Used plastic pallets in Minneapolis-St. Paul

Minneapolis-St. Paul by county

Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington spans 15 counties (Anoka, Carver, Chisago, Dakota, Hennepin, Isanti...). In the counties where the Bureau of Labor Statistics can publish, private employers had 6,599 warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 0.4% of local private jobs.

Minneapolis-St. Paul against Minnesota

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, 51 between them. 55121 (Saint Paul) leads with 19, 37% of the listed total.

• 55121 Saint Paul: 19 warehousing establishments, 1.9 times 55113.
• 55113 Saint Paul: 10 warehousing establishments, 53% of the count in 55121.
• 55428 Minneapolis: 9 warehousing establishments, 47% of the count in 55121.
• 55418 Minneapolis: 7 warehousing establishments, 37% of the count in 55121.
• 55379 Shakopee: 6 warehousing establishments, 32% of the count in 55121.

What the ratios say

The BLS leaves out counties where one employer would show through, so the 6,599 jobs counted for Minneapolis-St. Paul may understate the metro.

• Minneapolis-St. Paul ranks 41st of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 6,599 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 15 counties, that is 440 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• Hennepin County holds 55% of the metro's jobs and Anoka County 17%; the gap between them is 2,497 jobs.
• 55121 has 19 warehousing establishments, 3.2 times as many as 55379 (6) at the other end of the list.
• Minnesota has 17,921 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of Minneapolis-St. Paul are 37% of the state.
• Warehousing is 0.4% of private jobs in these counties; where it is higher than average, pallets are a daily cost and sellers of surplus are common.
• The metros closest in size are Salt Lake City (6,623, 24 above) and Savannah (6,384, 215 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 55121, 55113, 55428, hold 38 of the 51 establishments in the ZIP list, or 75%.
• The ZIP list spans 3 towns, led by Saint Paul (29) and Minneapolis (16).
• The ZIP list averages 10.2 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 55379 Shakopee, has 6.
• Of the 15 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 3 for warehousing, which together account for 5,514 of the 6,599 jobs counted.
• Reaching the median metro would take 2.1 times the disclosed warehousing jobs Minneapolis-St. Paul has now.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 249 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 15 counties.

Where Minneapolis-St. Paul ranks

Minneapolis-St. Paul and the 40 metros above it hold 95% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

Corridors through Minneapolis-St. Paul

No Interstate corridor in our data lists Minneapolis-St. Paul, so the county and ZIP figures carry this page.

The ladder around Minneapolis-St. Paul

Metros ranked by disclosed warehousing jobs: Minneapolis-St. Paul with the two above it and the two below.

Minneapolis-St. Paul's pallet-using trades

Against the national share of employment, food manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, at 0.6x. Food plants ask for clean, odour-free, washable decks. Food-contact papers come from the maker, not from the grade.

• Food manufacturing: 14,543 jobs in the disclosed counties, 0.8% of the 1,775,008 across the US, or 2.20 for every warehousing job here.
• Chemical manufacturing: 9,984 jobs in the disclosed counties, 1.1% of the 892,426 across the US, or 1.51 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.

What to send for a Minneapolis-St. Paul lot

• Footprint: 48 x 40 in or 56 x 44 in
• Grade: like new or used and clean
• Dock ZIP, for example 55121 or 55113
• Quantity band

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