Pallets find a higher purpose

Browse any do-it-yourself (DIY) craft website and you’ll find a hundred and one uses for the basic wooden shipping pallet. Even an amateur woodworker can turn a recycled pallet into a couch frame, TV stand, coffee table, headboard, or shoe rack.

But the employees of Carolina Handling, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based material handling solutions provider and Raymond Solutions and Support Center, had something much more ambitious in mind when they embarked on a recent pallet repurposing project: They were looking to create the world’s largest pallet painting.

Using 2,500 pallets donated by pallet management specialist 48forty Solutions, the workers created their masterpiece over a period of weeks, first painting the pallets 16 different colors, then using Raymond lift trucks to place them in a gridlike pattern to create a giant portrait of Lady Liberty. Located in a parking lot at the Greenville Downtown Airport in Greenville, South Carolina, the pallet painting occupies 26,235 square feet of space—about half the size of a football field.

Dubbed “The Patriotic Pallet Project,” the venture was designed to honor the service and sacrifice of the nation’s military veterans as well as raise awareness about jobs in material handling and careers at Carolina Handling, the company said. 

A video of the assembly process was released on Veterans Day. You can view the video here.