How This Entrepreneur Made Over $2K Her First Month Flipping Pallets

Meredith The Entreprenuer

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Transcription:

Rob: We are so excited to have Meredith The Entrepreneur here to talk to us about pallet flipping. 

Melissa: It’s a really cool topic. 

Rob: It is! We’re super excited to have her here. She’s given some time up and now super excited and appreciative for her to jump on here and answer these questions. 

Melissa: So thanks, Meredith for being with us.

Meredith: Thank you guys for having me. 

Melissa: So tell us a little bit about your backstory, how did you get into, flipping pallets? [00:01:00] And we’re going to dive into a whole bunch of questions that I’m sure everybody has about how, how this whole thing works. 

Meredith: Well, initially I got started due to the pandemic and having a baby and not being able to go back to work.

So I came across Ashley Jane on Instagram who has a pallet flipping course, I took her course. And from there I kind of took off with it. I learned how to pallet flip, where to pallet flip, and that’s how I created my liquidation pallet vendors list and I’d never gone into it at that point, I had never gone into a warehouse to purchase a pallet.

I ordered online and the pallets came right to me within three or four days. I sold my products on eBay, Facebook, and OfferUp, and I made thousands of dollars within weeks just taking products [00:02:00] from the pallets and reselling them. 

Rob: Wow. I love it. I love it. So many great questions spark in this. So we’ve never done pallet flipping.

It’s very exciting. 

Melissa: We get asked that question a lot. So it’s definitely, it’s a cool niche to get into. 

Rob: So Meredith, let’s break down a couple of questions for you. Definitely and we’ll walk through some of these, exactly the key questions to anybody who might be interested in getting started in pallet flipping, where to start, all that kind of stuff.

Melissa: So, what exactly is it that you’re doing with flipping pallets, like what are we doing with this? 

Meredith: So what pallets are, maybe people think that it’s the products that come on the pallet, that’s the pallet. The only thing that’s a pallet is the wood that everything sits on. So, what pallet flipping is, is taking products that a customer returns from big brand stores, like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, they get customer returns [00:03:00] or they get items that are overstocked on shelves and they can’t sell them quickly enough because they’re getting more in and not enough is going out. So they put these items on pallets and sell them to warehouses for literally nothing. So what those warehouses do is then resell to the public, which is us, for dirt cheap prices.

So you can get thousands of dollars worth of items that you only pay $300 or $400 for thousands of dollars worth of items. So that’s basically what a pallet is, what pallet flipping is. Taking those customer returns and those overstocked items and then reselling them for profit. 

Rob: Awesome. Awesome. So, okay. So if I am a customer and I take something back to Walmart, and some people maybe have never even thought about this is where it comes from, but now if I take it back to Walmart, if it’s broken, whether it’s just, I don’t need it anymore. [00:04:00] Those are the things that are going onto the pallets. Are you dealing with broken items? Are you dealing with items that are perfectly okay? What kind of items are coming on these pallets? 

Meredith: So you can get new items. You can get items that may be broken. You can get items that may be missing a cord or may be missing a remote, or, they may even be missing the packaging, the box.

So, because they can’t put those items back on the shelves they resell them on pallets for a cheaper price. A way to tell whether you have broken items or whether you’re buying a pallet that has items that are not brand new, there is something called a manifest. The manifest will tell you what grade those items are in.

So for example, if you had a Grade A pallet, those are all new items. They have all of the packaging. All of the cords, all of the remotes, anything that comes with the packaging, that’s all there. [00:05:00] Then it goes from Grade B to Grade C and Grade D whereas if you get to Grade D and E that means there’s something missing.

Either something doesn’t work or something is missing from there, and I tell people all the time, Read the descriptions and read the manifest, know what you’re purchasing before you purchase it. 

Melissa: That’s really good. Cause I was wondering the same thing. Like you just like, do you know what you’re getting? But if you read it, then you should know that you can have an expectation. These are not, need work or whatever, whatever, better items 

Rob: That sparks another question to me. So are you going in, are, are these like if I went to a store, are you paying, they have a certain price for this pallet? Or are you bidding like an auction? How does it work in correlating with a Grade A, Grade B, Grade C, whatever the different grades are. What are the prices? How does that vary on that? 

Meredith: Well the higher the grade, Grade A, Grade B, the higher the amount of the pallet will be the [00:06:00] better the products are. A way to kind of determine that would say is, like I mentioned before to read everything, don’t purchase anything without reading it.

