Guide
Freight forwarding and cargo handling
A pallet in an air freight chain is handled far more often than most buyers assume. Knowing where those handovers happen explains most pallet damage and most specification arguments.
Reviewed 10 September 2026.
Illustrative stock photography — not our premises or equipment. Photograph by imagesourcecurated (Envato Elements).
The typical chain
A consignment is usually palletised at origin, collected by road, delivered to a forwarder's warehouse, checked and possibly re-worked, moved to a handling agent, built for the flight or the container, then broken down and re-palletised at destination for onward delivery.
Each of those steps involves a forklift, a pallet truck or a set of hands. The pallet is a structural component of the load through all of it, which is why a base chosen purely on price is often the most expensive decision in the chain.
What handlers care about
- Sound deck boards and no protruding or lifted fasteners.
- Consistent dimensions across a batch so loads can be built and stacked predictably.
- Clean pallets where cargo is food, pharmaceutical or high-value.
- Fork entry that suits the equipment actually in use at each site.
- Correct wood packaging marks where the movement requires them.
Where things go wrong
Two failures worth planning against are mismatched batches — a load built on pallets of slightly different heights or footprints — and late discovery of wood packaging requirements at build-up. We do not publish figures on how often either occurs; both are avoidable at the point of specification and expensive to fix later.
Empty pallet flow is the other recurring problem. Sites near airports are space-constrained, so an agreed route for empties to leave is part of a workable supply arrangement, not an afterthought.
General information only, reviewed on the date above. It is not legal, customs or phytosanitary advice and does not confirm that any pallet or consignment is compliant. Always check the official source for your own movement.