prairiepedaler

Here is a stack of oak, apparently salvaged from pallets. I haven't seen wood like this before used in a pallet. Oak yes, but not these dimensions or thickness (5 1/2 wide by 2 inch thick by 43in). It must not have been ringnailed together. Ringnails in oak are a b!tch to remove. Looks useful for some sort of project. I'm guessing heavy machinery?

Hondo Gravel

I use old pallets to set stuff on like small machinery you don’t want contacting the floor. Never seen pallets like the ones in the pic.

thook

"apparently"? so, what gives you the idea they are from pallets?

Siu Blue Wind

The pallets we use have the supports that are 4.5 inches and we use those for heavy wet or frozen loads. But the ends of them are painted blue or red so we can spot them right away for their weight capacity. So it's gotta be for something like crate engines maybe?

ThermionicScott 

Looks a lot nicer than what I see in pallets.

canklecat

I see what appears to be oak lumber cross-stacked on a pallet. Looks like it was cross-stacked for drying and aging, then forgotten, maybe because the original business closed. My guess would be rough stock for making barrels.

No idea what the pallet is made of, but probably not oak unless it's an older pallet (possible, if the stacked lumber is as old as it appears to be). Too pricey and scarce nowadays, with most pallets now being yellow pine and lighter weight softer woods. But that's Texas. In your region pallets may still be oak.

thook

looks like oak to me. i pick up oak pallets all the time. been pulling them apart to make flooring and various things. mostly oak, but some are pine.

whatever that stack lumber was from, it was at some point fastened and constructed in some manner. you can see the staining and some holes from what i'd assume was nails. it also appears at least one side of each board was recently enough cut/ripped as the surface is lighter in color than the rest. likely cut to remove damaged surface from dismantling. it's my best guess, anyway

Russ Roth

There was a packaging plant near me for several years, not fully certain what they did but it involved repackaging thick sheets of brass, bronze and aluminum. Wasn't uncommon to get a rougher cut oak that would fit those dimensions. I'd bet the 43" is just from running the saw the length of both sides of the pallets. Was always surprised how many of them would have only 1 or no center support beam but with 4x4 beams on each side and 1.5-2" thick slats I guess it wasn't too necessary. Although red oak was most common, I'd also pull cherry, maple, birch, ash, walnut, beech and white oak. The wood did have to be left to dry a little longer as most didn't seem kiln dried and it wasn't uncommon to find boards splitting near the nail holes from being assembled too wet. Built 8 rocking dinosaurs for Christmas gifts for the local food pantry all built with beautiful red oak bases and rockers that came from the pallets. Just had to move quick since some grabbed them for the firewood value.

canklecat

Ah, I didn't see enough detail to see where the stacked lumber had been fastened before. If those were oak pallets it had to be for some very heavy, very valuable and fragile stuff.

I used to work on a freight dock loading and unloading trucks and never saw pallets made of anything other than cheap yellow pine or comparable wood. Even with heavy loads. But our heaviest loads weren't all that valuable or fragile, usually stuff like nails, screws, nuts, bolts, metal ingots, etc.

Unfortunately that slipshod packaging and cheap pallets meant I wasted a lot of time picking up stuff from broken pallets because the manufacturer couldn't be bothered with better packaging. It got much worse very quickly in the 1990s after consumer goods trade shifted mostly to China. Back then Chinese manufacturers used unbelievably cheap, flimsy pallets that seemed to be made of biscuits, and cartons made of the kind of thin single ply cardboard we use to fill out dress shirts in cello wrap. And the equivalent to Saran wrap to hold it all together, instead of proper thick plastic wrap.

Presumably Chinese packaging has improved but I didn't stick around that job long enough to find out. After a grueling winter holiday season of messing with that atrocious packaging and pallets I quit that job. The worst was an entire truck loaded with Chinese glassware and dinnerware, which wasn't badly made, but the packaging was so flimsy it was impossible to handle without breakage. I'd estimate at least a third of that load was broken, and I couldn't work fast enough to get it done without risking slashing my hands and arms to ribbons. Even by 1990s standards it wasn't worth the $10/hour they paid casuals (non-union employees).

thook

i know what you mean. it boggles the mind when you think about time and money wasted all the while trying to save money. makes so much sense...lol
every couple/few weeks, i pick up nearly a ton of frozen chicken and chicken products that have been damaged in storage, loading, and shipping to feed it to the animals here (animal sanctuary). this is only a fraction of what's damaged that i don't see. i know there's a tiger refuge that picks up, too. but, they can only use raw unprocessed chicken to feed. things like breaded and/or seasoned stuff we can use to a large degree....on top of raw. at any rate, all that stuff gets damaged for the same reasons you've seen. and, who knows how much goes to rendering plants or the dump. (well, i suppose they do). so, they also have tons of pallets. all the chicken we get is stacked on one or two, wrapped (sort of), and loaded onto my flatbed trailer. i must have five or six stacks around 5ft high of pallets right now. some are those blue painted ones mentioned above. hard to do much with them as they're remarkably heavy and hard to pull apart. i use those to stack things on in the out buildings. but, to get to my point; it's northwest arkansas and full of hardwoods. there's lots of logging and several pallet companies in the region that supply the industries and distribution hubs here. i assume texas is more full of pine, and maybe that's why you see them more there? i like the pine ones when/if they're not beaten to death. easy to pull apart and i can rip them down to make trim and various things with. busted pallets make great tinder and kindling....of course

prairiepedaler

Hello to y'all, I have not seen said wood and the picture is from an ad posted by a local seller. Doubtful he'd reveal which pallets this wood supposedly came from considering he is interested in selling it thereby jeapordizing a source. He has 75 boards at c$4 per. I broke down some a few years ago which appeared to be mahogany and still have them. These were slats, not the stringers.

Darth Lefty 

My kids got a heavy duty playground for Christmas last year and it was shipped on a giant triple length heavy duty pallet with basically guard rails and a few upper cross members that turned it into a sparse crate. The wood was just pine but it was dimensional lumber and they didn't skimp. I managed to hide the parts from my kids but the pallet was a "bridge" to play with for a week before I finished tearing it down. The pieces are waiting to become launch ramps soon if the weather doesn't eat them first.

thook

fun stuff!! i've built so many things over the years with pallets; a big dog cabin, a deck, two platforms for metal storage buildings, a junk corral, the roof for a shed. not to mention the things i've made from the dismantled lumber from them. you've got a year or so with that thing's bones being out in the elements before it starts really degrading

sknhgy 

Not unusual to use oak for pallets. A place around here uses black walnut scraps.

thook

man, you guys. i never see anything but oak and pine. i'm making an oak counter top right now. black walnut would be nice

more and more those OP photos sure look like stringers to me. just where the fasteners went and the way staining ran. you never see deck boards that thick. it's a waste

StupidlyBrave 

As a kid, I was sent to a garage door warehouse to pick out the Oak rough sawn boards from the scrap pile. They were pallets which my brother and I took apart with crowbars and removed all the nails. My Dad got enough boards to build a deck from this chore. He also burned up a circular saw dealing with it.

thook

that's a lot of work!! to do with crow bars. i got myself one of these and life got a bit easier....



just had to make a handle with some steel pipe. i cut the side stringers off with a framing saw and pull the bottom and top deck boards from the middle stringer with the tool. goes quick!