thus, the courier does not wait pallet unloading for recovering its own empty pallets as the same number of standardized pallets are provided immediately by the customer. Direct interchanges allow to reduce waiting times at the customer location: the courier only has to verify empty pallet features (based on the standard specifications) before loading empty pallets provided by the downstream customer. If provided pallets do not comply to standard specifications, the customer has to pay the total cost for these pallets to the courier as empty pallets are not delivered back.