Euro pallet weight: EUR and industrial pallets

An empty EUR / EPAL 1 pallet weighs about 25 kg. The figure moves with the moisture in the timber, so anything between 22 and 27 kg is normal. A certified EPAL 2 industrial pallet at 1200 × 1000 mm weighs around 35 kg. Those are the carriers on their own - for a quotation, a load plan or a gross-weight check you still have to add the goods.

The standard name alone will not get you to a number, because what matters in transport is the format, the condition of the pallet and whether you mean it empty or loaded. Below are the figures for the common formats and the method for turning them into the weight of a whole shipment.

EUR 1 pallet weight and how to read it

For a EUR / EPAL 1 at 1200 × 800 × 144 mm, take 25 kg as the working figure. The spread comes mostly from moisture: a pallet fresh off the line or caught in the rain is heavier, a seasoned one lighter. Treat 25 kg as a reference point for further calculation, not a value accurate to the kilogram.

Alongside its own weight sits load capacity. The safe working load of an EPAL 1 is 1500 kg, so a correctly loaded unit can weigh over 1.5 tonnes in total. Two numbers, two completely different jobs: one tells you what the carrier adds, the other how much goods you may put on it.

Weight of EUR 2, EUR 3, EUR 6 and EPAL 7

The 25 and 35 kg figures apply to certified EPAL pallets. A carrier with the same footprint but a different build can weigh noticeably more or less, so for anything without a standard mark the weight has to come from the documentation. The full list of formats is in the guide to pallet types and sizes.

What changes a pallet's weight most

Several things at once. Type and format first: an 800 × 600 mm half-pallet is far less timber than a full industrial base. Moisture second - wood absorbs water, so the same pallet weighs more after a wet trip than after a season in a dry warehouse. Condition third: repairs, replaced boards and wear all shift the weight of individual units.

In logistics the total usually matters more than the single unit. At 33 euro pallets in a trailer the carriers alone come to roughly 825 kg - close to a tonne removed from the vehicle payload. Ignoring pallet weight on large consignments is how load plans end up over-optimistic.

Don't confuse pallet weight with shipment weight

The simplest procedure: establish the weight of the pallet, then the weight of the goods including packaging and securing materials, then add the two. Settle at the same time whether your paperwork quotes gross weight (with the carrier) or net (goods only) - mixing those up is one of the most common sources of discrepancy at booking.

Changing the carrier changes the result even with identical goods. The same load on an EPAL 1 and on an EPAL 2 that is roughly 10 kg heavier gives a different gross weight, and across a few dozen units that grows into several hundred kilograms.

A worked example

Take a shipment on a EUR / EPAL 1: 30 cartons at 12 kg each. Goods weight is 30 × 12 = 360 kg. Add the pallet at roughly 25 kg and the gross weight of the unit is about 385 kg. That sits well inside the 1500 kg safe working load, so the limit here will be stack height and stability rather than the pallet itself.

The same load moved onto an EPAL 2 comes to about 395 kg gross. The method is simple, but it only works if you keep the components apart from the start: carrier, goods, securing materials.

How heavy can a loaded pallet be?

Own weight is only the start of the sum. The safe working load sets the ceiling for goods: 1500 kg on an EPAL 1, so a complete unit tops out around 1525 kg. On an EPAL 2 the goods limit is 1250 kg, giving a unit of roughly 1285 kg.

In practice those maximums are rarely reached. Thirty-three units at 1525 kg would be over 50 tonnes, while a typical artic carries around 24 tonnes of freight. With heavy goods it is the vehicle payload, not the pallet, that ends the calculation - which is why weight is always checked at two levels: the single unit and the whole consignment.

The most common mistakes

The usual one is mixing the weight of an empty pallet with that of a loaded unit. Second: assuming every EUR format weighs the same, when the gap between a euro and an industrial pallet is around 10 kg per piece. Third: leaving pallet weight out of large consignments. Fourth: treating own weight and load capacity as the same thing.

Before any operational decision, then, fix the format, the condition of the pallet and what is actually going on it. The dimensions of each EUR variant are covered in the article on euro pallet dimensions.