Building with pallet wood
Free hardwood everywhere — and a two-letter stamp that tells you whether to burn it or walk away.
What it is
Dismantling shipping pallets for lumber. Much of it is oak or other hardwood, and it's genuinely free.
The numbers
- Look for the IPPC stamp. HT = heat treated (held at 56°C / 133°F for 30 minutes) and is fine for building, garden beds, and firewood.
- MB = methyl bromide fumigated. Do not use it for anything — not a raised bed, not a chicken coop, and absolutely not firewood.
- DB means debarked. No stamp at all usually means a domestic-only pallet that was never treated — which is also fine, but you're guessing.
- Methyl bromide is being phased out globally, so MB-stamped pallets are getting rarer. 'Rarer' is not 'gone'.
Why it's here
It's an enormous free material stream, and for anything that isn't holding food or people up, it's perfectly good wood.
The catch
Read the stamp before you cut, and never burn an MB pallet — you'd be releasing the fumigant into the air you're standing in. Beyond the stamp: an unstamped pallet that spent its life under a leaking drum of something is still contaminated by whatever that was, and nothing on the wood will tell you. Pallets from food and beverage distribution are the safe bet; pallets from a chemical yard are not. And budget for the labor — taking a pallet apart without splitting every board is genuinely slow work.