Used plastic pallets in Indianapolis

Indianapolis's warehousing belt

Count the jobs the BLS can disclose in Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood and you reach 41,067 in warehousing and storage for 2025, 4.2% of the metro's private work. The area covers 11 counties: Boone, Brown, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Johnson....

Indianapolis against Indiana

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

Where a Indianapolis lot lands: the busy ZIPs

Census ZIP Code Business Patterns for 2023 list 5 ZIPs here with the most warehousing establishments, 116 between them. 46168 (Plainfield) leads with 39, 34% of the listed total.

• 46168 Plainfield: 39 warehousing establishments, 1.3 times 46268.
• 46268 Indianapolis: 31 warehousing establishments, 79% of the count in 46168.
• 46075 Whitestown: 19 warehousing establishments, 49% of the count in 46168.
• 46219 Indianapolis: 14 warehousing establishments, 36% of the count in 46168.
• 46052 Lebanon: 13 warehousing establishments, 33% of the count in 46168.

What the ratios say

Hidden counties mean Indianapolis's figure of 41,067 is the disclosed part of its warehousing work, not a ceiling.

• Indianapolis ranks 6th of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 41,067 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 11 counties, that is 3,733 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• Boone County holds 31% of the metro's jobs and Hendricks County 29%; the gap between them is 778 jobs.
• 46168 has 39 warehousing establishments, 3.0 times as many as 46052 (13) at the other end of the list.
• Indiana has 67,506 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of Indianapolis are 61% of the state.
• Warehousing is 4.2% 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 134,734 warehousing jobs along the route.
• The metros closest in size are Phoenix (42,340, 1,273 above) and Northern New Jersey (39,367, 1,700 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 46168, 46268, 46075, hold 89 of the 116 establishments in the ZIP list, or 77%.
• The ZIP list spans 4 towns, led by Indianapolis (45) and Plainfield (39).
• The ZIP list averages 23.2 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 46052 Lebanon, has 13.
• Of the 11 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 3 for warehousing, which together account for 32,269 of the 41,067 jobs counted.
• Indianapolis has 3.0 times the disclosed warehousing jobs of the median metro.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 23 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 11 counties.

Where Indianapolis ranks

Indianapolis and the 5 metros above it hold 35% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

The roads a lot travels in Indianapolis

Interstate 65 is the Interstate in our data that serves Indianapolis.

Neighbouring metros in the data

Metros that share a corridor with Indianapolis, and the other metros in Indiana, with their disclosed warehousing jobs.

The ladder around Indianapolis

Metros ranked by disclosed warehousing jobs: Indianapolis with the two above it and the two below.

Local industries that use pallets

Against the national share of employment, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, at 6.4x. Pharma shippers want pallets they can sanitise, with papers on resin and colour; some prefer polypropylene because it takes sterilisation.

• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing: 16,345 jobs in the disclosed counties, 4.7% of the 350,886 across the US, or 0.40 for every warehousing job here.
• Warehousing and storage: 41,067 jobs in the disclosed counties, 2.2% of the 1,901,976 across the US, or 1.00 for every warehousing job here.
• Chemical manufacturing: 18,829 jobs in the disclosed counties, 2.1% of the 892,426 across the US, or 0.46 for every warehousing job here.

Paperwork to keep

• The written lot description and the date it was sent.
• Your own count, signed and dated by whoever received the load.
• Photographs of stacks, plates and any marks, stored with the order number.
• The maker's papers for resin, colour or rating, where the job needs them.
• A line naming who agreed to which exceptions, so a later dispute has a record.

Safe handling at the stack

• Lift with the tines fully under the load and tilt back slightly before travelling.
• Never climb a stack, and never stand beside one while it is being moved.
• Take a damaged pallet out of service at once and tag it, so nobody reloads it.
• Keep stack heights even and edges square, since a leaning stack feeds on itself.
• Match tine length to the pallet, because short tines can crack the underside of a deck.

Requesting a lot for Indianapolis

• Footprint: 48 x 40 in or a square footprint
• Grade: like new
• Dock ZIP, for example 46168 or 46268
• Quantity band

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