Disposable pallets made of corrugated paper are known in the art and have been commercially available for a number of years. Such pallets are disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,728,545, issued to Hermitage on Dec. 27, 1955; U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,822, issued to Roberts et al. on Aug. 15, 1972; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,831,938, issued to Atterby et al. on May 23, 1989. Schmidtke U.S. Pat. No. 4,792,325, issued on Dec. 20, 1988, provides a method and machine for making a cardboard pallet. A particularly desirable form of corrugated construction pallet, and a method for manufacturing the same, are disclosed in Quasnick U.S. Pat. No. 4,867,074, issued Sept. 19, 1989.
To be satisfactory for their intended purposes, it is of course necessary that any such pallet exhibit an advantageous strength-to-weight ratio, and also that it be capable of withstanding considerable abuse, particularly under conditions that would typically be encountered during commercial shipment of a load thereupon. While prior art structures of this kind have been found to be generally satisfactory, one area of notable deficiency has resided in the levels of lateral stability that they afford; specifically, the load carried by a pallet tends to shift in transit, or at least to impose forces thereupon that are of varying magnitude and direction. Pallets that do not offer adequate lateral stability will tend to fail, with the likelihood thereof depending of course upon the mass of the load, the conditions to which it is subjected in transit, time factors, etc. The above-identified Quasnick patent substantially advances the art in these regards, but it goes without saying that the realization of still further improvements would be highly desirable.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds