Used plastic pallets in Iowa

Iowa in numbers

A pallet moves wherever a warehouse does, and Iowa has 338 of them by the BLS establishment count, with 19,824 jobs between them and 58.7 per site on average.

• Polk County: 4,393 warehousing jobs, 22% of Iowa and 0.23% of the country, 1.3 times Scott County.
• Scott County: 3,450 warehousing jobs, 17% of Iowa and 0.18% of the country, 79% of the size of Polk County.
• Black Hawk County: 2,144 warehousing jobs, 11% of Iowa and 0.11% of the country, 49% of the size of Polk County.

Iowa against the country

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

What the ratios say

Small counties in Iowa are hidden by BLS disclosure rules, so read the 19,824 state figure as the total and the county lines as a floor.

• The three largest warehousing counties hold 50% of Iowa's jobs in the line.
• At 58.7 jobs per establishment against 81.5 across the US, Iowa's warehouses run smaller than the national average by 28 percent.
• Food manufacturing employs 3.03 people for every warehousing job in Iowa; across the US the ratio is 0.93.
• Iowa holds 3.4% of the nation's food manufacturing jobs and 1.0% of its warehousing jobs, so food is the heavier of the two lines here.
• Pharmaceutical manufacturing adds 4,094 jobs, 1.2% of the US total.
• Motor vehicle assembly accounts for 346 jobs in Iowa, 0.12% of the US total, with another 4,137 in parts.
• Refrigerated space works out at 3,531 cubic feet for every warehousing job, against 2,098 nationally.
• The metro below accounts for 22% of the state's warehousing jobs, counting disclosed counties only.
• Polk County's 4,393 warehousing jobs are more than the whole state total of 11 other states, the largest being Maine at 3,774.
• Minnesota runs warehouses of nearly the same size, at 57.4 jobs per establishment against 58.7 here.
• For food manufacturing, New York is the closest match at 60,316 jobs, 155 above Iowa's 60,161.
• The smallest county the BLS shows for Iowa is Black Hawk County with 2,144 jobs; the largest has 2.0 times as many.
• If warehousing jobs were split evenly across 50 states, each would hold 2.0% of the total; Iowa holds 1.04%, which is 0.52 times an even share.
• Massachusetts sits above Iowa with 871 more warehousing jobs, and Oklahoma sits below with 155 fewer.

Where Iowa ranks

Iowa and the 28 states above it hold 92% of the country's 1,901,976 warehousing jobs between them. The median state has 23,211, so Iowa is 3,386 jobs below it; California, the largest, has 236,923, or 12 times as many.

Who buys pallets in Iowa

Measured against the national share of employment, meat and poultry processing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in Iowa, at 6.1 times the national figure. Wash-down plants need clean, crack-free decks. Ask whether any pallet has been repaired, since a weld bead holds residue.

• Meat and poultry processing: 33,386 jobs in Iowa, 6.0% of the 556,647 across the US, or 1.68 for every warehousing job in the state.
• Food manufacturing: 60,161 jobs in Iowa, 3.4% of the 1,775,008 across the US, or 3.03 for every warehousing job in the state.
• Refrigerated warehousing: 1,814 jobs in Iowa, 2.5% of the 73,136 across the US, or 0.09 for every warehousing job in the state.
• Dairy product manufacturing: 3,922 jobs in Iowa, 2.3% of the 168,222 across the US, or 0.20 for every warehousing job in the state.
• Plastics product manufacturing: 8,910 jobs in Iowa, 1.5% of the 575,006 across the US, or 0.45 for every warehousing job in the state.

The ladder around Iowa

Sorting all 50 states by warehousing jobs puts Iowa 29th. The rows around it show how close the next states are.

Metros we list in Iowa

One metro in Iowa has 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 Iowa

USDA counted 70 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in Iowa on 1 October 2025, 18th among the states; ask the maker how a pallet behaves frozen.

• Footprint: 48 x 40 in
• Grade: like new or used and clean
• Quantity: a band, from a few pallet-loads to a truck
• ZIP: the Iowa receiving ZIP

Other states

• Arizona
• Colorado
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Maine
• Massachusetts
• Missouri
• North Carolina
• Pennsylvania
• Texas
• West Virginia

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