Per-unit cost pulls you toward a truckload. Handling, cash and risk pull you back toward pallets. Here is how to work out which side you are actually on.
What a truckload changes
A full trailer holds around twenty-four pallets. The per-unit cost is lower, and across that many pallets the averages settle down, so a truckload behaves more predictably than any single pallet in it.
What it demands
Unloading
A dock or a forklift, realistically. A liftgate works but is slow across a full trailer.
Space
Somewhere for twenty-four pallets on the day it lands. The driver will not wait.
Cash
Paid up front, one order, one payment.
Throughput
You have to be able to sell it. Stock you cannot move is worse than stock you did not buy.
A straightforward test
Take how long a single pallet of the same class took you to sort and sell. Multiply by twenty-four. If that number is longer than you can afford to have cash tied up, buy pallets.
Most people should buy several pallets first. There is no penalty for it, the difference per unit is smaller than a failed delivery costs, and you learn the handling on something you can physically move.
One delivery, one address
A truckload ships to one address as one delivery. Splitting it with someone afterwards is your business, but the order, the payment and the signature are all yours.
