Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Missouri

Missouri, by road

It has two big freight cities, Kansas City and St. Louis, joined by I-70 across the middle. For a plastic pallet buyer in Missouri, the geography sets the route and the route sets the empty return: I-70, I-44, I-55 and I-35 carry most of what leaves, and every empty pallet that comes back has to ride the same road.

The state reports 26,726 warehousing jobs, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics withholds county detail here, so there is no county split. It shares a land border with Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

Warehousing in numbers

Refrigerated space matters because a freezer is hard on plastic; the cold guide says what to ask for. Missouri held 104 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse capacity on October 1, 2025.

Reading the numbers

• Motor vehicle manufacturing employs 13,274 people in Missouri, 0.50 for every warehousing job.
• Dairy product manufacturing employs 6,107 people in Missouri, 0.23 for every warehousing job.
• Meat and poultry processing employs 16,925 people in Missouri, 0.63 for every warehousing job.
• Fruit and vegetable preserving employs 4,877 people in Missouri, 0.18 for every warehousing job.
• Chemical manufacturing employs 22,970 people in Missouri, 0.86 for every warehousing job.
• Missouri holds 1.41 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 71, spread over 523 establishments averaging 51 jobs each.
• Kansas City accounts for 20,676 warehousing jobs, 77.4 percent of Missouri's.
• St. Louis accounts for 16,879 warehousing jobs, 63.2 percent of Missouri's.
• Iowa has 19,824 warehousing jobs, 0.74 times the 26,726 in Missouri.
• Illinois has 80,071 warehousing jobs, 3.00 times the 26,726 in Missouri.
• Kentucky has 38,281 warehousing jobs, 1.43 times the 26,726 in Missouri.
• Tennessee has 53,427 warehousing jobs, 2.00 times the 26,726 in Missouri.

Who ships pallets here

In Missouri, motor vehicle manufacturing employs 13,274. Assembly plants run closed loops with fixed footprints, and 48 x 45 in matches heavy-duty auto parts bulk containers. It tends to lean on heavy-duty stackable pallets in a closed loop, usually in 48 x 45 in, and to ask about the dynamic load for the heaviest part and the pallet's fit with the bulk container.

Motor vehicle manufacturing is the trade where Missouri is most concentrated, at 2.5 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 523 warehouse establishments in Missouri sent back 500 empty pallets in a week, that would be 261,500 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 Missouri with their own page: Kansas City and St. Louis.

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.

Interstate corridor

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

Footprint

The length and width of a pallet deck. It is chosen to fit the container, the drum, the bag or the receiving rack.

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.

Cross-docking

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

Pallet pooling

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

Drayage

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

4-way entry

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

Reefer

A refrigerated trailer or container.