Used plastic pallets in Houston

Where the warehouses are in Houston

Count the jobs the BLS can disclose in Houston-The Woodlands and you reach 33,785 in warehousing and storage for 2025, 1.2% of the metro's private work. The area covers 10 counties: Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris....

Houston against Texas

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

Houston ZIPs to name on a request

Census ZIP Code Business Patterns for 2023 list 5 ZIPs here with the most warehousing establishments, 107 between them. 77571 (La Porte) leads with 33, 31% of the listed total.

• 77571 La Porte: 33 warehousing establishments, 1.4 times 77032.
• 77032 Houston: 24 warehousing establishments, 73% of the count in 77571.
• 77523 Baytown: 18 warehousing establishments, 55% of the count in 77571.
• 77029 Houston: 17 warehousing establishments, 52% of the count in 77571.
• 77507 Pasadena: 15 warehousing establishments, 45% of the count in 77571.

What the ratios say

County totals for Houston-The Woodlands are floors, since the BLS hides counties with too few employers to publish; the 33,785 jobs are the disclosed part.

• Houston ranks 10th of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 33,785 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 10 counties, that is 3,379 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• Harris County holds 70% of the metro's jobs and Fort Bend County 16%; the gap between them is 18,434 jobs.
• 77571 has 33 warehousing establishments, 2.2 times as many as 77507 (15) at the other end of the list.
• Texas has 175,579 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of Houston are 19% of the state.
• Warehousing is 1.2% 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 255,943 warehousing jobs along the route.
• The metros closest in size are Columbus (34,200, 415 above) and Detroit (30,083, 3,702 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 77571, 77032, 77523, hold 75 of the 107 establishments in the ZIP list, or 70%.
• The ZIP list spans 4 towns, led by Houston (41) and La Porte (33).
• The ZIP list averages 21.4 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 77507 Pasadena, has 15.
• Of the 10 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 3 for warehousing, which together account for 30,998 of the 33,785 jobs counted.
• Houston has 2.5 times the disclosed warehousing jobs of the median metro.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 82 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 10 counties.

Where Houston ranks

Houston and the 9 metros above it hold 48% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

Highways around Houston

Interstate 10 is the Interstate in our data that serves Houston.

Neighbouring metros in the data

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

The ladder around Houston

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

Who buys pallets around Houston

Against the national share of employment, chemical manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in Houston-The Woodlands, at 2.2x. 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: 42,669 jobs in the disclosed counties, 4.8% of the 892,426 across the US, or 1.26 for every warehousing job here.
• Warehousing and storage: 33,785 jobs in the disclosed counties, 1.8% of the 1,901,976 across the US, or 1.00 for every warehousing job here.

When something looks wrong

• Stop unloading and photograph the fault before anything moves.
• Count how many pallets show the same fault, to see if it is a lot problem or a one-off.
• Tell the desk or the seller in writing the same day, with the photographs attached.
• Hold the affected stacks apart until you hear back.
• Keep one sample pallet unused, so the maker or an inspector can examine it.

Requesting a lot for Houston

• Footprint: 48 x 48 in or 45 x 45 in
• Grade: used and clean
• Dock ZIP, for example 77571 or 77032
• Quantity band

Keep reading