Load Carrier Management – A New Software Category

It's hard to believe, but until recently, and largely unnoticed by the public, there was still a blank spot on the software map of the logistics value chain. And this isn't just another digital tool or a new AI feature—it's an entirely new software category. That's all the more remarkable given that it revolves around the most fundamental element of logistics: the pallet—or, more broadly, the load carrier.

All of logistics stands on it. Without load carriers, the logistics "triathlon" of transport, handling, and storage would be as inefficient as it was 70 years ago, before the shipping container and the Euro pallet were invented. For decades, the manufacturing, provision, and exchange of pallets have been organized by producers, logistics service providers, and pooling companies. Looking at the economic dimension quickly makes clear what's at stake: for many logistics service providers, the value of the load carriers in circulation likely exceeds their annual EBIT, and the picture is similar for quite a few retailers. On top of that come considerable operating costs, as employees spend their days checking delivery notes, recording inventory, and resolving discrepancies.

Against this backdrop, the question arises why load carrier management hasn’t long been a focus of consulting and software development—after all, millions are at stake. The answer is as simple as it is fundamental. For one thing, the topic still carries an air of the mundane, even “uncool,” that in no way reflects its economic weight. For another—and this is perhaps even more surprising—load carrier management (LCM) doesn’t fit neatly into existing software categories. Warehouse management systems, material flow control systems, and supply chain solutions think linearly, from origin to destination and along process chains—it’s no coincidence we speak of supply chain management. Load carriers, by contrast, move between these system worlds.

They may travel through the same networks, but they are recorded, netted, exchanged, pooled, or returned independently of the actual goods. If a document goes missing or a transaction isn’t recorded correctly, the pallet quickly vanishes from the value chain and often ends up as makeshift furniture in someone’s basement bar. To prevent this, inventories have to be tracked and reconciled across companies. On top of that, load carriers change condition, and therefore value, over the course of their lifecycle, from like-new (1A) to heavily used (Class C). If these quality grades aren’t recorded accurately, additional losses quickly follow. This is exactly where the structural gap becomes apparent: conventional systems aren’t designed to exchange, assess, and manage inventory that physically sits at another company, all at the same time. Software and staff are thrown into complete disarray when only part of a shipment is exchanged, another part is invoiced directly, and a third party requires fixed conversion rates for exchanging different quality grades. The result is highly fragmented processes, and the obvious consequence is manually maintained Excel spreadsheets reconciled by email—an approach that hardly seems up to date given the sums involved.

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