Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic at the centre of pallet recycling. Recovering, repairing and re-grading a platform costs us roughly three kilograms of CO₂e against about twenty-four to manufacture a new one. That looks like a decisive win until you notice what dominates the three: the truck.
Push the truck far enough and the benefit disappears. A long recovery run for a half-empty trailer is not a climate win, however green the cargo is.
What we started doing in 2023
Deliberate backhaul matching. Every outbound delivery is checked against the recovery queue, and where geography allows, the trailer that drops your release collects someone else's surplus twelve miles away. It sounds obvious. It requires somebody whose actual job is looking at a map every morning, which is why most yards do not do it.
Empty miles fell 31% in eighteen months. That is a larger carbon reduction than the grinder, the kiln and the LED retrofit combined, and it cost one person's attention rather than capital.
Why nobody publishes this number
- It is unflattering. An honest empty-mile figure in this industry is frequently 40% or worse.
- It undermines a growth story. A national footprint sounds impressive and usually means longer runs.
- It is genuinely hard to measure if you broker your freight, because you do not control or even see the routing.
- Nobody asks for it. Buyers ask for diversion rates, which are easy, and not for mileage, which is hard.
The thing it implies about our business
We have deliberately not expanded the fleet radius. Six states from Richmond, roughly 250 miles of practical reach. Beyond that we quote common carrier at cost or tell customers to find a yard nearer them — and if we know a good one, we name it.
That is not altruism, it is the logic of the business. Density beats distance. A yard that trucks cores across three states has worse economics and worse emissions than one serving a tight radius, and eventually the economics catch up with it.
What to ask your own supplier
How far does my material travel to be recovered? Do you own the trucks or broker them? What is your empty-mile percentage, and how do you measure it? Those three questions will tell you more about a recycling partner's real environmental performance than any diversion statistic, and the quality of the hesitation before the answer is informative in itself.
The arithmetic that makes transport dominant
Recovering and repairing a platform costs us around 3.1 kg CO₂e against roughly 24 to build a new one. But look at what makes up the 3.1: a small amount for the repair boards and fasteners, a little for yard electricity and the chamber, and the large majority for diesel.
A rough rule: a loaded trailer burns something like 1.2 kg CO₂e per mile. Carrying 500 platforms, that is 2.4 grams per platform per mile. Two hundred miles of recovery adds half a kilogram per platform; a thousand miles adds two and a half. Run it half empty and double those figures. At some distance the reuse advantage disappears entirely, and that distance is not as far away as the industry's marketing implies.
What backhaul matching actually involves
Somebody looking at a map every morning with two lists: today's deliveries and this week's recovery queue. Where a pickup sits within a reasonable detour of a drop, the two get paired and the trailer runs loaded in both directions. Where it does not, the pickup waits for a better pairing or gets scheduled as a dedicated run.
It is not sophisticated. It is a constraint-satisfaction problem that a person with local knowledge solves adequately in twenty minutes and software would solve better. The reason most yards do not do it is not difficulty; it is that nobody owns the twenty minutes.
What we gave up to get the number down
- Growth. We have not extended the fleet radius since 2019 and have turned down volume outside it.
- Some margin. A pickup that waits two days for a pairing ties up a trailer and occasionally annoys a customer.
- Simplicity. Routing against two lists is harder than running fixed routes, and it requires somebody who knows which dock is awkward at four in the afternoon.
- A better-sounding map. Six states is a worse slide than a national footprint, and we have lost at least one tender to a company with a bigger map and a worse operation.
Four questions for your own recycler
How far does my material travel to be recovered? Do you own the trucks or broker them? What is your empty-mile percentage and how is it measured? What happens to a pickup that cannot be paired?
Those four will tell you more about a partner's real environmental performance than any diversion statistic. The length of the pause before the answer is itself informative.
Rosa, logistics · Pallets Recycle, 1113 Ingram Ave, Richmond VA · published February 25, 2025 · 810 words. Corrections welcome — tell us if we have this wrong.