Two men are under arrest on suspicion of carrying out an elaborate scheme in Merced County to steal and resell wooden pallets, the Merced County Sheriff's Department announced Wednesday. The pallets, used by wholesalers and manufacturers, can be recycled and resold. Each one is worth about $8. But over three years, the men managed to move tens of thousands of them worth more than $500,000 from a company on Vassar Avenue, Merced County deputy Tom MacKenzie said. He said one man, Jose Manuel Garcia, 28, of Chowchilla, worked for Yosemite Wholesale. When the company had an abundance of them ready to be resold, detectives suspect Garcia would contact an accomplice identified as Juan Pablo Rios, 39, of Madera, who worked for a Madera recycling company that dealt in pallets. Another pallet recycling business became suspicious after receiving an unscheduled delivery and, through surveillance, tracked it back to Yosemite Wholesale, MacKenzie said. The two men were arrested Tuesday. He said detectives suspect that the two stole an average of about 2,000 pallets a month from January 2005 to earlier this month.