How to Buy Liquidation Pallets 3 Questions to Ask Before Buying from a Liquidator

1) The first question that you want answered before buying Liquidation Pallets from a specific liquidator is where are they getting their pallets from? The reason why is because, most liquidators are small, and they don't have the capital to be buying truckloads a week or truckloads a day like a lot of larger liquidators. A lot of those large liquidators that you're probably not going to be able to find, don’t get their pallets from liquidation.com they're going straight to amazon American pallet liquidators. When you find a smaller provider, you must check the pallets they have for sale. For example, make sure a local liquidator isn’t cherry picking their specific pallets. Good thing is, not every pallet can be cherry-picked because some pallets come palletized by the big box place and some come just thrown into a truck floor-to-ceiling. Make sure the liquidation pallets were not cherry picked by asking a few simple questions. Read into their response and how they react to questions. If wholesalers clam up or they seem nervous or you're not quite sure if something feels right about their answer, then that might be a red flag not a deal breaker but a red flag.

Another question that you can ask is if they resell individual items and furthermore does the source that they get from do they resell individual items. There are two things that could happen the first thing is that they are cherry picking and that they are picking individual items off the pallets which is lowering the profitability of the of each individual pallet which may be a red flag. If the whole seller sells individual items, it does not mean they cherry picked the pallets they’re selling; they may just be involved in retail as well. Take every bit of information you get from reviews to first-hand experience with certain sellers to determine if they are a good fit for your business.


2) The second question that you're going to want to have answered before purchasing liquidation pallets is what is the process in which they process new merchandise that comes to them? Many times, truck loads will come in as a “floor load” this means the whole seller must organize all the items on to individual pallets. When pallets are being organized, it provides an opportunity for more profitable items to snatched from the batch. This is something to consider when doing your due diligence.

Some businesses have technology where they can scan the barcode and it will tell them exactly how much the item is worth which makes it very easy for that item to be cherry picked and then sometimes with the pallets they may come in in six foot tall pallets but your liquidator they may undo the pallet and then restack the pallet in four foot tall pallets which it's not a bad thing but it does reduce the profitability. It’s important to be aware of this information and knowing how pallets come in, how the items get palletized, re-palletized and moved around. If businesses don’t want to reveal who they get their pallets from, that's one thing but if they don't want to tell you any part of their process, do yourself a favor and walk away. There are plenty of liquidators out there that are willing to be honest with you and give you all the information that they know because they know that's good for business. Honest businesses are smart and understand customer acquisition is more expensive than customer retention. They will make sure that their customers win and have profitable liquidation pallets.


3) Finally, ask pilot liquidators customers about their experiences. There’re often many reviews out there on Facebook, Yelp and Google. You may also meet people at the liquidator and ask “Hey have you purchased with them before? What brought you back? Now not every pallet is going to be good, there's always going to be a risk that's not up to the liquidator. To make sure that you make your money back ask all customers you see their experience. Some may have good things to say and some may not. It is always safe to determine the quality of loads by taking all reviews into consideration. This is the question that we should ask because this is where we're going to learn.

building new relationships with people it's scary but it's sometimes it's good to be able to build new relationships because you never know when that new liquidator is going to be able to offer you something that the same pallet somewhere else is sold for at a lesser price; or even if it's a couple hours closer and it can save you time from having to drive and traveling/ shipping expenses when buying liquidation pallets.