A request for a custom pallet often starts with two numbers:
“We need a 72 × 60 pallet for a 3,000-lb machine.”
Those numbers are useful, but they aren’t enough to tell you what the pallet should look like.
Before deciding how many stringers to use or how thick the deckboards should be, we would want to know something much more basic: where does that 3,000 lb actually sit?
A machine resting on four relatively small steel feet does not load a wooden pallet in the same way as 3,000 lb of cartons spread across most of the deck. And if a motor, gearbox or other heavy component shifts most of that weight toward one end, the problem changes again.
The scale still says 3,000 lb.
The pallet doesn’t experience those three loads in the same way.
That is why statements such as “this pallet holds 3,000 lb” can be misleading when you’re talking about custom industrial packaging. The gross weight matters, of course, but it is only the beginning of the design conversation. The first thing we need to understand is the machine
The first thing we need to understand is the machine
When a company asks for a heavy-duty pallet or machinery skid, a good drawing of the equipment can be more useful than simply asking for a higher load rating.
– Where are the feet?
– How large are they?
– Is there a frame underneath the machine or only a few points where it can safely be supported?
– Where is the centre of gravity?
– Will the equipment be bolted down?
– Which direction will the forklift approach it from?
And once it reaches the warehouse, will the loaded pallet sit flat on the floor or span between rack supports?
Those details tell us how the load will travel from the machine into the wood structure below it.
Take the simplest comparison.
Put 3,000 lb of boxed material evenly across a pallet and several deckboards can participate in carrying that weight. Put a 3,000-lb machine on four small feet and much more of the load is introduced at four concentrated locations.
The boards immediately underneath those feet matter a lot more now.
Depending on the equipment and support arrangement, the design may need reinforcement in those specific areas, different member sizes, blocking or cribbing beneath structural points, or a skid configuration that transfers the load differently.
Simply adding another deckboard somewhere else may contribute very little.
That is the difference between making a pallet look heavy-duty and designing it around the load it has to carry.
A pallet can work perfectly on the floor and behave very differently somewhere else
This catches people because the loaded pallet may look completely fine during the first test.
The machine is placed on it. Nothing breaks. The pallet looks solid.
But where was it tested?
If it was sitting flat on a concrete floor, much of the structure may have been supported underneath. Put that same loaded pallet across rack beams and parts of the pallet now must span an unsupported distance.
The loading condition has changed even though the machine hasn’t.
This is one of the reasons the Pallet Design System (PDS) evaluates pallet performance based on actual support and handling conditions rather than treating load capacity as one universal number. Woodpack Global’s PDS resources cover pallet structural design as well as unit-load design, and its training includes areas such as fasteners and block pallet design. PDS 6.12, released in August 2026, also expanded the software’s deckboard design capabilities.
For a buyer, the useful lesson isn’t that every custom skid needs to be designed in one software package.
It’s that the supplier needs to know what will happen to the pallet after the machine is placed on it.
Floor storage, warehouse racking, forklift handling, stacking and transportation don’t create identical structural demands.
If those conditions aren’t communicated, somebody has to make assumptions.
The forklift is part of the design conversation too
Heavy equipment creates another problem that doesn’t show up in the gross weight: handling.
Imagine the machine has a large motor mounted toward one side. The pallet may be structurally strong enough to support it, but the combined load may not be balanced around the geometric centre of the skid.
Now fork entry direction and fork placement become important.
The people building the pallet should know how the equipment is expected to be picked up, particularly when the skid is long, unusually wide or carrying equipment with a high or offset centre of gravity.
This becomes even more important with oversized packaging.
A 10-, 20- or 30-foot pallet is not simply a normal pallet made longer. The longer the structure becomes, the more attention has to be paid to where it is supported, how it will be lifted, how the load is positioned and what happens during transportation.
Sometimes the right solution isn’t even a conventional pallet.
It may be a purpose-built skid with blocking or cribbing positioned underneath the machine’s structural support points.
More lumber isn’t automatically better engineering
There is a very understandable response when the equipment is expensive:
“Make the pallet stronger.”
Nobody wants a $50,000 or $100,000 machine damaged because somebody tried to save a small amount of money on the shipping base.
