Where plastic pallets ship across the US

Three ways in

Where the numbers come from

Job counts are private employment in warehousing and storage and in the trades that use pallets, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages for 2025. ZIP-level establishment counts come from the Census Bureau's ZIP Code Business Patterns for 2023, and refrigerated space from USDA NASS for October 1, 2025.

Nothing on these pages says we ship from a depot in any place; the pages describe where pallets are used and what each trade asks of them. A request from any of them goes through the same form.

Trailers for your volume

Suppose 3,150 empty pallets come back in a month. At the maker figures on file that is 3 trailers of Rehrig Pacific heavy-duty nestables (1,200 each), 2 of PHS Plastic's EXP 100 (2,340 each) or 6 of a rackable (540 each). The table runs the same sum for 6 volumes, from 3,150 to 16,540.

How to use the place pages

Start with the state if you are comparing regions, the metro if you are planning a route, and the corridor if the pallets travel a long way on one road. Every page shows the same measures, warehousing jobs and establishments, so you can read across the set.

Then use the trade tables. Each lists the industries that employ people in that place and the footprint and style each usually asks for. They are our reading of what the trade needs, labelled as such, and the questions in them are the ones worth putting to a maker.

How to read the place pages

Each state, metro and corridor page counts warehousing employers and jobs from public series, to show where pallet movement is thick. They describe the local trade, not a promise of local stock or service, and the pallet figures on them are the same maker figures used everywhere else on the site.

Using the place pages with the calculator

After finding your state or metro, take the pallets-per-trailer figure for your model to the calculator to count trailers. The place page tells you about the local warehouse trade; the calculator tells you about your own load, and the two answer different questions.

Words on this page

Dunnage

Loose material used to support or secure cargo inside a trailer or container.

Drayage

The short haul of a container between a port or rail ramp and a warehouse.

Slip sheet

A thin sheet of plastic or fibreboard used under a load in place of a pallet, handled by a push-pull attachment.

4-way entry

A pallet that forks or a pallet jack can enter from all four sides.

3PL

A third-party logistics company that stores and ships goods for other businesses.

Establishment

A single physical location where a business operates, such as one warehouse. A company with ten warehouses has ten establishments.

QCEW

The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, a Bureau of Labor Statistics count of jobs and establishments taken from unemployment insurance records.

ZIP Code Business Patterns

A Census Bureau series that counts establishments by ZIP code and industry.