Plastic Pallets Along I-85

I-85 from end to end

It is the textile and auto-plant road of the Piedmont, and a cut between I-95 and I-75. It runs from Petersburg, Virginia to Montgomery, Alabama, by way of Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, Greenville-Spartanburg and Atlanta.

States that list I-85 among their main Interstates: Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. A pallet that rides I-85 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 72,718 warehousing jobs, led by Atlanta (49,050) and Charlotte (18,437). That is 3.8 percent of the US trade on one road.

What the table means

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell is the largest warehousing metro on I-85 in this table, with 49,050 jobs, 67.5 percent of the route total. Warehousing and storage is the largest trade listed along it, with 72,718 jobs (partial) in the route's metros. Together the metros hold 3.8 percent of US private warehousing jobs, about one in every 26.

Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina list I-85 among their main Interstates, so the route's metros sit inside those states' wider warehousing trade.

Trades that ship along it

In Interstate 85, warehousing and storage employs 72,718 (a partial count). Racks decide the order of questions: a pallet that sits on beams needs a racking load that matches the span, and a floor-stacked pallet needs a static load that matches the bottom of the stack. 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 121 route warehouse sites (jobs ÷ 600, rounded) in I-85 sent back 800 empty pallets in a week, that would be 96,800 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

Interstate corridor

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

4-way entry

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

Recycled content

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

Drayage

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

Polypropylene

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

3PL

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

ZIP Code Business Patterns

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

Nest increment

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

Nest ratio

How many empty pallets fit in the height of one: pallet height divided by nest increment.

Cross-docking

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

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.

UL

Underwriters Laboratories, a safety testing body that publishes fire test standards, including one for storage pallets.