Used plastic pallets in California

California in numbers

A pallet moves wherever a warehouse does, and California has 2,776 of them by the BLS establishment count, with 236,923 jobs between them and 85.3 per site on average.

• San Bernardino County: 67,058 warehousing jobs, 28% of California and 3.5% of the country, 1.3 times Riverside County.
• Riverside County: 51,310 warehousing jobs, 22% of California and 2.7% of the country, 77% of the size of San Bernardino County.
• San Joaquin County: 28,518 warehousing jobs, 12% of California and 1.5% of the country, 43% of the size of San Bernardino County.

California against the country

Read across: what California has, what the whole country has, the slice California takes, and where that puts it in the state ranking when a rank exists.

What the ratios say

Small counties in California are hidden by BLS disclosure rules, so read the 236,923 state figure as the total and the county lines as a floor.

• The three largest warehousing counties hold 62% of California's jobs in the line.
• At 85.3 jobs per establishment against 81.5 across the US, California's warehouses run larger than the national average by 5 percent.
• Food manufacturing employs 0.70 people for every warehousing job in California; across the US the ratio is 0.93.
• California holds 9.4% of the nation's food manufacturing jobs and 12% of its warehousing jobs, so food is the lighter of the two lines here.
• Pharmaceutical manufacturing adds 42,575 jobs, 12% of the US total, enough to make sanitisable pallets a real part of local demand.
• Motor vehicle assembly accounts for 27,690 jobs in California, 9.6% of the US total, with another 11,444 in parts.
• Refrigerated space works out at 1,688 cubic feet for every warehousing job, against 2,098 nationally.
• The 6 metros below account for 80% of the state's warehousing jobs, counting disclosed counties only.
• San Bernardino County's 67,058 warehousing jobs are more than the whole state total of 41 other states, the largest being New York at 55,371.
• Wyoming runs warehouses of nearly the same size, at 85.8 jobs per establishment against 85.3 here.
• For food manufacturing, Texas is the closest match at 112,088 jobs, 54,572 below California's 166,660.
• The smallest county the BLS shows for California is San Joaquin County with 28,518 jobs; the largest has 2.4 times as many.
• If warehousing jobs were split evenly across 50 states, each would hold 2.0% of the total; California holds 12.46%, which is 6.23 times an even share.
• California leads the ranking, 61,344 jobs ahead of Texas.

Where California ranks

California leads the ranking. The median state has 23,211, so California is 213,713 jobs above it.

Who buys pallets in California

Measured against the national share of employment, beverage manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in California, at 1.7 times the national figure. Bottlers and brewers use the beverage footprint, with glass and can models; check the stacking rating if loads go three high.

• Beverage manufacturing: 63,604 jobs in California, 20% of the 316,938 across the US, or 0.27 for every warehousing job in the state.
• Fruit and vegetable preserving: 27,518 jobs in California, 16% of the 173,844 across the US, or 0.12 for every warehousing job in the state.

The ladder around California

Sorting all 50 states by warehousing jobs puts California 1st. The rows around it show how close the next states are.

Metros we list in California

6 metros in California have a page with ZIPs, counties and corridors.

Sorting a lot into piles

• Pile one: whole pallets with flat decks, square corners and no repairs.
• Pile two: whole pallets with a repair or a mismatched piece, kept separate and counted.
• Pile three: pallets with a crack through a load path, set aside for repair or scrap.
• Pile four: marked pallets that may belong to someone else, held until the owner is known.
• Write the pile count on a board by the stacks, and photograph it each morning.

What to put on a request from California

USDA counted 400 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in California on 1 October 2025, 1st among the states; ask the maker how a pallet behaves frozen.

• Start with the footprint: 56 x 44 in beverage
• Then the grade: used and clean
• Give the receiving ZIP in California
• Name a quantity band, a few pallet-loads up to a truck

Other states

• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Kansas
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• Virginia

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