Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Illinois

Illinois, by road

Illinois is a place where chicago is the rail and highway crossroads of the middle of the country, and Will County alone fills a long list of distribution parks. Pallets here follow I-55, I-57, I-80, I-90 and I-94, and the distance they travel empty is the cost a nestable cuts.

The counties with the most warehousing jobs are Will (25,357), Cook (16,057) and DuPage (8,368), which is 62.2 percent of the state's 80,071. It shares a land border with Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana.

Warehousing in numbers

Refrigerated space matters because a freezer is hard on plastic; the cold guide says what to ask for. Illinois held 190 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse capacity on October 1, 2025.

Reading the numbers

• Will County has 25,357 warehousing jobs, 31.7 percent of Illinois's 80,071, the most in the state.
• Cook County has 16,057 warehousing jobs, 20.1 percent of Illinois's 80,071, 9,300 fewer than Will County.
• DuPage County has 8,368 warehousing jobs, 10.5 percent of Illinois's 80,071, 16,989 fewer than Will County.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing employs 24,257 people in Illinois, 0.30 for every warehousing job.
• Grocery and related product wholesale employs 48,629 people in Illinois, 0.61 for every warehousing job.
• Refrigerated warehousing employs 4,095 people in Illinois, 0.05 for every warehousing job.
• Food manufacturing employs 98,300 people in Illinois, 1.23 for every warehousing job.
• Chemical manufacturing employs 48,745 people in Illinois, 0.61 for every warehousing job.
• Illinois holds 4.21 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 24, spread over 864 establishments averaging 93 jobs each.
• Chicago accounts for 59,586 warehousing jobs, 74.4 percent of Illinois's.
• Wisconsin has 33,054 warehousing jobs, 0.41 times the 80,071 in Illinois.
• Iowa has 19,824 warehousing jobs, 0.25 times the 80,071 in Illinois.
• Missouri has 26,726 warehousing jobs, 0.33 times the 80,071 in Illinois.
• Kentucky has 38,281 warehousing jobs, 0.48 times the 80,071 in Illinois.

Who ships pallets here

In Illinois, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing employs 24,257. 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.

Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the trade where Illinois is most concentrated, at 1.8 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 864 warehouse establishments in Illinois sent back 800 empty pallets in a week, that would be 691,200 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

Metros in Illinois with their own page: Chicago.

Words on this page

QCEW

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

ZIP Code Business Patterns

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

Commodity class

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

Dunnage

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

Beam span

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

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.

Drayage

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

Static load

The weight a pallet holds while standing still on a flat floor, spread evenly across the deck. It is the highest of the three ratings.

TEU

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