free with no monthly subscription. The only cost to use PalletTrader is a small transaction fee recovered from the seller and the buyer.
“We built the store, set up the business process and connected fast payment and advertising. They just need to stock the shelves and fulfill orders — and they can do so from anywhere,” Vaccaro said.
“One of the major benefits of PalletTrader is the exposure that will come with posting on the e-commerce platform,” Eroza added.
Via the platform, buyers have instant access to pallet supply, and sellers have instant access to pallet needs. They start by going to the website and registering. The registration process includes the user’s identification and payment information.
Upon qualification, users can enter the geographically intelligent marketplace, which functions and appears like that of eBay or Amazon. Users can create a geographical “fence” defining the boundaries of the markets they want to serve or buy from. From there, they have access to buying and selling pallets, including a descriptive pallet specification library that defines quality and spec of varying pallet types, including grade A and B pallets.
Another feature Vaccaro highlights is PalletTrader’s privacy tools. Companies and individuals often want to control who sees their stuff, without everything on public display. Much like setting up a private network, PalletTrader’s privacy feature lets users create a secure, dedicated market for only its participants. In this way, confidential information about customers is protected.
Users can conduct transactions in private, with the details of their needs or inventory to only be visible to those approved by the user. Or the users can opt to have their needs or inventory and the bid/buy or offer/sell process is public and open to anyone.
PalletTrader is sponsored by pallet industry leader and New Jersey-based Bettaway Supply Chain Services, which often includes the message “Powered by Bettaway” in its marketing. That means that PalletTrader has the full resources of all Bettaway entities at its disposal, including a fleet of trucks, a national 3PL, a national network of pallet suppliers, a warehouse and an e-commerce fulfillment center. This is only to ensure and enhance success, while PalletTrader still operates as a neutral platform and functionally independent entity outside of Bettaway.
“Simply stated, we have the ability to deliver on our promises,” Vaccaro said.
Long term, the goal of PalletTrader is to be the go-to brand and information source for “white wood” pallets and to continue to empower businesses with tools and an online community that helps decrease pallet waste and improve reuse and pallet flow efficiency across all industries.
“PalletTrader is here to stay. It’s good for everyone — it’s neutral ground. It’s easy, but it’s technology and while some folks are going to look at this as a disruptor, I view it as an enabler,” Vaccaro said. “It’s going to help empower businesses. It’s not meant to replace everything. It’s meant to combat inefficiencies, complement and enhance — that’s it.”
According to Eroza at SFVP, PalletTrader has helped with both efficiency and success.
“As a family-owned business, our organizational culture at SFVP is to become an innovative company that grows not only in size and areas of domain but builds on the ideas and creativity of our employees to provide the best service from the bottom up,” Eroza said. “PalletTrader supports our company goals because of the innovative aspect of the platform. The platform exposes our business to a limitless market that opens up avenues we have not tapped into.”
To learn more about PalletTrader, visit its website.