We made pallets interesting

on the internet.

Pallets don’t trend. The people behind them can.

Niagara Pallet has been a family business for over 30 years—founded by Dirk Vrugteveen, now run by his sons Fred and Mike out of Smithville, Ontario. They retrieve, recycle, repair, and build pallets for roughly 700 customers across the Niagara Peninsula, the Greater Toronto Area, and parts of Quebec. About 100 people work there. The culture is strong enough that they went through EOS implementation, codified their values, and came out the other side with phrases like “It’s Your Skid” and “Hold the Nail” that their team actually uses.

What they didn’t have was any consistent way to tell that story externally. Social media existed—LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram—but without strategy, without design templates, without an editorial calendar, and without anyone whose job it was to think about what to post and why. The few times someone made an effort, engagement spiked. During COVID, a “Sign Wars” series with neighboring businesses in Smithville went semi-viral locally. But those were moments, not a program.

Niagara Pallet came to us ready to invest. Not in ads. In owned channels—the platforms they control, the audiences they build, the content that compounds over time.

niagara pallet 

niagara pallet 

Client/Industry

ManufacturingNiagara Pallet

Tactics

Brand StrategyContent MarketingCreativeSocial Media

The audit that changes the plan.

We started where we always start with social: understanding what exists before proposing what should. Our analytics manager conducted a full historical content audit, a competitive analysis across direct competitors and indirect players, and a platform-by-platform assessment of where Niagara Pallet’s audiences actually live.

The competitive landscape was revealing. Most pallet companies either had no social presence at all or posted sporadically with generic graphics. The one exception was iGPS, posting daily on LinkedIn to a 7,000-person following with polished, informative content about supply chain and warehouse safety. That set a ceiling for what B2B pallet content could look like—and confirmed that LinkedIn was the primary platform for this industry.

From the audit, we built a campaign brief that mapped Niagara Pallet’s business objectives (facility expansion, customer growth in the GTA, specialty product development) to social media objectives that could actually move those needles. Not vanity metrics—real targets: four new followers per week, 3-5% engagement rate, increased website traffic from organic social, and LinkedIn as the engine for lead generation.

The brief also established something the client had never formalized: a brand positioning statement, a promise, points of differentiation, key messaging hierarchy, and tone guidelines. Social strategy was the project. Brand strategy was the prerequisite.

Eight themes that earn their place.

Content pillars are easy to propose and hard to sustain. Everyone’s seen the deck with “Behind the Scenes” and “Industry Insights” and “Employee Spotlights” as themes—categories so broad they don’t actually tell you what to create on a Tuesday afternoon when you’re staring at an empty calendar slot.

We proposed eight themes, each with sample copy, reference imagery or rough designs, a rationale tied to specific campaign objectives, and an execution plan for sourcing the input needed to create the assets. The themes weren’t just content categories—they were strategic instruments. Some existed to build awareness (sustainability storytelling tied to their Veritree partnership and zero-waste recycling process). Some existed to convert (product-focused content highlighting PALLETAI quality inspection, EPAL certification, custom sizing). Some existed to humanize (their EOS-driven core values brought to life through real team stories, the way Fred channels PalletOne CEO Howe Wallace’s leadership philosophy).

The balance mattered. Niagara Pallet’s audience includes manufacturers seeking pallet retrieval, distributors buying recycled and new pallets, and specialty packaging customers—each with different information needs and different reasons to care about the brand behind the product. The content mix had to serve all three without feeling scattered.

We built the themes into a system: Canva templates for each so anyone on their team could produce on-brand graphics without design skills. An editorial calendar in Google Sheets with cadence, platforms, and themes pre-populated. A reporting dashboard in Agency Analytics that auto-generates monthly performance summaries. And a training session where we sat with their team and planned the first month of content together—not as a handoff, but as a working session.

Then we put their brand on every highway in Ontario.

The social strategy was the flagship engagement, but Niagara Pallet’s fleet of trucks presented an opportunity we couldn’t ignore. These vehicles cover the Niagara Peninsula and GTA daily—thousands of impressions on every route. The existing wraps were functional. They could be iconic.

We developed a four-concept truck wrap campaign, each built around a different service line: pallet sales, recycling, pickup, and custom orders. The creative concept was simple and unexpected—familiar objects reimagined as if they were built entirely from pallet wood. A piggy bank sitting on a pallet. A globe on a stand. An alarm clock. A sneaker.

The imagery was generated using AI, then art-directed and refined to match the brand’s navy and orange palette. Every detail—the wood grain, the nail heads, the construction joints—had to read as both playful and credible. The result was truck-side creative that people actually notice: “Quality pallets you can bank on.” “Recycled pallets. Happy planet.” “Pallet pickup—like clockwork.” “Custom pallets to keep your business running.”

Each concept was adapted across multiple vehicle types—box trucks with french doors, pup trailers with roll-up doors—with QR codes driving to NiagaraPallet.ca for the trailer executions where dwell time is higher. The orange side panels on smaller vehicles create a visual system that’s immediately recognizable from any angle.

The truck wraps became the most talked-about element of the rebrand. They show up on highways, at customer loading docks, in facility parking lots. And when someone notices a pallet-wood piggy bank rolling down the QEW and looks up Niagara Pallet—the social channels are now ready for them.

Built to run without us.

This is a case study about building internal capability, not dependency. The deliverable set was designed so that Niagara Pallet’s team can execute the social strategy independently—using the templates, the calendar, the content themes, and the reporting dashboard we created. The monthly review cadence means they have a checkpoint for performance and planning. The Canva templates mean they don’t need a designer for every post. The editorial calendar means they don’t start each month from zero.

We offered two execution models: full internal execution with training and mentorship, or ongoing Riveter management with monthly content meetings. The client chose to build the muscle internally, with us available for guidance and asset creation when they need it. That’s exactly how it should work.

The social program and the truck wraps operate as parts of the same ecosystem. The trucks generate awareness. The social channels convert that awareness into engagement. The content strategy ensures that what people find when they look is consistent, professional, and authentically Niagara Pallet—the family-first values, the innovation investment, the sustainability commitment, the team culture that makes 100 people feel like they’re building something together.

Let’s Connect 

Let’s Connect 

Riveted?

Social media strategy isn’t about posting more. It’s about knowing what to say, who you’re saying it to, and building a system that makes consistency possible. We develop platform strategies, content themes, editorial calendars, branded templates, and reporting frameworks—then we train your team to use them or manage execution ourselves.

Let’s talk about what your audience is missing.

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