I’m trying to see most places when I purchased pallets personally. They will try not to give a description, which you don’t want to purchase from anyone who won’t give you a description of what’s on the pallet. If you’re purchasing Grade A or Grade B items, you should expect to have new or close to brand new items, with you purchasing Grade C or Grade D, you know going into it that either something is not working on the pallet or something is missing from it, but they should itemize each package that’s on the pallet and should have an itemized description of its condition.

Melissa: Okay. Do you know on the [00:07:00] pallet I’m like I’m getting 20 vacuums or I’m getting like a D, is that in the description or no, you don’t really know that? 

Meredith: Yes. You will know that as well. Some places as well have barcodes on each box, or you can use your phone to scan the barcode. Then it’ll tell you where where the item came from. 

If it came from Amazon, if it came from Home Depot and it’ll tell you the MSRP price, the price that it should be sold for. 

Melissa: Wow. Okay. That’s good to know. 

Rob: Yeah. So much great information. So much more. I want to know. So if I go to one of these warehouses or I try and buy this, am I going to bid on this pallet? Or is it going to be listed for, this is a Grade A that we want $300 for this pallet. How does that whole process work?

Meredith: Okay. Now some places do offer bidding and they do offer, outright purchasing. I personally try not to bid because you have to be extremely, extremely consistent and on it to bid on the the great [00:08:00] products, and they go very quickly.

And with bidding, sometimes you won’t win. You know what I’m saying? A lot of people we wanna win. We wanna win that. Some places do offer only auctions and some places do offer outright buying. Some places offer both. There are websites that are on my list that offer both as well. But with auctioning you have to really, really be consistent and constantly checking the prices.

But with auctioning, it is, I would say a cheaper route. If you do choose to auction over purchasing it outright.

Rob: Cool. Awesome!

Melissa: So what’s an average cost that you can expect to pay for the different grades? 

Meredith: I would say for Grade A to grade B? You’re looking at, I would say about over $800 for a pallet. 

Rob: And even further into that, I [00:09:00] was going to say that you said MSRP, what it actually retails for. If you’re paying $800,what are you expecting to MSRP? I mean, you’ve done this quite a bit, so you probably have a good idea. 

Meredith: So if I’m purchasing a pallet for $800, I’m expecting to make at least $2,500 or more from the $800 pallet. They have pallets where you’re getting all brand new TVs, but you’re paying $11,000 just for that pallet. But you can make $50,000 to $60,000 once you sell all of the items on that pallet. So I would say Grade A, Grade B items, you can expect the MSRP of $2,500 or more, off of that pallet.

Rob: Awesome. Cool. Now my wheels are still spinning, so I might’ve missed this. And you did say this, I think you did. Can I just go to a warehouse and like, are there warehouses that just sell the pallet? I can walk in. I can look at the manifest. I can check on my iPhone or whatever. I can do [00:10:00] that. And then they’ll have a price that I can just go. I can pay that price. They’ll put it in the back of my truck and I go away with it. Is it that easy to do a pallet sometimes? 

Meredith: Yes, most warehouses, especially on where it goes to physical locations that have a set price, where if you spend $450, you can choose any one of these pallets that you like. You know, they have certain deals where they don’t want you to auction.

They have a set price that you can pay or a price that you can negotiate, it just really depends on the warehouse that you’re going to.

Rob: That’s so exciting. You got me sucked in, so I’m excited. We’ve never done pallets before, but I love finding deals and that’s kinda what it is. You’re jumping into these things. You might find a sweet deal inside of one of the pallets, and you have a great chance for markups on it. You can make your money back easily and then make, you know, double, triple, quadruple your money, your investment. So that’sexciting. 

Melissa: So, where are you? You talked about the warehouses, but, do those stores actually do these too, or do they always have a warehouse that takes care of all [00:11:00] this, like to get rid of their stuff?

Meredith: There are sites where you can specifically go to, there is a site called direct liquidation. Where you can go to this site and they have direct links to Walmart, direct links to Target, direct links to Home Depot, Amazon, or you can purchase pallets from them, but not necessarily going to amazon.com and purchasing a full pallet.

Melissa: Yeah. Oh, that’s cool. So where do you sell a lot of your items?

Meredith: I sell the majority of my items locally. I’m using Offer Up or Facebook marketplace. If I am selling online, I do so, via Poshmark or E-bay or Amazon. 

Rob: Awesome. Cool. Now, when you’re doing this, are you buying like some of these places and maybe, did say this too. I can just buy one pallet. I don’t have to go and buy 15 pallets or 10 pallets. I can go and just buy one pallet. If I want to get started in this to see if I really like it, I can go pay the price. You’re asking me to put it in the back of your truck. You can go and try and sell all that stuff. Then if [00:12:00] you make good money on it, you can come back and buy multiple pallets or whatever you want to do. Is that correct? 

