Plastic Pallets Along I-65

I-65 from end to end

It joins the Gulf to the Chicago area through the middle of the country, past several automotive assembly plants. It runs from Mobile, Alabama to Gary, Indiana, by way of Montgomery, Birmingham, Nashville, Louisville and Indianapolis.

States that list I-65 among their main Interstates: Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. A pallet that rides I-65 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 134,734 warehousing jobs, led by Chicago (59,586) and Indianapolis (41,067). That is 7.1 percent of the US trade on one road.

What the table means

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin is the largest warehousing metro on I-65 in this table, with 59,586 jobs, 44.2 percent of the route total. Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the largest trade listed along it, with 38,390 jobs (partial) in the route's metros. Together the metros hold 7.1 percent of US private warehousing jobs, about one in every 14.

Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee list I-65 among their main Interstates, so the route's metros sit inside those states' wider warehousing trade.

Trades that ship along it

In Interstate 65, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing employs 38,390 (a partial count). Pharma plants care about clean surfaces and a paper trail. A used 48 x 40 model one maker lists is described as pharma and food safe but not approved for direct food contact, which is the kind of careful wording to expect. It tends to lean on clean, washable stackable or nestable with a paperwork trail, usually in 48 x 40 in, and to ask about resin and colourant documents and the maker's cleaning guidance.

The empty return, mile by mile

An illustration, not a forecast: if each of 225 route warehouse sites (jobs ÷ 600, rounded) in I-65 sent back 1,200 empty pallets in a week, that would be 270,000 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

ISPM 15

An international standard on treating and marking wood packaging material. Plastic is outside it.

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.

Edge rack

A rack arrangement where the pallet rests on the edges of the beams. It is the common test case for a racking rating.

Pallet pooling

A rental model where a company owns the pallets and moves them between customers, instead of each customer buying its own.

Commodity class

A fire-protection category for stored goods and their pallets, used to design sprinkler systems.

Euro pallet

A 1200 by 800 millimetre pallet, about 48 by 31.5 inches, widely used in Europe.

Drayage

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

Beam span

The open gap between two rack beams. The longer the span, the lower the load the pallet can carry across it.

Last mile

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

Gross cubic feet

The total volume of a refrigerated warehouse. Usable space is smaller once aisles and equipment are subtracted.

Recycled content

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

Intermodal

Freight that changes between truck, rail and ship in the same container.