Cartoned bags are the friendliest freight in the world to pallet wrong: soft cartons compress, overhang hides until the stretch wrap comes off, and a pallet that left the factory holding 4,000 bags arrives holding 3,200 sellable ones. Pallet pattern planning, how cartons arrange on the pallet and how those pallets fill a container, recovers that loss without touching the product. This guide covers the pattern geometry, the crush rules and the numbers to put on the packing instruction, extending the carton-level math in our carton dimensions and freight class guide and the delivery programs on our logistics solutions page.

Transit testing frameworks published by ISTA on the official ISTA site exist because pallet loads fail in predictable ways, compression at the corners and shift under vibration; the pattern rules below apply those failures to the soft-carton case.

The pattern: column stacking beats interlocking for bags

Pallet patterns come in two schools. Interlocking patterns, where cartons rotate 90 degrees between layers, hold together as a unit but crush the cartons underneath at every crossing. Column stacking, cartons aligned in columns directly over each other, preserves each carton’s full compression strength and pairs with stretch wrap or strapping for stability. For soft cartons of bags, column stacking is the default recommendation: bag cartons are light but low in compression strength, and the interlock crossings are exactly where they crush. The corrugated grade conversation from the carton guide applies here too, because the pattern can only preserve strength the board has.

The container math: where palletized bags win and lose

Palletizing trades container cube for handling speed and damage reduction, and the trade is worth running as numbers. Loose-loaded cartons fill roughly 55 to 60 percent more cube than palletized ones, because pallets add footprint and height limits; palletized loads unload in hours instead of days and cut handling damage sharply. The crossover for bag programs is usually destination-driven: distribution-center deliveries with forklifts justify pallets, while e-commerce and mixed multi-stop deliveries favor loose loading with slip sheets, the routing logic covered in our DC delivery requirements guide.

Writing the pallet instruction buyers actually need

Three numbers make a pallet instruction executable. Cartons per layer and layers per pallet, stated as a pattern drawing with rotation marked, so the packing team builds the same footprint every time. Total pallets per container against the container’s internal dimensions, so the load plan proves it fits before the truck arrives. And a crush statement: maximum stack height per carton grade, which protects the bottom-layer bags from the weight of the pattern itself. Programs that state these three numbers, and check them at the loading inspection described in our loading inspection guide, lose pallets to arithmetic mistakes almost never, and arithmetic mistakes are the only pallet mistakes that matter at scale.

Video: bag production from our line

The clip shows the cartoning and staging steps ahead of palletizing, where the pattern is built carton by carton.

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