Mean Pallet

A term used in logistics to describe the centre of gravity of all pallets carrying (or not) carrying goods worldwide. Due to the absence of a GPS tracker on most pallets, this is a quantity (expressed as a latitude and longitude) that can only be estimated.

Setting 0.N and 0.E as a baseline, the mean pallet is estimated to be somewhere over the Caspian Sea (due to a high level of manufacturing in the far east.) It is also estimated to be drifting in a east-south-easterly direction at a rate of 0.24 kilometres per day although the movement of the largets container ships can produce significant noise in this trend.

(From a postdoctorate textbook in applied logistics):-

'The Mean Pallet was a phrase first coined in the 19th Century by a Victorian industrialist who, looking out of his factory window, proclaimed 'I wonder where ye average of all ye world pallets be'

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