Used plastic pallets in San Francisco-Oakland

San Francisco-Oakland by county

San Francisco-Oakland spans 5 counties (Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Marin). In the counties where the Bureau of Labor Statistics can publish, private employers had 9,473 warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 0.5% of local private jobs.

San Francisco-Oakland against California

The metro's disclosed-county total set beside the state's whole count, so the two can be read together.

ZIPs with the most warehouses

Census ZIP Code Business Patterns for 2023 list 5 ZIPs here with the most warehousing establishments, 72 between them. 94545 (Hayward) leads with 21, 29% of the listed total.

• 94545 Hayward: 21 warehousing establishments, 1.3 times 94577.
• 94577 San Leandro: 16 warehousing establishments, 76% of the count in 94545.
• 94544 Hayward: 14 warehousing establishments, 67% of the count in 94545.
• 94550 Livermore: 11 warehousing establishments, 52% of the count in 94545.
• 94587 Union City: 10 warehousing establishments, 48% of the count in 94545.

What the ratios say

The BLS leaves out counties where one employer would show through, so the 9,473 jobs counted for San Francisco-Oakland may understate the metro.

• San Francisco-Oakland ranks 35th of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 9,473 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 5 counties, that is 1,895 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• Alameda County holds 61% of the metro's jobs and Contra Costa County 27%; the gap between them is 3,197 jobs.
• 94545 has 21 warehousing establishments, 2.1 times as many as 94587 (10) at the other end of the list.
• California has 236,923 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of San Francisco-Oakland are 4.0% of the state.
• Warehousing is 0.5% of private jobs in these counties; where it is higher than average, pallets are a daily cost and sellers of surplus are common.
• One Interstate in the data serves the metro, and it carries 155,780 warehousing jobs along the route.
• The metros closest in size are Pittsburgh (9,826, 353 above) and Oklahoma City (8,336, 1,137 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 94545, 94577, 94544, hold 51 of the 72 establishments in the ZIP list, or 71%.
• The ZIP list spans 4 towns, led by Hayward (35) and San Leandro (16).
• The ZIP list averages 14.4 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 94587 Union City, has 10.
• Of the 5 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 3 for warehousing, which together account for 9,205 of the 9,473 jobs counted.
• Reaching the median metro would take 1.4 times the disclosed warehousing jobs San Francisco-Oakland has now.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 199 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 5 counties.

Where San Francisco-Oakland ranks

San Francisco-Oakland and the 34 metros above it hold 91% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

Corridors through San Francisco-Oakland

Interstate 80 is the Interstate in our data that serves San Francisco-Oakland.

Other metros nearby

Metros that share a corridor with San Francisco-Oakland, and the other metros in California, with their disclosed warehousing jobs.

The ladder around San Francisco-Oakland

Metros ranked by disclosed warehousing jobs: San Francisco-Oakland with the two above it and the two below.

San Francisco-Oakland's pallet-using trades

Against the national share of employment, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in San Francisco-Oakland, at 2.0x. Pharma shippers want pallets they can sanitise, with papers on resin and colour; some prefer polypropylene because it takes sterilisation.

• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing: 10,914 jobs in the disclosed counties, 3.1% of the 350,886 across the US, or 1.15 for every warehousing job here.
• Food manufacturing: 16,356 jobs in the disclosed counties, 0.9% of the 1,775,008 across the US, or 1.73 for every warehousing job here.

Training the dock crew

• Show new staff three pallets: one acceptable, one marginal, one rejected.
• Agree on words for faults, such as crack, gouge, bow and dish, and use them.
• Tell people to stop and ask when a pallet carries any mark they do not recognise.
• Remind drivers to enter pockets squarely, since angled entry splits the pocket wall.
• Walk the dock together once a month and compare notes.

What to send for a San Francisco-Oakland lot

• Footprint: 48 x 40 in or a square footprint
• Grade: like new
• Dock ZIP, for example 94545 or 94577
• Quantity band

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