Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Maine

Maine, by road

Maine is a place where i-95 is the only Interstate spine, ending at a Canadian border crossing, so loads rarely leave the corridor. 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 Cumberland (1,731), Kennebec (419) and York (391), which is 67.3 percent of the state's 3,774. It shares a land border with New Hampshire.

Warehousing in numbers

Refrigerated space matters because a freezer is hard on plastic; the cold guide says what to ask for. Maine held 8 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse capacity on October 1, 2025.

Reading the numbers

• Cumberland County has 1,731 warehousing jobs, 45.9 percent of Maine's 3,774, the most in the state.
• Kennebec County has 419 warehousing jobs, 11.1 percent of Maine's 3,774, 1,312 fewer than Cumberland County.
• York County has 391 warehousing jobs, 10.4 percent of Maine's 3,774, 1,340 fewer than Cumberland County.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing employs 2,783 people in Maine, 0.74 for every warehousing job.
• Food manufacturing employs 5,673 people in Maine, 1.50 for every warehousing job.
• Maine holds 0.2 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 500, spread over 72 establishments averaging 52 jobs each.
• New Hampshire has 3,283 warehousing jobs, 0.87 times the 3,774 in Maine.

Who ships pallets here

In Maine, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing employs 2,783. 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.

Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the trade where Maine is most concentrated, at 1.9 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 72 warehouse establishments in Maine sent back 800 empty pallets in a week, that would be 57,600 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

Beam span

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

Cruciform base

A base shaped like a plus sign under the pallet, which gives a stable footprint and slides well on conveyors.

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.

Cross-docking

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

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.

3PL

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

Recycled content

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

Pallet pooling

A rental model where a company owns the pallets and moves them between customers, instead of each customer buying its own.

Pallet jack

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