Pallet lumber in The Great Depression

[Stephen Tashiro]

Making things out of pallet lumber is sufficiently popular nowadays that we find all sorts of YouTube videos about how to take apart pallets quickly. Was making things from pallet lumber expedient during the Great Depression? - or were the pallets themselves too valuable to break up?

[jack duren]

I would imagine pallets if found became heat....

[Mel Fulks]

Have not bought much on pallets, but I'm sure I was charged for them. The common practice ,at least around here, was for steady customers to expect empty ones to be picked up at each new delivery.

[Mike Henderson]

I just looked up the history of pallets. Seems that they were just coming into common use during the 30's. Web site said that the explosion in their use occurred during WWII.

Mike

[Jim Koepke]

It was breaking down some pallets and making a lawn chair for my back yard that started me down the path of woodworking. Honestly though before that I had done a few other items of necessity out of wood. An adirondack chair was the turning point.

Sometimes I still go hunt for free pallets and the larger pieces of lumber that get tossed. When young, my folks had a furniture and appliance store. Washers, dryers and refrigerators my folks sold came with a wooden shipping bases made of hardwood. My brothers and I made a lot of things out of those 'pallets' including some large box forts using the big cardboard boxes.

jtk

[Tom Stenzel]

During the Great Depression lots of wooden crates were used in shipping. That was the scavenged wood used to build the Hoovervilles.

I remember reading an old government booklet from the pre-Depression era I *think* came from the US Forest Service on the things that old crate wood could be re-used for. A lot of wood was going to waste back then. Right now my Google-fu is failing me. If I find a PDF somewhere I'll post a link.

-Tom

[Dan Hunkele]

I once read that Henry Ford used wood from shipping crates for the floors of truck beds.

[Jerome Stanek]

I once read that Henry Ford used wood from shipping crates for the floors of truck beds.

Also used the drops for charcoal

[Steve Peterson]

Have not bought much on pallets, but I'm sure I was charged for them. The common practice ,at least around here, was for steady customers to expect empty ones to be picked up at each new delivery.

A few years ago, we had a house that we heated with wood pellets. They came on pallets and the workers would prefer to load them on your truck with a forklift. I decided to skip re-using them because of the risk of unknown chemicals. They had a pile of pallets and it was easy enough to return the old ones when going back to get a second load of pellets.

One time, the pallet was made from oak instead of the usual crummy wood. I returned that one as well, dumping it onto the pile then heading inside to buy another ton of pellets. It was gone within 10 minutes. It either became someones project, or firewood.

Steve