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Key takeaways:
Sustainability is a key consideration across every industry as businesses strive to meet their own internal sustainability goals and external regulatory requirements. For pallet buyers, this often means focusing on purchasing used pallets over new ones.
Wood pallets are naturally more sustainable than those made of plastic, as the wood will start to decompose when the pallet reaches the end of its life. By comparison, plastic pallets will take years to compose.
On top of that, plastic pallets are made from petroleum or natural gas products, which greatly increases their carbon footprint. In contrast, once wooden pallets are regenerative: once the trees are cut down to make them they can be replanted.
Additionally, wood pallets are much easier to repair and maintain as they can be disassembled easily, while plastic pallets are moulded and so can’t be repaired if they break.
At Fastmarkets, we offer price data for new, used grade-A and used grade-B GMA pallets across the six largest metro areas in the US: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth, Chicago, New York and Seattle.
There are a variety of benefits to purchasing used pallets over new, the most obvious being that used pallets are often cheaper. In April 2025, Fastmarkets assessed the price of new pallets delivered to Dallas-Fort Worth at between $10-14 per pallet. By comparison, used grade-A and grade-B pallets were assessed at $8.50-10.50 and $4-8.50 per pallet, respectively.
Notably, several of the price ranges for new and used pallets in Dallas-Fort Worth, and the other areas covered by Fastmarkets, overlap or intersect. This is indicative of the parity that high quality inferior grade pallets currently have with low quality superior grade pallets in today’s market.
Throughout the first half of 2025, a glut in the used market suppressed pallet producers’ ability to raise prices for new pallets. In addition to this, many businesses are in cost cutting cycles meaning repaired pallets being sold at a lower price remain attractive.
However, in recent weeks the used grade-A GMA supply has dried up. This has left many traders optimistic despite downward pressure on low-grade lumber prices from anaemic pallet demand.
In September, trading ranges were largely unchanged across the new GMA market compared to the previous month. The sole exception was the New York delivered price, which was assessed with a $1.50 decline on the low side, and a $0.75 decline on the high side.
The New York market for used grade A has seen steady overlap between premium or good quality used grade-A material and lower or average quality new pallet material. This has created downward pressure on the new pallet market.
That market is also heavily influenced by the hardwood pallet sector. While prices have been relatively stable there, low-grade hardwood lumber supplies in the Northern region have been in a rut for several months, due in part to additional competition with softwoods in the region.
Other notable price trends this month included a slight increase in most used grade A GMA markets. This aligned with reports that used grade A inventories have tightened. For the past several months, many buyers have turned to used grade A pallets as a cost-saving mechanism with a significant detrimental impact on the new pallet sector.
While some US traders have expressed optimism amid the United States Federal Reserve’s recent rate cut and the pending Section 232 investigation into lumber, other see little upside to the market in the near term.
Many softwood lumber prices have continued to fall in the face of poor demand and widely available supplies. Additionally, US low-grade lumber and pallet producers have reported steep competition from Canadian pre-assembled pallets.
Overall, trends have been relatively steady over the past several months. Traders continued to describe the market as up against key profit margin resistance on the production side and persistently underwhelming demand on the buy side.