People will steal anything — even those wooden pallets that shippers use and no one normally gives a second thought to.

Craig Savell is a partner in the Margolin, Winer and Evens, an accounting firm in Garden City, NY, and he explained to me the other day the theft of these pallets have become so bad that companies have begun branding them and including distinctive material to discourage thieves.

In case you aren’t familiar with the shipping industry, these pallets are usually made of wood and are used to put under goods that are being shipped. So instead of having to pick up numerous boxes of, say, toilet paper, all you have to do is pick up one pallet with dozens of boxes on top.

Back when I was summering at a truck loading dock we had another name for the pallets. We called them “skids.”

Well, so many of these skids are slipping away that companies are up in arms.

Not only are pallets being stolen, but poor quality ones are being switched for good ones that can cost up to $20 apiece.

Some manufacturers, according to Savell, are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on them.

Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.