Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Delaware

Delaware, by road

Delaware is a place where it sits on the I-95 spine between Philadelphia and Baltimore, with a river port at Wilmington. Pallets here follow I-95 and I-295, and the distance they travel empty is the cost a nestable cuts.

The counties with the most warehousing jobs are Sussex (80), which is 0.6 percent of the state's 12,495. It shares a land border with Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Warehousing in numbers

Refrigerated space matters because a freezer is hard on plastic; the cold guide says what to ask for. Delaware held 25 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse capacity on October 1, 2025.

Reading the numbers

• Sussex County has 80 warehousing jobs, 0.6 percent of Delaware's 12,495, the most in the state.
• Meat and poultry processing employs 9,741 people in Delaware, 0.78 for every warehousing job.
• Warehousing and storage employs 12,495 people in Delaware, 1.00 for every warehousing job.
• Food manufacturing employs 11,157 people in Delaware, 0.89 for every warehousing job.
• Delaware holds 0.66 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 152, spread over 134 establishments averaging 93 jobs each.
• Maryland has 29,966 warehousing jobs, 2.40 times the 12,495 in Delaware.
• Pennsylvania has 123,481 warehousing jobs, 9.88 times the 12,495 in Delaware.
• New Jersey has 76,152 warehousing jobs, 6.09 times the 12,495 in Delaware.

Who ships pallets here

In Delaware, meat and poultry processing employs 9,741. Processing floors are wet, so open decks that drain and shed water matter, and so does a maker's cleaning guidance. It tends to lean on a washable nestable or stackable that drains, usually in 48 x 40 in, and to ask about whether the deck drains and how the maker says to clean it.

Meat and poultry processing is the trade where Delaware is most concentrated, at 5.6 times the national share of employment. A buyer in that trade will tend to ask the questions in the last column first.

The empty return

An illustration, not a forecast: if each of 134 warehouse establishments in Delaware sent back 800 empty pallets in a week, that would be 107,200 pallets. The table counts the 53 ft trailers that takes at three makers' published nestable figures, beside the 540 per trailer of a rackable.

Next door

Words on this page

Reefer

A refrigerated trailer or container.

Gross cubic feet

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

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.

Beam span

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

Racking load

The weight a pallet holds when it rests on two rack beams with an open gap between them. It is usually the lowest rating and only exists for pallets built for racks.

Slip sheet

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

Commodity class

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

Dock door

The opening where a trailer backs to a building so pallets can be loaded and unloaded.

QCEW

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