Fine furniture is crafted from used pallets

Twenty-eight-year-old Stuart Dimson launched a company called Safe Solutions LLC in 1997 to transform weather-beaten shipping pallets into fine furniture. In the last eight months, Dimson's firm has recycled 550 pallets into a line of coffee tables, end tables, night tables, desks and dressers, as well as custom pieces such as credenzas. It recently completed an order for 345 night tables for the Sheraton Rittenhouse Square Hotel in Philadelphia which was renovated into a "green" hotel.

Safe Solutions' 1200-square-foot facility is located on seven acres in the mountains outside of the town of Durango in southwestern Colorado. "We have more than enough land because we don't stockpile mass quantities of pallets," notes Dimson.

Pallets are collected in a flatbed one-ton truck which can hold 35 pallets at a time. Dimson estimates that one-third of the pallets he sees are oak and the remainder maple, cherry, ash, poplar, beech and tropical hardwoods. Each piece of Safe Solutions' furniture is made from different combinations of hardwoods. "We don't tell customers that we can make a table entirely out of solid maple," says Dimson. "For us, it's not cost-effective to use one type of hardwood for a project because we would have to have a large facility just for sorting. When a pallet comes in, it's very difficult to tell what type of wood it is until we cut into it because each pallet ages differently from exposure to sunlight and moisture." He says combining hardwoods furthers Safe Solutions' goal to increase public awareness. "When people see different woods in a piece like ash and maple, they say that they can't believe that they're used in pallets."

Pallets are constructed of two types of boards - deck and runner. Dimson designed a hydraulic machine to pry the deck boards from the runner boards which are considered "prize pieces." The company makes all furniture frames out of the thicker runner boards to form the structure of the piece and uses the thinner deck boards inside the frame as paneling.

Most of Safe Solutions' sales are wholesale. "We're competing with much larger furniture companies for other hotel jobs," he notes. The night tables retail for $175 to $350 and dressers are around $600. "We're trying to make our products cost-effective so the general public can afford to buy them," says Dimson. "We're not saying: `It's green, it's recycled, now you have to pay a lot for it."'

A complete article on Safe Solutions plus other companies salvaging wood from deconstruction materials is in the latest issue of In Business, as part of a continuing series of how recycled products are used by sustainable enterprises. For subscription information, call (800) 661-4905 or visit our web site: www.jgpress.com.