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

Inland Empire in the numbers

Inland Empire had 118,368 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 6.22% of the national total and 1st of the 60 metros we cover.

It spans 2 counties: Riverside and San Bernardino. Warehousing is 8.4% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 50.0% of California's 236,923 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 91761 (Ontario, 122).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: San Bernardino (67,058) and Riverside (51,310).

• San Bernardino County67,058 jobs, 56.7% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Riverside County51,310 jobs, 43.3% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

4 industries are named for the Inland Empire metro. The most concentrated is warehousing and storage, at 5.9 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage118,368 jobs in 2025, 6.22% of the US total. General-purpose 48 x 40 pallets, nestables for empty storage and rackables on beams. Warehouses hold the widest mix of styles of any industry here, so mixed resin and mixed colour piles are normal. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Grocery and related product wholesale13,219 jobs in 2025, 1.59% of the US total. 48 x 40 pallets of many styles and marks, nestables for returns and the rented pool pallets that arrive with suppliers’ freight. In a pile from here, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.
• Plastics product manufacturing8,907 jobs in 2025, 1.55% of the US total. Retired stock after a product line ends. Some processors regrind their own scrap, and a pallet pile is one more feedstock. Plastics plants know resin. Say what you know. They are also the likeliest to want sorted regrind, so mention if you can take flake back. In a pile from here, photograph moulded codes and maker marks.
• Refrigerated warehousing1,565 jobs in 2025, 2.14% of the US total. Hygienic, easy-to-wash pallets in 48 x 40, often PP or HDPE with closed or solid decks, because cold stores need surfaces that drain and wash clean. Say it came from cold storage. Brittle pallets grind fine. Wet pallets should be dry before they are stacked for a trailer. In a pile from here, photograph the cracks at corners and along the deck.

On the freight lanes: I-10

Inland Empire sits on I-10, which runs from I-10 is the southernmost transcontinental Interstate, 2,460 miles long, the fourth-longest in the country. The metros we track on it hold 255,943 private warehousing jobs, 13.5% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Los Angeles (27,225), Houston (33,785), San Antonio (16,751), Jacksonville (15,384), Phoenix (42,340) and New Orleans (2,090).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Dallas (82,593), Chicago (59,586) and Atlanta (49,050).

Elsewhere in California

Los Angeles (27,225 jobs, 0.23 times Inland Empire, busiest ZIP 90670), Fresno (5,006 jobs, 0.04 times Inland Empire, busiest ZIP 93725), Stockton (28,518 jobs, 0.24 times Inland Empire, busiest ZIP 95206), San Francisco (9,473 jobs, 0.08 times Inland Empire, busiest ZIP 94545) and Salinas (298 jobs, 0.00 times Inland Empire, 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 market this size is made of many separate sites, so a pile in Inland Empire is rarely the only one nearby. Large distribution clusters bring pooled pallets and mixed footprints into the same trailer, which is why the marks and the sizes get listed before anything else.

What a Inland Empire load looks like

Warehousing and storage comes first here, at 118,368 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for grocery and related product wholesale, every mark, logo and RFID bump. 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.