Plastic Pallets Along I-35

I-35 from end to end

It is the Mexican trade highway, and it runs through the middle of the country to the Twin Cities. It runs from Laredo, Texas to Duluth, Minnesota, by way of San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Des Moines and Minneapolis.

States that list I-35 among their main Interstates: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. A pallet that rides I-35 loaded rides it back empty, and the length of that haul is what a nestable's short stack pays for.

Metros on the route

Together the route's metros hold 147,019 warehousing jobs, led by Dallas (82,593) and Kansas City (20,676). That is 7.7 percent of the US trade on one road.

What the table means

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington is the largest warehousing metro on I-35 in this table, with 82,593 jobs, 56.2 percent of the route total. Warehousing and storage is the largest trade listed along it, with 147,019 jobs (partial) in the route's metros. Together the metros hold 7.7 percent of US private warehousing jobs, about one in every 13.

Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Missouri list I-35 among their main Interstates, so the route's metros sit inside those states' wider warehousing trade.

Trades that ship along it

In Interstate 35, warehousing and storage employs 147,019 (a partial count). Most of the demand is for general pallets in the common footprint, with the choice split between rack service and block stacking. It tends to lean on rackable where the pallet lives on beams, stackable for block stacking, nestable for the empties that go back, usually in 48 x 40 in, and to ask about the racking load, and the beam span it was rated on.

The empty return, mile by mile

An illustration, not a forecast: if each of 245 route warehouse sites (jobs ÷ 600, rounded) in I-35 sent back 1,200 empty pallets in a week, that would be 294,000 pallets. The table counts the 53 ft trailers that takes at three makers' published nestable figures, beside the 540 per trailer of a rackable.

Words on this page

QCEW

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

Closed deck

A solid deck that keeps small items and torn bags from falling through and wipes clean on top.

Metropolitan area

A group of counties around an urban core, as the Census Bureau delineates it. Metro pages here follow those lines.

Creep

Slow, permanent bending of plastic under a steady load. A pallet can hold a load for an hour and bow under it after a month.

Nest increment

The extra height each additional empty pallet adds to a nested stack, measured in inches. A small increment means a short stack.

Slip sheet

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

Polypropylene

Another common pallet resin, lighter and stiffer than some others, with its own behaviour in the cold.

Last mile

The final leg of a delivery, from a local depot to the customer.

Location quotient

A place's share of employment in a trade divided by the national share. Above 1 means the trade is more concentrated there than average.

2-way entry

A pallet that can be lifted from only two opposite sides.

Recycled content

The share of a pallet moulded from reground plastic. Makers print it as a range, often by colour.

One-way pallet

A light pallet built to carry cargo to a destination and stay there, often used in export.