But “stronger” needs some definition.
Adding lumber everywhere can increase weight and cost without necessarily addressing the part of the pallet that is actually under the greatest demand.
The opposite approach is just as risky. If Procurement asks suppliers to keep reducing material until they reach the lowest possible unit price, the pallet can lose performance in exactly the areas that matter.
Good custom packaging sits somewhere between those two extremes.
You want enough material in the right places for the product, support conditions and handling method. You don’t want to pay for wood that isn’t contributing useful performance.
This is where an engineered design becomes commercially useful rather than simply technical. It can help answer two questions at the same time:
Where does this pallet actually need strength?
and
Where are we paying for material we may not need?
The RFQ can make or break the design before anybody cuts a board
A lot of custom pallet problems begin with an RFQ that doesn’t give the manufacturer enough information.
Something like:
Need price on 72 × 60 heavy-duty pallet.
Load: 3,000 lb.
will certainly get you a quote.
But different suppliers may be quoting against very different assumptions.
One may assume the load is evenly distributed. Another may assume floor storage only. Another may simply use a familiar heavy-duty construction that has worked for similar jobs.
The prices can then look easy to compare even though the proposed pallets aren’t necessarily solving the same problem.
A more useful request would include the equipment drawing or footprint, gross weight, location of the support feet, known centre of gravity, required fork-entry direction, storage/support condition, transportation method and any bolting or tie-down requirements.
For example, instead of just telling the pallet builder that a machine weighs 3,000 lb, you might explain that the machine has four mounting feet shown on the attached drawing, most of its weight sits toward the motor side, it will be lifted from the long side, transported by flatbed and stored on the floor.
Now the supplier knows considerably more about the job without Procurement trying to design the pallet itself.
That is exactly what you want.
Procurement should describe the application well enough for the pallet manufacturer to solve it.
Cribbing can sometimes do more than another layer of boards
Heavy machinery doesn’t always need support everywhere.
Often there are portions of the machine frame designed to carry the load. Properly positioned wood blocking or cribbing can help transfer those concentrated reactions into the skid structure and can also become part of the equipment-restraint strategy.
But the word properly matters.
Adding random blocks because they make the skid look stronger is not the same thing as placing support where the equipment needs it.
The machine drawing, mounting points and load path should drive those decisions.
This is especially important when the product is unusual enough that the pallet manufacturer has never seen it before. A short conversation between the customer’s engineering or operations team and the pallet manufacturer before production can prevent a lot of guessing later.
So, what does a “3,000-lb pallet” tell you?
By itself, not as much as people sometimes think.
A useful heavy-duty pallet specification is really describing a complete application: the product, its weight distribution, the way it contacts the pallet, the way the pallet is supported, and the way the complete unit will be handled and transported.
Change one of those conditions and you may change what the pallet needs to do.
So when an RFQ arrives saying:
“We need a pallet for a 3,000-lb machine,”
the next question shouldn’t immediately be:
“What pallet capacity do you need?”
A better place to start is:
“Can you show us how the machine sits on it?”
That drawing may tell the pallet designer more than another number ever could.
For manufacturers shipping machinery, equipment or other concentrated loads, Geo Pallet builds custom pallets, oversized skids, crates and wood cribbing around the actual product and handling requirements. For unusual loads, providing the product dimensions, gross weight, support points, handling method and destination at the quoting stage gives us a much better starting point than weight alone.
References & Further Reading
Pallet Design System (PDS) — Current Downloads and Release Information
Woodpack Global’s official PDS resource for current software information and releases, including PDS 6.12.
https://palletdesignsystem.com/download/
Pallet Design System — PDS Reference Documents
Technical reference materials related to pallet and unit-load design.
https://palletdesignsystem.com/pds-reference-documents/
Woodpack Global — Pallet Design System
Information on PDS and engineering-based pallet and unit-load design.
https://woodpackglobal.com/
For heavy machinery, concentrated loads or unusual equipment, send Geo Pallet the product dimensions, weight, support points and handling requirements. A custom pallet or skid can then be built around the actual load instead of a generic capacity assumption.
