Used plastic pallets in Milwaukee

Milwaukee by county

Count the jobs the BLS can disclose in Milwaukee-Waukesha and you reach 8,262 in warehousing and storage for 2025, 1.1% of the metro's private work. The area covers 4 counties: Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington, Waukesha.

Milwaukee against Wisconsin

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, 29 between them. 53209 (Milwaukee) leads with 7, 24% of the listed total.

• 53209 Milwaukee: 7 warehousing establishments, 1.2 times 53218.
• 53218 Milwaukee: 6 warehousing establishments, 86% of the count in 53209.
• 53051 Menomonee Falls: 6 warehousing establishments, 86% of the count in 53209.
• 53207 Milwaukee: 5 warehousing establishments, 71% of the count in 53209.
• 53186 Waukesha: 5 warehousing establishments, 71% of the count in 53209.

What the ratios say

The BLS leaves out counties where one employer would show through, so the 8,262 jobs counted for Milwaukee may understate the metro.

• Milwaukee ranks 37th of the 60 metros in the data by disclosed warehousing jobs, with 8,262 against a median of 13,652.
• Spread across 4 counties, that is 2,066 warehousing jobs per county on average.
• Milwaukee County holds 51% of the metro's jobs and Waukesha County 44%; the gap between them is 610 jobs.
• 53209 has 7 warehousing establishments, 1.4 times as many as 53186 (5) at the other end of the list.
• Wisconsin has 33,054 warehousing jobs in all, so the disclosed counties of Milwaukee are 25% of the state.
• Warehousing is 1.1% 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 Oklahoma City (8,336, 74 above) and Portland (8,157, 105 below).
• The top three ZIPs, 53209, 53218, 53051, hold 19 of the 29 establishments in the ZIP list, or 66%.
• The ZIP list spans 3 towns, led by Milwaukee (18) and Menomonee Falls (6).
• The ZIP list averages 5.8 warehousing establishments per ZIP across 5 ZIPs, and the quietest, 53186 Waukesha, has 5.
• Of the 4 counties in the metro, the BLS discloses 3 for warehousing, which together account for 8,262 of the 8,262 jobs counted.
• Reaching the median metro would take 1.7 times the disclosed warehousing jobs Milwaukee has now.
• For every warehousing job in these counties there are about 90 other private jobs, so pallet-using work is spread thinly across 4 counties.

Where Milwaukee ranks

Milwaukee and the 36 metros above it hold 92% of the 1,116,650 warehousing jobs across the 60 metros in the data. The largest, Inland Empire, counts 118,368.

Corridors through Milwaukee

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

The ladder around Milwaukee

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

Milwaukee's pallet-using trades

Against the national share of employment, food manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using line in Milwaukee-Waukesha, at 1.2x. Food plants ask for clean, odour-free, washable decks. Food-contact papers come from the maker, not from the grade.

• Food manufacturing: 11,405 jobs in the disclosed counties, 0.6% of the 1,775,008 across the US, or 1.38 for every warehousing job here.
• Warehousing and storage: 8,262 jobs in the disclosed counties, 0.4% of the 1,901,976 across the US, or 1.00 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 Milwaukee

• Footprint: 48 x 40 in or 56 x 44 in
• Grade: like new or used and clean
• Dock ZIP, for example 53209 or 53218
• Quantity band

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