Meredith: Yes, you only, you can only purchase one. If you only want to purchase one, you don’t have to buy a truckload of pallets if you don’t want to. But, if you want to go even smaller than a pallet, you can get on what they call a big box. And a big box is smaller items like headphones or books or something like that.

It’s smaller items that can be put into a big box and they sell those boxes for people who don’t necessarily want to get started with having boxes all over their house or boxes all over their apartment, you can start with the big box of smaller items. 

Rob: Okay. And maybe I missed it, or if I misunderstood it, you can buy one pallet. Can you buy multiple pallets as well? Or you have to go from one to a truck. Okay. So you can 

Meredith: buy as many as you like.

Melissa: Yeah. The boxes too, because some people are probably thinking, oh, I need a truck and trailer to go do this. And you [00:13:00] don’t really. 

Meredith: Yeah, no, off with my Ford Taurus and loading boxes in the trunk, backseat, everywhere that I can fit a box. We loaded our car up. Sometimes we made multiple trips when we had bigger pallets or more than one pallet, but I used a Ford Taurus starting out to get my pallets. 

Rob: I love it! That is great. Great information to know, because that’s what we get asked a lot with what we do. Hey, do I have to have a truck? Do I have to have a trailer? And you’re thinking of pallets, you got to have a truck in the trailer, but you don’t, you can start where ever you’re at. So that’s very, very exciting for a lot of people because people don’t want to go out and, buy that truck. And we always recommend people don’t go out and buy a truck and a trailer.

Start where you are at. If you enjoy it and you start making some money, that’s where you guys can upgrade and go into, you know, a truck and a trailer and that kind of stuff. So thank you, Meredith. That’s definitely a great clarification that we can start anywhere, wherever we’re at right now. We can start buying one pallet, one big box, [00:14:00] to get the entry-level into this pallet flipping.

Melissa: Yeah, that’s really cool. What would you say somebody could expect if they’re getting into this, that they could make a month doing. Like on average. I mean, I get it all depends how much time and what they get and all that stuff. 

Meredith: Well, for me, from personal experience, being dedicated and consistent with doing it constantly, I made, over $4,000 my first month with flipping pallets and that was just purchasing the one pallet.

Reselling my items consistently, constantly, checking the websites and constantly checking the warehouses for the best pallets. I made personally $4,000 my first month, but I feel like it’s always whoever is selling. You have to be very consistent. It’s not a get rich quick scheme that you can just pick up [00:15:00] and, you know, you’ll be successful at it.

You really have to put in some form of work and dedication into reposting and selling these items. And a lot of people say, well, I don’t want a million things around my house. Well the point is to sell those things and not to keep them in your home. You know what I mean? So, I would say if you’re consistent, you can make over $2,000 a month flipping pallets.

Rob: Yeah, I love it. That’s awesome. And thank you for clarifying that because that people need that clarification. This is not a get rich quick guys. We work, we work as flippers, whether you’re a big item, small item whatever you got, whatever you do in this industry, nobody comes in knowing this. Pay a little bit of money and you get rich quick. That’s not how it works. We worked and it worked for what we do, but we love it. 

Meredith: Exactly. 

Rob: It’s so much fun. I’m one for the hunt. And so I totally get that. We are, you know, we’re right next to you on that. So, I had another question [00:16:00] about the pallets, my mind, is spinning like crazy.

If I do want to go and buy one of these pallets, do they designate in. Are they going to put a vacuum with a blower? Is it like items in there that are just maybe related? Electronics and then yard equipment, do they designate different types of pallets? If I go and pick one, I can say, I really love electronics. I love DVD players. You know, I love MP3 players. I love all this kind of stuff. Do they do that in certain pallets or is it all mixed together and you just have to check the manifests. 

Meredith: That’s a really great, question. They categorize each pallet. So, going into it you’ll know, well, this is an electronics pallet, or this is a home goods pallet that has,blenders and microwaves, or this is a clothing pallet that has majority clothing, or you have a shoe pallet that has all shoes, but they tend to categorize each pallet. So, you will know what you’re getting and what category [00:17:00] you’re getting.

Rob: Awesome. That’s exciting because we recommend people doing stuff that they love. If you don’t love doing shoes, don’t go buy a shoe pallet. And if you love electronics toys, kid’s toys, stuff like that. If they are designated in different, categories. That’s awesome. That’s very exciting as well. 

So, one other question, like I said, my mind’s running a million miles a minute. One other question is, when you go into these warehouses, you probably have some warehouses that you are enjoying buying from more. Do you create relationships with those people that are in there that might benefit you to where, you buy a couple of pallets from them?

