Used plastic pallets in Cleveland

Cleveland by county

Count the jobs the BLS can disclose in Cleveland and you reach 13,652 in warehousing and storage for 2025, 1.5% of the metro's private work. The area covers 6 counties: Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina.

Cleveland against Ohio

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, 33 between them. 44139 (Solon) leads with 10, 30% of the listed total.

• 44139 Solon: 10 warehousing establishments, 1.7 times 44149.
• 44149 Strongsville: 6 warehousing establishments, 60% of the count in 44139.
• 44146 Bedford: 6 warehousing establishments, 60% of the count in 44139.
• 44128 Cleveland: 6 warehousing establishments, 60% of the count in 44139.
• 44142 Brookpark: 5 warehousing establishments, 50% of the count in 44139.

What the ratios say

The BLS leaves out counties where one employer would show through, so the 13,652 jobs counted for Cleveland may understate the metro.

• Cleveland ranks 31st of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 13,652 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 6 counties, that is 2,275 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• Cuyahoga County holds 92% of the metro's jobs and Medina County 3.9%; the gap between them is 11,968 jobs.
• 44139 has 10 warehousing establishments, 2.0 times as many as 44142 (5) at the other end of the list.
• Ohio has 98,354 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of Cleveland are 14% of the state.
• Warehousing is 1.5% 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 Orlando (13,928, 276 above) and Tampa (13,205, 447 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 44139, 44149, 44146, hold 22 of the 33 establishments in the ZIP list, or 67%.
• The ZIP list spans 5 towns, led by Solon (10) and Strongsville (6).
• The ZIP list averages 6.6 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 44142 Brookpark, has 5.
• Of the 6 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 3 for warehousing, which together account for 13,450 of the 13,652 jobs counted.
• Cleveland has 1.0 times the disclosed warehousing jobs of the median metro.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 66 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 6 counties.

Where Cleveland ranks

Cleveland and the 30 metros above it hold 87% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

Corridors through Cleveland

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

The ladder around Cleveland

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

Cleveland's pallet-using trades

Against the national share of employment, motor vehicle parts manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in Cleveland, at 2.4x. Automotive plants reuse pallets in a loop and load them heavily, so ask for static and dynamic ratings and for one maker.

• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing: 8,452 jobs in the disclosed counties, 1.6% of the 521,212 across the US, or 0.62 for every warehousing job here.
• Chemical manufacturing: 11,126 jobs in the disclosed counties, 1.2% of the 892,426 across the US, or 0.81 for every warehousing job here.
• Plastics product manufacturing: 5,137 jobs in the disclosed counties, 0.9% of the 575,006 across the US, or 0.38 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 Cleveland

• Footprint: 48 x 45 in to match heavy-duty bulk containers
• Grade: a uniform closed-loop lot
• Dock ZIP, for example 44139 or 44149
• Quantity band

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