“The TV, you Remove will live similar. Make remove the pallets of the surface of the sphere, plus nothing does not function. One would not transport any more, one would not store any more, one would not produce any more. You will take to me for a fada but I really think that the pallet is one of the major inventions of the XX E century.”In his office angevin, Jean de Vulliod (1) does not hesitate a second: yes, this coniferous (to 97 %), weighing a score of kilos, bored of 54 nails, sold timber machine between 5 and 10 € is to be arranged with the Pantheon of the brilliant lucky finds. On the glorious rack where trônent the Social security, penicillin and the computer. Jean de Vulliod would place it even a little above. Because without pallet of transport, not of drugs, not of flat-faced screens. And even not of newspaper where you read these lines.

The pallet, which is? “An element of ground transposable.” The mobile base of the world. A machine to transport, forward, embank the distances. A kind of carpet flying, travelling, sailing on which mankind piles up all that imports to him. The pallet is a carrier pigeon not ringed which would have a force herculéenne and dedicated. A pure stroke of genius arranged house before which there was only the back of the women and the men. And the pain tâcheronne of thousand miseries.

France manufactures 70 million of them

Where was it born? Under a heavy helmet, in an American head, in the middle of the XXe century and of a war which is completed: “The first pallets appear in Australia where the Americans unload and embark their material to gain their war against Japan. In 1945, they leave behind them a mountain of pallets. It is where it starts to change us the life.  ”

Quickly, this military auxiliary is recycled extremely civilly in ustensil of peace. North America, Europe, the Southeast Asia seize some. Because this logistics is fantastic. And mathematics. This wood square which does not fear anything if it is not “a blow of fork of elevator”, “was calculated for”. Conceived like a multiple of the bag of fifteen kilos. And a submultiple of the plates of trucks, holds of boats or compartments of plane. Foster sister of the lifting truck, it goes like a glove to a world economy which makes exchanges the engine of the world. She proliferated on the wave carrying tended flows. Only in Europe, 3,5 billion rotations of pallets is recorded every year.

This year, France in manufactured 70 million. It circulates, on our premises, between 600 and 700 million units. Between 120 and 150 million waits their hour, in store, with pyramids of stocks on the fire-rake. Make hundred meters in the street by opening the eyes. It would be well the devil if you do not fall on one from these valorous collapsing under a half-ton from cement. Or two recluses posed on the section reserving a parking bay for a removal. Even, one sacrificed which burns its beautiful death, set fire to by demonstrators in anger.

It is everywhere, the discrete one. One uses about it, one makes use of it and one hardly sees it: “It is a product in hollow, analyzes Jean de Vulliod, something of essential and almost invisible.  ” We are ungrateful in his opposition, incompetents to have for it the reward of the belly.

Because the pallet, the quiet and butineuse pallet, brings all to us on a plate, in our factories, our stores and even with the threshold of our door: “Each French generates, on average, eight kilos of goods per day. That is to say three tons per annum. And it is the pallet which delivers to us. For you, as for me, an unknown pallet ensures ten rotations in the year.  ” Last nines of more than the Father Christmas.

(1) Jean de Vulliod worked 32 years in the pallet. He has just founded a European Institute of the pallet, in Angers (the Maine-and-Loire). And animates an encyclopaedic Internet site on the pallet, its life its work: www.planetpal.net