Nestable and Stackable Pallets: Washington

Washington, by road

Washington is a place where seattle and Tacoma share a port alliance, and I-90 and I-82 carry freight over the Cascades to the farms of the interior. Pallets here follow I-5, I-90 and I-82, and the distance they travel empty is the cost a nestable cuts.

The counties with the most warehousing jobs are Pierce (10,323), King (9,341) and Spokane (5,387), which is 68.3 percent of the state's 36,691. It shares a land border with Idaho and Oregon.

Warehousing in numbers

Refrigerated space matters because a freezer is hard on plastic; the cold guide says what to ask for. Washington held 301 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse capacity on October 1, 2025.

Reading the numbers

• Pierce County has 10,323 warehousing jobs, 28.1 percent of Washington's 36,691, the most in the state.
• King County has 9,341 warehousing jobs, 25.5 percent of Washington's 36,691, 982 fewer than Pierce County.
• Spokane County has 5,387 warehousing jobs, 14.7 percent of Washington's 36,691, 4,936 fewer than Pierce County.
• Fruit and vegetable preserving employs 10,988 people in Washington, 0.30 for every warehousing job.
• Grocery and related product wholesale employs 23,876 people in Washington, 0.65 for every warehousing job.
• Washington holds 1.93 percent of US warehousing jobs, about one in every 52, spread over 473 establishments averaging 78 jobs each.
• Seattle-Tacoma accounts for 23,062 warehousing jobs, 62.9 percent of Washington's.
• Yakima accounts for 1,309 warehousing jobs, 3.6 percent of Washington's.
• Idaho has 2,445 warehousing jobs, 0.07 times the 36,691 in Washington.
• Oregon has 16,750 warehousing jobs, 0.46 times the 36,691 in Washington.

Who ships pallets here

In Washington, fruit and vegetable preserving employs 10,988. Processors ask for nestables first because the return leg is empty, then check the static load for the filled stack. It tends to lean on nestable, because bins and pallets return to the grower empty, usually in 48 x 40 in, with 48 x 48 where bins are square, and to ask about the static load for the heaviest filled stack.

Fruit and vegetable preserving is the trade where Washington is most concentrated, at 2.8 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 473 warehouse establishments in Washington sent back 800 empty pallets in a week, that would be 378,400 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

Metros in Washington with their own page: Seattle-Tacoma and Yakima.

Words on this page

Cube utilisation

How well loaded freight fills the volume of a trailer or container. Taller or wider-than-floor pallets waste cube.

Nest increment

The extra height each additional empty pallet adds to a nested stack, measured in inches. A small increment means a short stack.

Interstate corridor

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

Cross-docking

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

QCEW

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

Nest ratio

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

Polypropylene

Another common pallet resin, lighter and stiffer than some others, with its own behaviour in the cold.

Reefer

A refrigerated trailer or container.

Dunnage

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