Used plastic pallets in St. Louis

St. Louis by county

Count the jobs the BLS can disclose in St. Louis and you reach 16,879 in warehousing and storage for 2025, 1.4% of the metro's private work. The area covers 15 counties: Bond, Calhoun, Clinton, Jersey, Macoupin, Madison....

St. Louis against Missouri

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, 76 between them. 63042 (Hazelwood) leads with 32, 42% of the listed total.

• 63042 Hazelwood: 32 warehousing establishments, 1.9 times 62025.
• 62025 Edwardsville: 17 warehousing establishments, 53% of the count in 63042.
• 62040 Granite City: 10 warehousing establishments, 31% of the count in 63042.
• 63044 Bridgeton: 9 warehousing establishments, 28% of the count in 63042.
• 63147 Saint Louis: 8 warehousing establishments, 25% of the count in 63042.

What the ratios say

The BLS leaves out counties where one employer would show through, so the 16,879 jobs counted for St. Louis may understate the metro.

• St. Louis ranks 25th of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 16,879 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 15 counties, that is 1,125 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• 63042 has 32 warehousing establishments, 4.0 times as many as 63147 (8) at the other end of the list.
• Missouri has 26,726 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of St. Louis are 63% of the state.
• Warehousing is 1.4% 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 Harrisburg (17,241, 362 above) and San Antonio (16,751, 128 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 63042, 62025, 62040, hold 59 of the 76 establishments in the ZIP list, or 78%.
• The ZIP list spans 5 towns, led by Hazelwood (32) and Edwardsville (17).
• The ZIP list averages 15.2 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 63147 Saint Louis, has 8.
• Of the 15 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 1 for warehousing, which together account for 7,612 of the 16,879 jobs counted.
• St. Louis has 1.2 times the disclosed warehousing jobs of the median metro.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 70 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 15 counties.

Where St. Louis ranks

St. Louis and the 24 metros above it hold 78% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

Corridors through St. Louis

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

The ladder around St. Louis

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

St. Louis's pallet-using trades

Against the national share of employment, chemical manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in St. Louis, at 1.6x. Drums and bags drive the footprint here: four 55-gallon drums sit on a 48 x 48 without overhang, and 45 x 45 is the CP9 chemical standard.

• Chemical manufacturing: 12,524 jobs in the disclosed counties, 1.4% of the 892,426 across the US, or 0.74 for every warehousing job here.
• Warehousing and storage: 16,879 jobs in the disclosed counties, 0.9% of the 1,901,976 across the US, or 1.00 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.

Questions to put to any seller

• Where did these pallets work, and what did they carry?
• How were they sorted, and who walked the lot?
• Are any welded, riveted or fitted with replacement parts?
• Can the maker's plate be photographed on several pallets?
• Will the description be sent in writing before payment is discussed?

Requesting a lot for St. Louis

• Footprint: 48 x 48 in or 45 x 45 in
• Grade: used and clean
• Dock ZIP, for example 63042 or 62025
• Quantity band

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