EUPAL-Dolly

Turning a 1200 × 800 mm plastic Euro pallet into a rolling platform dolly for an apartment move.

The dolly does one job: carry a block of 60 × 40 cm Euroboxes out of the flat, into the lift, down to street level, and onto a truck at the loading bay. It is a load carrier, not a piece of furniture — no handle, no sides, no folding. Casters bolted to a pallet we already own.

Project opened 2026-07-26. Location: Jerusalem. Status: design stage — nothing bought yet.

The answer, up front

Question	Answer
How many casters?	6 — four corners + the two mid-points of the long (1200 mm) edges
How many locking?	4 (the corners), total-lock type — wheel brake and swivel lock
What diameter?	125 mm, grey/amber polyurethane tread on a nylon core, ball bearing
Load rating	≥ 100 kg each, prefer 150 kg (design gross load ≈ 280 kg)
How to mount?	Not directly to the feet. Two 18 mm plywood runners under each row of feet; casters through-bolted to the plywood — see docs/mounting.md
Is a better pallet available?	Yes. A three-skid pallet converts far more easily than the nine-foot one on hand — ₪150 used to ₪350 new, locally. One phone call decides it: docs/pallet-selection.md

Full parts list with quantities and prices: docs/bom.md.

Before buying anything, do the measurements in docs/route-survey.md. A 1200 × 800 dolly does not fit through an 800 mm door or an 800 mm lift entrance, and that is a build-or-don't-build question, not a detail.

The pallet, as measured

Open-deck (mesh) nine-foot plastic pallet, feet in a 3 × 3 grid. Measurements are from the photographs in images/, taken 2026-07-26.

Feature	Measured
Deck	1200 × 800 mm, open mesh (~25 mm square openings throughout)
Feet	9, in a 3 × 3 grid — 4 corners, 4 edge mid-points, 1 centre
Foot height	100 mm
Foot ground face	120 × 70 mm, waisted ("double hump")
Openings per foot	2 × (35 × 15 mm), opening into a hollow cavity
Foot form	Tapered — wider at the deck, narrower at the ground (nestable type)
Overall pallet height	not yet measured — assumed ~145 mm (100 mm feet + ~45 mm deck)
Weight	not yet measured — assume 12–16 kg for this class

The open mesh deck is a gift: bolts can be passed down through it almost anywhere, so the build needs no holes drilled in the pallet itself.

The hollow, waisted, 70 mm-wide feet are the problem. A standard 125 mm caster has a 100 × 85 mm top plate with bolts at 80 × 60 mm centres — wider than the foot, with the bolt line falling in thin wall or empty space. Bolting casters straight onto the feet is not an option; the plywood runner exists to solve exactly this.

Most likely a Plasgad DI208 / PG1208 "Open Deck" or a near-identical competitor — Israeli-made, 1200 × 800 × 135–145 mm, nestable, PP/HDPE. Worth knowing because the same pallet is sold in an "Open Deck 3 Skids" version, which is the easy donor upgrade. See docs/pallet-selection.md.

Why these numbers

Payload. 1200 × 800 mm is exactly four 600 × 400 Euroboxes per layer. Two layers = 8 boxes. Packed for a move, a 600 × 400 × 320 box runs 15–25 kg (more if it is books), so the design payload is 250 kg — comfortably above a realistic ~175 kg.

Gross. 250 kg payload + ~32 kg dolly (pallet ~14 + plywood ~6 + casters ~8 + fasteners) ≈ 280 kg rolling.

Per caster. Even sharing is 47 kg, but a six-wheel platform on a real floor loads four wheels at a time — call it 70 kg, ×1.5 for shock over thresholds ≈ 105 kg. Hence ≥ 100 kg per caster, and 150 kg for margin. Six 150 kg casters = 900 kg nameplate, ~3× the design load.

Diameter. 125 mm is the smallest wheel that reliably crosses lift-door gaps and threshold strips (rule of thumb: wheel diameter ≥ 3× the obstacle). It adds ~155 mm of height, putting the deck at ~318 mm and the top of a two-layer stack at ~0.96 m. 160 mm wheels roll better still but add another ~45 mm of height and centre-of-gravity; take them only if the route to the truck crosses broken paving or a kerb.

Brakes. Four braked corners resist rotation as well as rolling, which two do not. The dolly has to stand still in a lift and on a tail-lift. Total-lock casters (wheel + swivel locked together) are the right type; plain wheel brakes are an acceptable substitute, two diagonal corners is the budget floor.

Documents

File	Contents
docs/pallet-selection.md	The four plastic-pallet base types, why racking load is the rating that matters, Israeli suppliers and prices
docs/bom.md	Bill of materials, quantities, specs, prices, suppliers to call
docs/mounting.md	The mounting design, alternatives considered, step-by-step build, load test
docs/route-survey.md	Measurements to take before buying, clearances, risks, failure modes
images/	Measured photographs of the pallet

Open questions

Answer these before ordering — several change the parts list. The first two are the ones that actually gate the project.

1. Lift car and door clear widths, and the flat's door clear width. The go/no-go number. See docs/route-survey.md.
2. Donor pallet: keep this one or buy a three-skid? One call to Cortico about their ₪149.90 used heavy 120 × 80 answers it — see docs/pallet-selection.md. This decides half the BOM.
3. Are the foot cavities open through to the deck top? Shine a torch down at a foot from above. Picks between mounting method (i) and (ii) in docs/mounting.md. Only matters if keeping this pallet.
4. Corner foot geometry — the photographs show the corner feet as larger rounded scoops, not the 120 × 70 mm waisted form measured on a mid-edge foot. Measure a corner foot's ground face. Only matters if keeping this pallet.
5. Overall pallet height (deck top to foot bottom). Expect 135 or 145 mm if this is the Plasgad DI208 class; confirm with a tape.
6. Manufacturer / model moulded into the deck, and its racking load rating — the rating that governs a dolly conversion, and the one nestable pallets tend not to publish. (The handwritten "6529 POPPLEBERRY" is a previous owner's marking, not a model number.)
7. How many pallets? One dolly, or a second so one can be loading while the other travels?

Alternatives worth ruling out first

Rent a manual pallet jack. If the whole route is step-free, hard-floored and never enters a lift, a pallet jack (roughly ₪100–200/day locally) moves a plain pallet with no build at all. Mutually exclusive with this project: once casters are fitted the fork tunnels sit ~155 mm off the ground and no pallet jack can get under it. The dolly wins as soon as a residential lift is involved, because a pallet jack cannot use one.

Buy a pallet dolly instead of building one. Palettenfahrgestell / pallet chassis in exactly 1200 × 800 is a standard industrial product — a steel angle frame with four corner supports that a pallet drops onto, typically ~1000 kg rated, commonly 2 fixed + 2 braked swivel wheels. Examples: Hoffmann Group 919908, fetra 22881, Kraus 1320006. All European; the problem is shipping a bulky steel frame to Israel, and the 2-fixed-wheel layout is worse than all-swivel for getting into a lift. Worth a check for an Israeli equivalent before building — ask the caster suppliers in docs/bom.md, who sell into the same market.