Plastic Pallets Along I-80

I-80 from end to end

It is the northern transcontinental route, crossing the Sierra, the Rockies and the Great Plains. It runs from San Francisco, California to northern New Jersey, by way of Sacramento, Reno, Salt Lake City, Omaha, Des Moines, Chicago and Cleveland.

States that list I-80 among their main Interstates: California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and Wyoming. A pallet that rides I-80 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 155,780 warehousing jobs, led by Chicago (59,586) and Northern New Jersey (39,367). That is 8.2 percent of the US trade on one road.

What the table means

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin is the largest warehousing metro on I-80 in this table, with 59,586 jobs, 38.3 percent of the route total. Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the largest trade listed along it, with 51,192 jobs (partial) in the route's metros. Together the metros hold 8.2 percent of US private warehousing jobs, about one in every 12.

California, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa list I-80 among their main Interstates, so the route's metros sit inside those states' wider warehousing trade.

Trades that ship along it

In Interstate 80, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing employs 51,192 (a partial count). The questions are what the pallet is made of, how it is cleaned, and what documents travel with it. 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 260 route warehouse sites (jobs ÷ 600, rounded) in I-80 sent back 1,200 empty pallets in a week, that would be 312,000 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

Dynamic load

The weight a pallet holds while it is moved by a forklift, pallet jack or conveyor. It is lower than static because motion adds shock.

RFID tag

A small radio tag moulded into or attached to a pallet so readers can track it through a plant or a loop.

Pallet jack

A hand or powered truck with two forks, used to move a pallet short distances.

Slip sheet

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

Recycled content

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

ZIP Code Business Patterns

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

Polypropylene

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

Stretch wrap

Elastic film wound around a loaded pallet to hold the load together.

Cross-docking

Moving freight from an inbound truck to an outbound one with little or no storage between.

Interstate corridor

A freight route named for its highway, together with the metros along it.

ISPM 15

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

TEU

Twenty-foot equivalent unit, the standard way ports count containers. A 40 ft container is two TEUs.