Plastic pallet recycling in Fresno: ZIPs, industries and the loads they leave behind

Fresno in the numbers

The Fresno metro counts 5,006 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 0.26% of the US industry and 1.3% of private jobs in the metro, 46th of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 2 counties: Fresno and Madera. Warehousing is 1.3% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 2.1% of California's 236,923 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 93725 (Fresno, 30).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Fresno (5,006).

• Fresno County5,006 jobs, 100.0% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

5 industries are named for the Fresno metro. The most concentrated is fruit and vegetable preserving, at 6.5 times the national share of employment.

• Food manufacturing13,497 jobs in 2025, 0.76% of the US total. Sanitation audits remove cracked or stained pallets. A change of packaging line retires a colour-coded set. Pallets that held ingredients with strong odours or oils are culled early. Hygienic 48 x 40 and 40 x 48 pallets in HDPE or PP, often with closed decks and colour-coding by zone. Some are listed as food safe but not approved for direct food contact. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Meat and poultry processing6,499 jobs in 2025, 1.17% of the US total. Washdown, grease and thermal cycling. Pallets are retired when the surface cannot be sanitised. Plant remodels retire whole colour-coded sets. In a pile from here, photograph the surface condition, close up.
• Grocery and related product wholesale4,304 jobs in 2025, 0.52% of the US total. High volume and many inbound shippers. Strays collect at the back of the yard. Sets retire when a retailer changes its pallet standard. Sort marked from unmarked first. Count the unmarked by style. This industry is where the ownership check matters most. In a pile from here, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.
• Fruit and vegetable preserving3,355 jobs in 2025, 1.93% of the US total. Sticky residue grinds badly. Rinse where you can and say where you cannot. Count by footprint, because 56 x 44 and 48 x 40 are separate jobs. In a pile from here, photograph a stack from the side, and a stained deck.
• Beverage manufacturing1,655 jobs in 2025, 0.52% of the US total. Heavy pallets weigh a lot. Say the footprint and model if you know it. Stack sound ones apart, since a sound heavy-duty stackable can be worth reusing. Heavy glass and can loads crush runners over time. Route changes and returnable programmes retire whole sets. Weather in outdoor yards ages the surface. In a pile from here, photograph the runners and the model plate.

Freight around Fresno

Fresno is not on one of the twelve corridors we read, so we place a load here by ZIP and by the distance to the nearest metro we cover, Omaha.

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Omaha (5,157), Greenville (4,575) and Des Moines (4,393).

Elsewhere in California

Los Angeles (27,225 jobs, 5.44 times Fresno, busiest ZIP 90670), Inland Empire (118,368 jobs, 23.65 times Fresno, busiest ZIP 91761), Stockton (28,518 jobs, 5.70 times Fresno, busiest ZIP 95206), San Francisco (9,473 jobs, 1.89 times Fresno, busiest ZIP 94545) and Salinas (298 jobs, 0.06 times Fresno, busiest ZIP 93901) are the other metros we cover in California, which has 236,923 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

A smaller market, with fewer sites within reach of each other. For a pile in Fresno, say whether it can be held and for how long, and whether the pallets are stacked where a truck can reach them.

What a Fresno load looks like

Food manufacturing comes first here, at 13,497 jobs. Photograph the deck surface and any staining and, for meat and poultry processing, the surface condition, close up. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. California AB 1760 sets a 35-day period before stray proprietary pallets can be declared abandoned, so marks are checked first.