Not to Be Confused with All the Other Pallets
The Blue Pallet
Planet Money
Taking a cue from a recent Cabinet magazine story, NPR’s Planet Money takes you into the weird and wonderful world of pallets. Yes, those big, flat structures that hold products for transport. The story goes like this: For decades, the standard in the pallet industry was stringer pallets, which forklifts could pick up from two of the four sides. But then an Australian company came up with a new version that could be lifted from any side. Great, right? Not so fast. This updated model, made by a company called CHEP, was about twice as expensive to buy. So CHEP did something kind of genius: It rented out the containers and then picked them up once a shipment was delivered. That’s why they’re painted bright blue, and the company even holds contests for employees who can spot and bring home pallets that were somehow left in the wild.