Exactly. Like, do you go in and you’re like, Hey Bob, how you doing today? Yeah, I’m looking for this. Do you have relationships like that? Or it doesn’t work that way with pallets. 

Meredith: Yes, you definitely build relationships when you’re going to physical locations. And they’re used to seeing you and used to you purchasing from them.

They tend to give you discounts. They tend to want to help you more. If you need help unloading. First, starting out you know, you [00:18:00] look around and it’s like, who’s going to help me. Who’s going help me put this pallet up here. But the more you go, the more they’re like, okay, she’s consistent.

She’s purchased from me every week. They tend to have better relationships with people like that. They know me now by name, just going in there. Hey Meredith, what are you buying today? What category can we show you today? So it’s great to go to physical locations. Build relationships with the owners. 

Rob: That’s really cool. That’s awesome.

Melissa: Go ahead. I thought of one question too earlier, when you were talking about, you know, an obstacle people have is, having things all over their house, like you said, on the object is to sell it. Like, that’s what you want to do.

But also if you think about it, you start where you’re at. If you have an extra bedroom in your apartment, maybe that’s where you start. And then you get to a point where maybe you do get a storage unit and it makes sense, and you’re making the money, you’re making more money. So it makes sense to maybe have a storage unit. So then that’s your business right there, but you can always start where you’re at. We started with just putting stuff in our [00:19:00] closets. We had extra, like an extra closet, and then we got a shed in the backyard and then it started where we were. 

Rob: And one thing that you did say that I want to touch on, was consistency guys. We’re the same way we build relationships with people with the flea market. It’s one of those things that when you’re consistently in front of people and consistently running this business, that’s when stuff pays off. Meredith just said, when people start to know you and start to see you week after week, it’s hard not to build a communication or relationship with somebody that you’re dealing with weekend and week to week out. And I know you, so that’s really, really cool to build relationships and create that consistency in your business. So that’s awesome. 

Any other key points or any other key things you want to touch on about pallet flipping or anything like that? Before we jump off?

Meredith: I would say, there will be wins, big wins, and there will be losses when it comes to, flipping pallets.

Don’t let the losses steer you away from picking it back up going in there, getting another pallet and trying it again. I would [00:20:00] say, educating yourself on the matter and knowing that, knowing what you’re doing when you’re going into it, but I will say start, that’s the first thing. Just start, even if you’re nervous, even if you’re scared, just start.

And I promise you once you start, whether than this is anything, not just pallet flipping once you just start, you’ll get it. You’ll consistent, you will start and be consistent. It’ll come to you just don’t quit. 

Rob: I love it. Two great points out of that is the starting, no matter what gets started. The other one was, don’t let any failures or any losses get you down. I was going with that… It’s the growth you guys grow in those losses, there’s losses in every business. There’s, things that you don’t like about every business, but grow from those, learn those mistakes. Like Meredith is saying, I’m sure buying a pallet, you know, you might get something you’re expecting a bigger return on it than you got…

But you’re able to liquidate it and you just learn, you learn for next time around. Okay. Well, I can’t do the,I’m not going to make as much [00:21:00] money on this or, you know, I, got a bad pallet, I tried a low grade pallet and it didn’t work out for me. You guys got to experiment, you have to do it. And you have to learn from those losses.

So, great, great points for sure. Meredith and you also, wanted to end with this too. You put together a list of vendors or pallets. A warehouse vendors list? 

Meredith: Yes. Liquidation pallets 

Melissa: Awesome! We’ll link to that. And then also, if you do have the Reseller Pro Power Pack, she has a list of 170 in there.

But for everybody here, that’s watching, we do have the 20. 

Rob: Awesome! to get you started and then that’s when you go to the next level. So, that’s awesome. Meredith, thank you so much. You provided so much value to us today. I’ve never done this before. I’m excited about it. I’m super excited about it. So thank you for bringing the energy and getting me excited about this and all the great, great information that you actually provided for everybody who’s here watching this. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Meredith: Thank you guys for having me. Thank you for asking me to be a part of the [00:22:00] summit. This is my first time to be a part of anything, so I really appreciate it. And, I look forward to you guys getting all the information that you guys need from watching everybody on the summit.

Rob: Awesome. Sweet, have a great day. We’ll see you guys soon. Thank you. Bye guys.

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Robert Stephenson

I grew up in Central Florida and have lived here my whole life. I first got into buying and selling items when I was 16 years old, and have been hooked ever since. It has mostly been a hobby that makes some extra cash, but sometimes it serves as my main income as well. I don't plan on stopping any time soon. I find too many fun toys for my family (or myself), and just love the whole process.

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