In a shipment made up of several pallets, every unit needs its own unique number and an indication of which part of the whole it is. Numbering of the “one of six” kind is not decoration: without it a discrepancy at receiving can be noticed but not attributed to a particular pallet, and that decides the outcome of every subsequent investigation.
Two layers, two different jobs
Transport numbering answers the question of which of the six pallets you are holding. The consignee’s label answers which announced shipment the pallet belongs to and what the system should do with it. The driver and the warehouse operative use the first; the scanner uses the second. When a shipper tries to serve both purposes with one marking, it is usually the first that is lost, because a consignee label says nothing about how many units travel together. Logistics label standards and how to describe units with mixed content are unpacked in the article on the mixed pallet.
Why the second figure in “one of six” matters
Because the first figure only carries identity; the second carries completeness. A driver handing pallets over at the consignee sees at once whether the set is complete or something is missing, and sees it before signing anything. The warehouse operative sees the same thing from the other side. On a partial delivery that single piece of information decides whether it will later be possible to establish what was accepted and what came back, which we cover in the article on the stages of a refusal.
Four records that have to agree
- The physical pallet, with its number visible without turning the unit.
- The packing list, where the content sits under each number.
- The consignment note, with the unit count and, on split batches, the number range.
- The announced shipment at the consignee, with a unit count matching the other three.
A mismatch between any of these four is detected at receiving rather than later, and by then it is usually too late for a cheap correction. Where the resulting charges come from is described in the article on delivery non-compliance charges.
Rebuilds en route: renumber, do not patch
If a unit is broken down and built differently on the way, the old number stops describing reality. The rule is firm: a rebuilt unit gets a new number, and the documentation records the link between the old number and the new one. Adding letters to the old number, or leaving two markings side by side, ends with the scanner reading whichever it finds and the human guessing. When and why we rebuild units is described in the article on pallet preparation in Milton Keynes. A change in unit count also has consequences on the customs side and is worth reporting immediately.
Where to put the marking
On two adjacent faces, on a flat surface, at a height comfortable to read from floor level, clear of the film and of any strap. The top face of a pallet is useless for anything except units that always stand alone, because it disappears the moment anything is stacked on it. Old markings are removed rather than having new ones stuck beside them. How wrapping affects readability is covered in the article on securing a pallet on the Poland to Britain route.
Shipments to several delivery points
Where a batch splits across several delivery points, the numbering has to reflect that rather than simply counting units in sequence. In practice that means separate number ranges per destination and a legible destination marking on the unit. Without it, whoever splits the batch at a transhipment has to compare packing lists instead of reading the marking, and that is precisely the activity that generates errors. How such batches are built is described in the article on one shipment from several collection points, and documenting the handover in the article on proof of receipt at Amazon.
Sources
Sending multi-pallet batches and want the numbering tidied up? Describe the shipment structure in the quote form and we will propose a marking scheme consistent with the paperwork. The channel is described on the Amazon UK deliveries page.
