Heat Treated Pallets

What heat treatment is

Heat treatment is a process applied to the timber, not a grade and not a document. The wood is brought up to temperature in a chamber and held there until the core, not the surface, reaches 56°C and stays at or above it for at least 30 minutes. The core measurement is the part that matters, because heating the outside of a board is easy and proves nothing about the middle of it.

The treatment does two things to the timber. It drives moisture out, which leaves the pallet drier and lighter than an untreated one, and the sustained core temperature is what deals with anything living inside the wood. Neither effect is visible. A heat treated pallet and an untreated one sitting side by side look the same, which is precisely why the question of which one you have has to be asked rather than eyeballed.

Because it is a property of the wood rather than a condition of the pallet, treatment and grade are separate things. A pallet is graded on how worn it is and treated or not treated independently of that. If you need both a particular condition and treated timber, say so together when you ask, because the two do not imply each other.

Where businesses use it

The most common reason a Metro Atlanta business asks for treated stock is a receiving requirement further down its own chain. A manufacturer, a food or beverage operation, or a customer with its own written standard will specify treated timber, and the specification arrives with the order rather than being something the buyer chose.

The drier timber is worth knowing about on its own terms too. Lower moisture means less weight to move, and it means less of the damp that causes staining on whatever is sitting on the deck. For anything stored a long time, or stored somewhere with poor airflow, that is a practical difference rather than a technical one.

What treatment does not tell you

Two things, and both are worth being blunt about because the alternative costs somebody money.

The first is that treatment says nothing about what the pallet will carry. It is not a strength process. A treated pallet in poor condition is still a pallet in poor condition, and the condition question is answered by the grade, on the Grade A pallets page and the Grade B pallets page, not here.

The second is the mark. Treating timber and marking timber are two different operations, one in a chamber and one with a stamp, and the stamp is what a receiving dock reads. Every heat treated pallet we supply carries the ISPM-15 stamp, the standard mark that shows the wood has been through the treatment. If the receiving end has handed you a written requirement, forward it with your order and we will confirm the stock against it.

Ordering treated stock

Say that you need treated timber at the point you ask for a price rather than at the point you confirm the order. It is a different pool of stock from the untreated pallets, so it changes what we can offer and when, and finding that out late is what turns a straightforward order into a rescheduled one.

Send the quantity, the condition you need alongside the treatment, where it is going, whether it repeats, and any written requirement you have been given by whoever is receiving the load. If somebody has handed you a spec, forward the spec rather than summarising it. It answers questions a description does not, and it means we are reading the same document you are.

There is no hard minimum order, but around fifty pallets is the point where a dedicated delivery starts to make economic sense, and same-week delivery is standard across Metro Atlanta and West Georgia. How supply works in full is on the pallet supply service page.

Where a standard footprint will not fit the product at all, we build custom size pallets to your dimensions.

The rest of the range is on the products overview.

What the stamp on a heat treated pallet means

The ISPM-15 stamp on a stringer or block records that the wood was heat treated to the standard's core temperature and time. What each part of the mark means, and how to read one on a pallet in your yard, is on our pallet stamps explained page.