Dealing with moldy pallets--Frequently asked questions and answers about moulded wood pallets
What causes moldy pallets? Mold spores are everywhere, looking for a place to land and propagate. That’s the reason a piece of bread develops mold after a while, even inside a closed refrigerator. As it turns out, your basic green hardwood pallet is a pretty good source of moisture and sugars for mold spores. In part, that’s because the pallet industry today is a just-in-time industry. Pallet makers want to minimize the amount raw material they keep in inventory, which means that lumber doesn’t sit around long after it comes off the saw. Nor do they want to keep an inventory of finished pallets, which might otherwise air dry. Does heat treating kill mold? Yes and no. Heat treating is typically done to kill insects or insect larvae that may be in the wood. Yes, it will also kill mold, but heat treating is not designed to dry the pallet,The heat treatment process actually brings moisture to the surface of the wood. That’s an ideal mold-growing environment if the pallet isn’t p