Slip Sheet vs Tier Sheet vs Anti-Slip Sheet: Which One Do You Actually Need?

All three arrive on your dock as flat brown kraft sheets. That is where the similarity ends. The differences are structural, and ordering the wrong one usually means the product is unusable rather than merely suboptimal.

The slip sheet replaces the pallet

A slip sheet has a gripper lip along one or more edges. A forklift push-pull attachment clamps that lip, pulls the load onto its platen, and pushes it off at the destination. The cargo sits directly on the sheet and there is no pallet in the shipment at all.

This is the only one of the three that requires special equipment. Without a push-pull attachment at both ends of the lane, a slip sheet cannot be handled.

The tier sheet works with the pallet

A tier sheet is a solid laminated kraft sheet with no lip. It sits between product layers on a pallet, giving each layer a flat base so the stack builds square. The same sheet can also go on the pallet deck as a pad, or over the top of the stack as a cap.

The anti-slip sheet adds friction

An anti-slip sheet is also lipless and also stays on the pallet, but its job is friction rather than support. A coating on one or both faces increases the resistance between cargo layers so the stack does not shift under braking and cornering forces.

The name causes most of the confusion. An anti-slip sheet is not a slip sheet with an added coating — the two products do opposite jobs.

How to decide

• Do you want to eliminate the pallet entirely, and do both warehouses have a push-pull attachment? Slip sheet.
• Are your product layers uneven, or does the bottom layer get marked by the pallet deck? Tier sheet.
• Does the load arrive intact but with layers visibly shifted? Anti-slip sheet.
• Still unsure? Send photographs of a loaded pallet. It is usually obvious from the picture.