Amphibious Assault Landing Craft Program: Large Pallet Development

To complement the high speed of the advanced craft being developed by the Amphibious Assault Landing Craft Program, a need exists to consolidate cargo into larger unit loads in order to improve the material handling rates at the terminals of the ship-to-shore cycle. This report documents the design, fabrication, test, and evaluation of four prototype large pallets, 8 x 9 feet in area, each capable of carrying four standard 40 x 48-inch pallets. The prototype pallets include a wooden, a folded-plate, an aluminum, and a strongback design. Each pallet functioned well with respect to its specific design criteria however, no one pallet was clearly superior to the other three alternatives, and none fulfilled all the design criteria.