What it is for
A bevelled edge lets the wheels of a pallet truck ride up onto the bottom board instead of hitting a square edge. That reduces damage to the pallet and makes it easier to move by hand.
How to use it in identification
Chamfered bottom boards are a quick check that a 1200 × 800 pallet was built to the EPAL pattern. Generic pallets in the same footprint often have square edges. A chamfer alone does not prove anything, but its absence on a pallet branded EPAL is a warning sign worth adding to the other checks in our identifier.
On repaired pallets
A licensed repair replaces a bottom board with a dimensionally accurate one, chamfer included. A square-edged bottom board on an otherwise EPAL pallet points to a repair outside the system.