"During the design of pallets, it is a common practice to assume that the load is continuously distributed on the top of the pallet. However, in reality packages on the top of the pallet experience different levels of bridging depending on their physical characteristics. This bridging phenomena significantly increases the load carrying capacity of the pallet and it is unaccounted for in current design methodologies leading to overdesign and reduced sustainability. The presentation will cover the results of the latest research on load bridging within the unit load focusing on how the size of corrugated boxes, stiffness of corrugated board and number of layers in a unit load influences the load carrying capacity of the pallets with different stiffness characteristics. 
Takeaways: - Increasing the size of corrugated boxes significantly increases load bridging. 
- Increasing the stiffness of corrugated board significantly increases load bridging. 
- Using more layers in a unit load increases load bridging. 
- The load bridging phenomena has different effect on pallets with different stiffness characteristics.
- Efficient and sustainable pallet design methodology needs to incorporate the effect of packaging and unit load stabilizers."