Standards · How-to
Pallet standards in
Australia: the yard guide
CHEP blue, Loscam red, the 1165 square that rules them all — what the standards actually are, why carriers care about them, and how to avoid the rejected-delivery fee.
The Australian standard pallet is 1165 × 1165 mm — a square that doesn't fit neatly into a 40ft container, which is either a design flaw or a national character test depending on who you ask. Everything in local freight is measured against it.
The blue CHEP and red Loscam pallets are hire equipment — they travel in a pool, they get swapped at delivery, and losing them costs real money (a lost CHEP runs north of $40 on the account). That's why drivers count them like cash and why "just use any pallet" is terrible advice.
For freight purposes: keep the load inside the footprint, keep it under the rated weight, and strap-wrap it so the carton stack moves as one unit with the pallet, not fifty loose boxes held together by optimism.
Blue ones travel
Reading the detail
Written by Tash Meyer, ops — she has rejected more shrink-wrap than most people will ever wrap.
Nine out of ten rejected deliveries I've ever seen were the same story: overhanging cartons on a pallet the network didn't want to carry.
The mistakes we see weekly
Overhang — cartons past the deck edge — is number one; it sheds weight ratings, tears wrap, and gets freight refused at DCs. Second is the home-made pallet that splits under the forklift. Third is wrapping the pallet to the product but not the product to the pallet — the wrap needs to tie the load to the deck.
What we do with non-standard freight
Oversize skids, crates, half-pallets and machinery are daily work for us — they just get quoted as the space they occupy rather than a pallet rate. A 2.4-metre crate costs like two pallet spaces because it eats two pallet spaces.
If you're not sure whether your freight counts as 'a pallet', measure the footprint and the height (most networks cap around 1.8 m loaded) — or photograph it and we'll tell you in one email.
The short version
- Standard AU pallet: 1165 × 1165 mm
- Blue/red hire pallets are pooled — they get swapped
- Overhang is the #1 rejection cause
- Wrap the load to the deck, not just to itself
CHEP blues strapped and ready — the boring kind of beautiful.
Pallet rules that matter
Get these three right and nobody ever rejects your freight.
More from the dispatch desk
Freight that doesn't fit the square?
Send a photo — we'll tell you how it travels and what it costs.