There's nothing simpler than the basic pallet. Right? "Not so fast," says Laszlo Horvath, who spends a whole lot more time with pallets than most of us as director of the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design at Virginia Tech. In the course of a year, Horvath and the center's staff test more than 100 pallet designs. Clients such as Amazon want to know in advance if a particular pallet can protect the load it will carry. Clearly, Amazon is into packaging much beyond the individual boxes and envelopes we all receive. More on that later. In fact, all pallets at Amazon must be certified by testing to carry specific loads. Some are for transport of loads within the company. Others are for transport of goods by Amazon merchants to the e-commerce giant's distribution centers. And there's good reason for all this research.
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