A buyer sent us a competitor's quote last year asking why ours was eleven percent higher. It took four questions to establish that the two documents described materially different products. Ours was dearer and it was also the cheaper purchase.
The seven variables that hide inside one line item
- Grade. A versus B is routinely a 30–40% price difference. If one quote does not state a grade, it is quoting the cheapest thing it can defend.
- Board count. 7/5 versus 5/3 is a different platform. "Heavy duty" is not a specification.
- Combo ratio. A "combo" load at 70/30 A to B and one at 40/60 are both honestly called combo.
- Freight. Delivered or ex-yard? Pallets are bulky and cheap per pound, so freight is a large fraction of landed cost.
- Tolerance. Nominal footprint with half an inch of variance, or sorted tighter? The second costs more to produce and matters enormously to automation.
- Treatment. HT marked, or domestic only? And is the mark on two faces?
- Buyback. Does the supplier take your surplus, and at what rate? A credit column changes the net number more than the price column does.
The normalisation method
Build a small table with one row per variable and two columns, one per quote. Fill it in by asking rather than assuming — any supplier who will not answer those seven questions in writing has told you something useful. Then compute landed cost per unit delivered, net of any buyback credit.
In the case above, the competitor was quoting B-grade on a 5/3 deck, ex-yard, no buyback. Ours was Combo at an agreed 60/40 on a 7/5 deck, delivered, with a surplus credit. Normalised, ours was about fourteen percent cheaper per unit delivered.
The two questions that settle it fastest
"What is the board count and the grade, in writing?" and "Is that delivered to my dock?" Those two eliminate most of the variance in most comparisons, and they take one email.
A note on being undercut
Sometimes a competitor is genuinely cheaper on a like-for-like basis, and when we work that out we say so. There are yards closer to some customers than we are, and freight is freight. We would rather lose a quote honestly than win one by letting somebody compare two different products.
The variable nobody puts in the table
What happens when a load is wrong. Our terms say photograph it, email it within five business days, and we collect and replace at our cost without requiring a return first. That clause has a value and it does not appear on any price comparison, right up until the morning you need it.
The worksheet, as a table you can copy
Nine rows, two columns. Fill it in by asking, not by assuming.
- Footprint and tolerance
- Construction, stringer count, fork entry, jack access
- Top deck board count and widths; bottom deck count; flush or wing
- Grade, and for Combo the numeric ratio
- Lumber species group and board thickness
- Moisture specification and measurement method
- Treatment and marking, including the post-repair clause
- Delivered or ex-yard, and the delivery lead time
- Buyback or recovery credit, and the rate
Then one computed row: landed cost per unit delivered, net of recovery credit. That is the only number that is actually comparable, and it is frequently in a different order from the quoted prices.
Two traps in the credit line
First, a buyback rate quoted per unit on A-grade returns is worth much less than it looks if your returns are mostly B. Ask for the rate by grade, and apply your actual return mix.
Second, a supplier who will not take non-salvageable cores is not offering a complete recovery service. Somebody still has to pay to move the material that has no resale value, and if it is not in their quote it is in your waste contract. We haul the cores and charge for it, which looks worse on a line-by-line comparison and is cheaper than a dumpster.
When the other quote is genuinely better
It happens, and the commonest reason is geography. Pallets are bulky and cheap per pound, so freight is a large fraction of landed cost, and a yard thirty miles closer to you has a structural advantage we cannot negotiate away. When we work that out we say so, and occasionally we name them.
The second commonest reason is that they are quoting a lower grade or a lighter deck and nobody has noticed. That one is worth four minutes of checking before you switch, because the cost of discovering it at a dock is considerably higher than the saving.
The line that never appears on any comparison
What happens when a load is wrong. Our terms: photograph it, email within five business days, we collect and replace at our cost, no return required first. That clause has a real value and it is invisible on a price sheet right up until the morning you need it. Ask both suppliers what theirs says, in writing.
Rosa, logistics · Pallets Recycle, 1113 Ingram Ave, Richmond VA · published April 15, 2025 · 834 words. Corrections welcome — tell us if we have this wrong.