They hand back all 33 pallets and six are no longer currency
You deliver on 33 pallets and get 33 back. The count matches, so you sign. But four have a cracked board, one has a split block with the nail showing, and two are stamped EUR with no EPAL mark. None of those six is any use in the next exchange. You have just lost six pallets and no paperwork says so.
A pallet is not packaging. It is currency
A Euro pallet is not bought and thrown away. It circulates. The system is pallet for pallet: you deliver the goods on twenty and you get twenty of the same kind back, either there and then or on account. Two things follow, and they change how you should be looking at them:
- They count as money, and what they are worth depends on still being acceptable at the next exchange. A pallet that cannot be exchanged is not a pallet with a defect: it is a pallet you have lost.
- Nobody tells you. No invoice arrives for a broken pallet. You drive off with it and find out at the next dock, when the person receiving refuses to swap it.
The arithmetic does itself: a standard trailer holds 33 Euro pallets on the floor. If two come back unusable on every trip, you have given away forty pallets in twenty trips.
The four defects that take it out of the pool
This is not the receiver's opinion: it is published by EPAL, the association that runs the pool. A Euro pallet is not exchangeable if:
| The criterion, as written | What that is on the dock | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | A board is missing | Any of the eleven. Including the bottom ones, which nobody looks at |
| 2 | A block is missing or split in such a way that more than one nail shank is visible | Pallet-truck forks always hit the same place: the corner blocks |
| 3 | A bottom or deck board is splintered in such a way that more than one nail shank is visible | Splintered, not scuffed. The line is more than one nail showing |
| 4 | A board is broken transversally or diagonally | The break you can see from the edge. A split running along the grain is not the same thing |
And one more that everyone forgets: twisted blocks must not protrude more than 10 mm. That is the one that stops the pallet sitting square in the racking, and the one that usually passes a visual check because from a distance the pallet looks whole.
That is exactly what an EPAL Euro pallet is made of, and it weighs about 25 kg. Eleven boards: it takes one of them to break — a bottom one, the one nobody looks at while loading — for the whole pallet to stop being currency. That is the fragility of the whole system in one sentence.
The pallet stamped EUR that is not an EPAL
This is the one that actually costs money, because almost everyone still uses “EUR” and “EPAL” as if they were the same thing. They stopped being the same years ago.
On 21 February 2017 the EPAL board voted unanimously to terminate the exchangeability agreement with Rail Cargo Austria, which represented the UIC working group. The agreement ended with effect from 1 May 2017, and EPAL recommended that users stop exchanging EPAL Euro pallets for UIC/EUR pallets. The reason they gave: they could not control the counterfeits entering the pool.
There was a transition: UIC/EUR pallets produced up to 28 February 2017 would still be accepted until 31 December 2021. That deadline expired more than four years ago.
EPAL recommends; it does not prohibit. An exchange is an agreement between two parties, and in practice plenty of people still swap UIC/EUR pallets without trouble — a shippers' organisation has argued for exactly that. But EPAL's recommendation is the one in writing, and that means nobody is obliged to accept a pallet stamped EUR with no EPAL mark. If they refuse it, they have something to point at. So “EUR, EPAL, same thing” is not false exactly: it depends who you are swapping with, and that risk sits with you whether you know it or not.
What it holds, for the argument you always have
The safe working load of an EPAL Euro pallet is 1,500 kg. It settles half the arguments on a loading dock, and it is worth knowing before you have one: a pallet with a board or a block missing no longer stands behind that 1,500 kg, however solid it looks. That is why the exchange criteria and the safety criteria are the same criteria — what cannot be exchanged should not be loaded either.
What to do on the dock, because that is where it goes
- Count and then look, in that order. The count almost always matches. What does not match is the condition. Counting 33 and signing is exactly how you lose six.
- Look underneath. The bottom boards and the corner blocks carry nearly all the damage, and they are the ones you cannot see with the pallet loaded.
- Look for the EPAL mark on the block, not the word EUR. They have been different things since 2017.
- Write it on the consignment note, on the carrier's copy. “33 pallets returned, 6 not exchangeable: 4 with a broken board, 1 with a split block, 2 stamped EUR with no EPAL mark.” Written there it is a reservation. Said out loud to the driver it is nothing.
That last point is the same mechanism as in the guide on being paid by the kilo: signing with nothing written on it states that everything arrived fine, and from then on it is you who has to prove otherwise. Pallets work the same way, except the amount is small each time, which is exactly why nobody claims. The consignment note you can fill in has box 18 for precisely this.
What this page does not do
It does not replace your own exchange agreement. Plenty of supply chains run on rental pools — where the pallet is not exchanged at all, it is hired and billed per use — and there the rules are the contract's, not the EPAL pool's. It also stays out of pallet accounts and balances, which every company keeps its own way and where the big differences accumulate. And the criteria above are exchange criteria: a pallet can still be exchangeable and still be the wrong pallet for what you are about to load on it.
Exchange criteria, dimensions, weight, construction (11 boards, 9 blocks, 78 nails) and the 1,500 kg safe working load: EPAL, EPAL Euro pallet product page. End of the exchangeability agreement: EPAL's own announcement of the board decision of 21 February 2017, effective 1 May 2017, with transitional acceptance of UIC/EUR pallets produced up to 28 February 2017 until 31 December 2021. The 33 Euro pallets per trailer is the usual floor capacity, not a regulatory figure.
What to take away
- A pallet is money, not packaging. One that cannot be exchanged is one you have lost.
- Four defects take it out of the pool: a missing board; a block missing or split with more than one nail showing; a board splintered with more than one nail showing; a board broken transversally or diagonally.
- A twisted block must not protrude more than 10 mm.
- EUR has not been EPAL since 2017, and the transition ended on 31 December 2021.
- 1,500 kg safe working load, and only while the pallet is whole.
- If you do not write it on the note, you pay for it. Same as with the goods.
And if what you need is how much goes on top without overhanging the edge — which is what stops a pallet being stackable and ends up costing you loading metres — that is in the pallet calculator and in the guide on non-stackable freight.