Buying Manifested Pallets

If you are a new wholesale liquidation buyer you should make sure the pallet or truckload you are about to buy comes with a full manifest. A manifest is simply a written inventory showing you, the buyer, what you are buying. If a pallet or truckload is manifested you will  have a clear indication of its contents before you ship it across the country to your location.

Some manifests will offer:

Item descriptions: Usually abbreviated, but most of the time you can discern what the actual item is.

Quantity: Before or after the description you should find an actual item count

Vendor Cost: This is the items original wholesale cost

Extended Cost: Simply the vendor cost multiplied by the quantity. For example: If you have 3 widgets and the vendor cost was $1.45 the extended cost would be $4.35

Original Retail: This is the cost of a particular item when it was being sold to the public. There are few liquidation manifests that list retail pricing.

A manifest can show you what you are buying, but you still should proceed with your pallet or truckload purchase with caution as I have been shorted on a few of my own manifested liquidation purchases.

If a liquidation pallet or truckload does not come with a manifest then the load is considered “Blind”. The only information you might have about a blind load is simply a category description. For example, many general merchandise pallets offered by liquidators are un-manifested or blind. You are offered a general or estimate of piece count and then a total cost.

I have noticed hundreds of wholesale merchandise liquidators and Brokers who will advertise a pallet offering an approximate item count and an approximate total wholesale or retail cost.

For example an advertisement might read:

Customer Returned Apparel
Pallet height 4-5 feet
Approximate item count 350 – 500 items
Your cost $750

With the above example, you the liquidation buyer, will have a tough time upon purchase knowing what your exact cost will be for each item. I would hope from this short rant you will come to the conclusion that buying manifested pallets is the preferred way to purchase liquidation merchandise. Some of the largest big box retailers offer customer returned and shelf pull pallets of liquidation merchandise. Sears, Walmart.com, Best Buy, Overstock.com, QVC, HSN, Macys and several other retailers offer manifested pallets and truckloads