How to calculate board feet in a pallet

Board feet are how pallet lumber is bought, priced and compared. Two pallets that look similar can differ by several board feet, and at hundreds of thousands of pallets a year that is real money.

What is a board foot?

A board foot is a volume of wood equal to a piece 1 in thick, 12 in wide and 12 in long: 144 cubic inches (about 2.36 liters). Lumber is priced per thousand board feet, written MBF.

The formula

board feet = thickness (in) x width (in) x length (in) / 144

For a pallet, apply it to every part and add them up. Use actual sizes (a 5/8 in board is 0.625 in, not a nominal 1 in). This is how the Pallet Design System reports volume.

Worked example: GMA-style 48 x 40 stringer pallet

Top deck

Bottom deck

Stringers

Total

4.95 + 3.73 + 4.81 = 13.49, or 13.5 board feet. A published PDS sheet for this pallet reports the same groups as 4.9, 3.7 and 4.8, and 13.5 in total.

What board feet do and don't include

• Notches are not deducted. The stringers are counted at full size even though the notches remove wood (a little over half a board foot across all six notches on this pallet). This matches PDS practice.
• It is not the lumber you buy. Saw kerf, trimming and rejected pieces (cull) are extra. Mills add their own yield factor when they buy cants or boards.
• It is volume, not weight. For weight, multiply by a pounds-per-board-foot factor. See pallet weight.

From board feet to cost

At a given lumber price per MBF:

lumber cost per pallet = board feet x price per MBF / 1,000

One MBF builds about 1,000 / 13.5 = 74 GMA-style pallets before yield losses. Every tenth of a board foot saved per pallet is 100 board feet per 1,000 pallets. See pallet cost.

Metric: cubic meters

In metric, volume is m^3 = thickness x width x length (mm) / 1,000,000,000. One board foot is about 0.00236 m^3, so the GMA-style pallet's 13.5 bf is about 0.032 m^3.

Board feet for other constructions

Each figure is the sum of that design's parts list, calculated the same way as the GMA example.

Board feet for a whole order

Multiply by the order quantity. 5,000 GMA-style pallets at 13.49 bf use about 67,450 board feet, or 67.5 MBF, before sawing losses. By part size, that is 40,000 pieces of 5/8 x 3-1/2 x 40, 20,000 pieces of 5/8 x 5-1/2 x 40 and 15,000 stringers at 1-3/8 x 3-1/2 x 48. A cut list in this form is what a mill uses to plan its sawing.

Nominal vs actual: a common mistake

If you calculate with nominal sizes, a "1x4" deckboard becomes 1 x 4 instead of 5/8 x 3-1/2, and the deck volume comes out almost double. Always use the actual sizes from the drawing. See nominal vs actual lumber.

Where to cut board feet

• Reduce deck thickness (5/8 in instead of 3/4 in) where the load allows
• Use fewer or narrower interior boards if gaps stay acceptable
• Right-size stringers for the actual racked load
• Use the load requirements, not habit, to set the design

Each change must still pass the load and handling checks. palletdesign.ai lists board feet by part and in total for every design, so you can see the effect of each change.