Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Hawaii

Hawaii, by road

Start with the map. Everything arrives by ship or air, so an empty stack that nests short saves deck space on every return sailing. Without an Interstate, haul lengths are set by sea and air schedules, and the longer the haul, the more an empty stack's height matters.

The state reports 1,298 warehousing jobs, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics withholds county detail here, so there is no county split. It has no land border with another state.

Warehousing in numbers

Hawaii reports no refrigerated warehouse capacity separately in the USDA table we used, so the cold question depends on the individual customer.

Reading the numbers

• Grocery and related product wholesale employs 5,408 people in Hawaii, 4.17 for every warehousing job.
• Food manufacturing employs 6,032 people in Hawaii, 4.65 for every warehousing job.
• Hawaii holds 0.07 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 1429, spread over 57 establishments averaging 23 jobs each.

Who ships pallets here

In Hawaii, grocery and related product wholesale employs 5,408. Wholesalers handle mixed cases and rewrap often, so they ask about deck type first and whether the pallet nests when it goes back. It tends to lean on nestable and stackable in the common footprint, usually in 48 x 40 in, and to ask about static load for mixed stacks and whether the deck is open or closed.

Grocery and related product wholesale is the trade where Hawaii is most concentrated, at 1.7 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 57 warehouse establishments in Hawaii sent back 1,200 empty pallets in a week, that would be 68,400 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

Hawaii has no neighbouring state by land, so there is no table of borders; the pages for the states and corridors show the nearest mainland routes.

Words on this page

Reefer

A refrigerated trailer or container.

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.

Nest ratio

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

Dunnage

Loose material used to support or secure cargo inside a trailer or container.

Closed deck

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

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.

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.

3PL

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