What are the Benefits of Having Multiple Pallet Suppliers?

Having one supplier for all of your pallets can be convenient, to be sure. You only have to communicate with one manufacturer, saving you valuable time. Depending on the size of your company, this may or may not be an option. Industries that send out several large shipments per week often have multiple suppliers to meet their pallet demand. Even if this is not a necessity, it may be a smart approach to pallet supply. Using multiple pallet providers protects you in the case something goes wrong with one of your orders. If your main supplier cannot deliver, you have a back-up supplier to step up and keep your supply chain running smoothly.

What Can Go Wrong?

I don’t mean to be an alarmist; inability to fill orders is not a usual occurrence for reliable pallet manufacturers. That being said, there is no harm in being prepared just in case something happens. Your business relies on pallets and an interruption in that supply chain means trouble for you. Problems that could affect your pallet order include:

  • Fire
  • Machine malfunction
  • Late inventory shipment
  • Poor quality inventory shipment

Again, these are not typical occurrences, but that does not mean you cannot identify a back-up pallet provider just in case.

Disaster is not the only problem multiple providers help to protect against. Having two or more suppliers can also help keep your pallet costs stable by maintaining competition for your business. Allow me to illustrate:

A company has two pallet providers bid for their business and, of course, chooses the cheapest one. Once they have secured your business, that provider may raise the price of their pallets. Now you must face the decision to take valuable time to find a different provider or pay the inflated price. If instead you maintain both providers, then you get the best actual price from both. Each wants to secure the lion’s share of your orders, but neither sees the benefit of undercutting the other and then raising the price again.

An Alternative Option for Securing Multiple Suppliers

If you do not have the time to devote to communicating with multiple companies, but you want the security of multiple pallet suppliers, your provider may be able to broker the business by outsourcing pallets to other manufacturers. While this is not a common practice, it may be a viable option if you are interested in the perks without the added logistics of multiple suppliers.

By working with two or more pallet suppliers, you achieve two ends: you secure your business against an unexpected hiccup in your pallet supply and you provide an incentive for each to give you their best price.