Pavers come in many different shapes and sizes, so determining how many pavers will fit on a pallet is largely a matter of how big each paver is. There are some common shapes and sizes. However, that can make it easier to estimate how many pavers would actually come on a pallet.
Pavers are essentially bricks, typically made from concrete instead of clay. This means that they are more porous than traditional clay bricks and less dense. This means that pavers tend to weigh slightly less than clay bricks.
Unlike clay bricks, however, concrete pavers come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. It’s not uncommon for concrete pavers to range in size from three inches to three feet across.
Thickness varies wildly as well, as some pavers are designed only to be used as landscape material that outlines a bed of flowers, while other pavers are meant to be stacked into a retaining wall or used as paving material for a patio or parking space.
This means that some pavers are actually more dense than clay bricks since they have to have enough structural stability to support the weight of several cars, patio furniture, and/or multiple people.
Related: How Much Do Bricks Weigh?
How Can I Determine the Weight of a Pallet of Pavers?
In order to determine the weight of a pallet of pavers, you’ll need to know how much an individual brick weighs and how many bricks are on a stack of pavers. Of course, if you know all of this information, it’s pretty easy to multiply to find your answer.
Why Is Knowing the Weight of a Pallet of Pavers Important?
If you’re ordering pavers but plan to haul them home yourself, you need to know if your van or truck can handle the weight of the number of pallets that you’re ordering.
Be aware that unless you have a forklift, the odds of you unloading the bricks while still on the pallet are very small. If you’re using these bricks for a home improvement project, you’ll likely unload them one by one from your vehicle.
Also, be aware of the weight of multiple pallets of pavers if you plan on storing them for an extended period of time. Sheds with raised floors are often not strong enough to hold multiple pallets of pavers.
How Can I Make an Estimate?
If you don’t know this information, then you’ll need to make an estimate. There are a few facts that can make this estimate easier:
- A typical shipping pallet in the United States is 48″ x 40″
- The maximum weight one of these shipping pallets can hold is 4,800 lbs.
- It’s generally recommended that pallets not get stacked beyond 72″ high.
Using this information as a guide, you can make a guess about many pavers will fit onto a pallet, and from here, you can make some assumptions about how much that pallet weighs.
For example, if you’re just concerned with the weight limits on your truck, you can just assume that each pallet of pavers will weigh 4,800 lbs and plan accordingly. If you know the weight of an individual brick and its approximate dimensions, you can also make a good guess about the total weight of the pallet.
How Can I Determine the Number of Pavers I Need for a Project?
If your project is a simple shape, such as a rectangle, and the pavers are the same shape, figuring out how many you need is a matter of simple geometry. The math can get a lot more complicated, however, if the shape you’re trying to make is unusual or if the shapes of the individual pavers vary.
The trick to determining how many pavers you need is to divide unusual areas into smaller shapes that have easily computable areas. While this won’t give you an exact number of pavers needed, it should put you fairly close.
When ordering pavers, always be sure to order at least 10% more than the estimate of what you need. This will give you a few spares in case your math is wrong, the pavers are chipped or broken, and it should also leave you a few pavers as spares in case they are stolen or damaged in the future.
Being able to have a few loose pavers on hand will also help you to expand your paved areas if you need to do so in the future. At the very least, you will be able to use them to match up to new pavers that need to be bought.
How Can I Determine the Number of Pavers That Come on a Pallet?
For example, if you’re thinking of ordering pavers that are 4″ x 5″ x 1″, some simple math would tell you that a grid that is twelve bricks wide by eight bricks tall would fit on the first layer. Assuming that the pallet is not stacked beyond 72″ tall, that means that the pallet could hold a maximum of 72 layers of these bricks.
Since you now “know” that the pallet could contain a maximum of 12 x 8 x 72 bricks, you can estimate that a single pallet would hold 6,912 individual bricks.
