People can’t stop stealing wooden pallets

People will steal anything — even those wooden pallets that shippers use and no one normally gives a second thought to.

Craig Savell is a co-managing partner in Margolin, Winer and Evens, an accounting firm in Garden City, NY, and he explained to me the other day that the theft of these pallets has become so bad that companies have begun branding them and including distinctive material to discourage thieves.

In case you aren’t familiar with the shipping industry, these pallets are usually made of wood and are used to put under goods that are being shipped. So instead of having to pick up numerous boxes of, say, toilet paper, all you have to do is pick up one pallet with dozens of boxes on top.

Back when I was summering at a truck loading dock, we had another name for the pallets. We called them “skids.”

Well, so many of these skids are slipping away that companies are up in arms.

Not only are pallets being stolen, but poor-quality ones are being switched for good ones that can cost up to $20 apiece.

Some manufacturers, according to Savell, are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on them.