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Budgeting Tips for Pallet Business Owners

Calculator and money for budgeting
Kevin SageKevin Sage
July 19, 2024

To succeed in the pallet industry today requires budgeting your pallet business carefully. The two main ways to budget better for your pallet business are to lower expenses and increase income. Here are multiple useful budgeting tips for pallet business owners and managers looking to make more and save more.

Reduce Expenses

Man repairing pallets in house

By lowering your expenses, you keep more money on hand to apply toward future projects, emergencies, and income-producing savings. Successfully doing so requires learning how to do more with less. Here are several budgeting tips for pallet business managers on ways to lower your expenses.

Rent Pallets

One alternative to selling pallets that can also help you raise more revenues from the pallets you generate is to use a third-party management service that will rent your pallets on a trip-by-trip basis.

Trade Pallets

You can also consider trading your pallets with other companies; pallets you find less marketable may be very profitable for another company whose less-marketable pallets may be more profitable for you.

Recycle Pallets

Every pallet business has some pallets it is unable to sell for reasons such as age, damage, or wear. However, there are a number of markets you can access to make some money off of this unsellable inventory by recycling it instead.

You can find recyclers who take in pallets to repair for reuse and others who convert pallets into alternative and newly profitable forms, such as grinding them for boiler fuel or making mulch. You can often find a recycling markets directory online with a simple Google search. Our pallet marketing business can also help you find pallet recyclers in your area.

Repair Pallets In-house

By meeting your pallet repair needs in-house, you can save on unnecessary costs associated with outsourcing.

Optimize Pallet Sizes

Some pallets are better for resale and recycling than others, which gives them greater value in these markets. By standardizing your pallet sizes to the dimensions most common and, therefore, most popularly sought, you can appeal to a wider swath of customers.

Make a careful assessment of the types and sizes of pallets you generate in order to ensure they meet the expectations and desires of those to whom you plan to market them. Among the most appealing standard pallets to today’s customers, for example, is the GMA 48 x 40 pallet.

Improve Efficiency

Efficient operations, by definition, leave more money in your coffers. The two parts of your operation where you can produce some of the most lucrative efficiencies are how you sort pallets and how you store them.

Don’t just use a garage or yard to store pallets more efficiently. Rather, invest in a warehouse or storage unit to keep your pallets safe from the elements and other accidental damage or wear sources.

To sort pallets more efficiently, stack them with others of the same size. This makes it easier to track and replenish your inventory and quicker to access and transport the sizes a customer orders.

Upgrade Equipment

The quality of equipment your pallet company uses can improve the efficiency of everything from pallet production to inventory management to sales. Therefore, upgrades of your company's equipment are an important investment in its success. Some of the equipment to consider upgrading include:

  1. Transportation
  2. Inventory management
  3. Tools
  4. Safety equipment

Improvements you can make in these areas include straps for tying pallets down while transporting them and protective gear for hands, eyes, and ears.

Increase Revenues

By increasing revenues, you give yourself a greater arsenal of funds to apply toward your projects, allowing you to upgrade and expand your business more easily. Here are several budgeting tips for pallet business managers on ways to raise more revenue from the work you’re doing.

Improve Pallet Quality

New Pallets

Use higher-quality pallets to make your pallets more marketable. Simply by generating pallets that can be rebuilt, you can save several dollars per pallet. A high-quality pallet is easier to repair and can be reused repeatedly.

Transporting higher-quality pallets also costs less than transporting cheaper pallets. This is because higher-quality ones are more durable and, therefore, able to endure longer and more rugged trips as well as more trips overall.

Sell Pallet Wood

Scrap wood from your pallets is only trash if you throw it out. If you find markets willing to pay for it, it can alternatively become a new source of revenue. Many do-it-yourself pallet projects need reclaimed wood to help optimize their limited budgets. You can tell your potential customers that they can even use reclaimed wood in LEED buildings as long as it first gets certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

Purchase Pallets in Full Truckloads

It may seem like paying for partial truckloads of pallets, so you only receive what you need at the moment is a more cost-effective way to buy pallets, but this ordinarily requires you to pay a delivery fee to compensate for the unused space in the truck. By ordering pallets in full truckloads, you can avoid that fee. All you need is to find ways to safely store those extra pallets you have on hand as you find more opportunities to sell, trade, reuse, and recycle them. You also have more pallets on hand when you need them, avoiding ordering additional future truckloads.

Improve Marketing

Increasing visibility with marketing

One of the most obvious ways to make more money is to do more business. That includes getting more work from existing customers, attracting new customers, and expanding revenue sources. Success in all these endeavors involves marketing. At our pallet business marketing company, we understand how to help pallet companies spread the word about their business to all of these markets.

Free and low-cost marketing are among the best marketing options available to a growing pallet business because they allow you to reserve resources for operational expenses. These days, one of the best free and low-cost marketing venues is social media, and among social media platforms, the one most popular and effective among B2B (business-to-business) companies, such as a pallet business, is LinkedIn. You, therefore, need to learn how to create a company page on LinkedIn that produces conversions or leads.

Other ways to improve your marketing efforts for your pallet business are to improve your website and SEO (search engine optimization) and to make use of modern software technology to more effectively identify your markets and target your efforts.

With these budgeting tips for pallet businesses, you can ensure that your business meets or exceeds its annual financial goals and projections, allowing it to stay competitive and grow in an increasingly competitive field. To help your pallet company thrive in any economic climate, give us a call today.

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