Gaylord Is The Word You Didn’t Think You Needed To Know

Do you know what a "gaylord" is? I had no idea until this weekend.

I had one of those genuine, "are you f'n with me?" conversations this weekend. I was visiting with a man who works at a large haunted house. He told us of all the neat stuff they do and the whole time I was messing with him. Then he told me a story that I had to research right there on the spot and *spoiler alert* he was telling the truth.

He told us that as part of their haunt they had built a barn for charity. He said that they lined the entire inside of the barn with shelves so that people could come by and pick out a pumpkin. He then told us it was really successful because his boss was able to get a free "gaylord of pumpkins".  My partner who specializes in numbers, measurements and whatnot immediately leaned in and said, "what did you say?" The man replied, "we got a gaylord of pumpkins". At this point, it was a race to Google.

Now, let me say straight up that "gaylord" is obviously not a common term, it in fact keeps coming up as misspelled as I type this, but yes, a "gaylord" is a loose unit of measurement.  A "gaylord" is for the most part a palllet-sized box. Most of these boxes are about 48" by 40" by 36" tall, but apparently, the term is not incorrect for any pallet-sized box.

What I was not able to find out is if this was a regionally used term or whether this man just took it upon himself to use the word "gaylord".  Also, for the record, a gaylord holds about 40 pumpkins (but yeah, you can put whatever you want in them).