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

Los Angeles in the numbers

Los Angeles had 27,225 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 1.43% of the national total and 15th of the 60 metros we cover.

It spans 2 counties: Orange and Los Angeles. Warehousing is 0.5% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 11.5% of California's 236,923 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 90670 (Santa Fe Springs, 55).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Los Angeles (19,954) and Orange (7,271).

• Los Angeles County19,954 jobs, 73.3% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Orange County7,271 jobs, 26.7% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the Los Angeles metro. The most concentrated is grocery and related product wholesale, at 1.3 times the national share of employment.

• Food manufacturing46,988 jobs in 2025, 2.65% of the US total. Say what the pallets carried. A load that touched edible oil is a different bin from a load that sat under sealed cartons. FDA does not approve pallet models, and recycled regrind is not made for food contact. 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. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Grocery and related product wholesale44,471 jobs in 2025, 5.36% 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. In a pile from here, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.

On the freight lanes: I-10 and I-5

Los Angeles 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: Inland Empire (118,368), Houston (33,785), San Antonio (16,751), Jacksonville (15,384), Phoenix (42,340) and New Orleans (2,090).

Los Angeles sits on I-5, which runs from I-5 is the West Coast's main north-south Interstate through California, Oregon and Washington, and the only continuous Interstate joining the Mexican and Canadian borders. The metros we track on it hold 86,962 private warehousing jobs, 4.6% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Stockton (28,518), Seattle (23,062) and Portland (8,157).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Memphis (27,742), Las Vegas (28,250) and Stockton (28,518).

Elsewhere in California

Inland Empire (118,368 jobs, 4.35 times Los Angeles, busiest ZIP 91761), Fresno (5,006 jobs, 0.18 times Los Angeles, busiest ZIP 93725), Stockton (28,518 jobs, 1.05 times Los Angeles, busiest ZIP 95206), San Francisco (9,473 jobs, 0.35 times Los Angeles, busiest ZIP 94545) and Salinas (298 jobs, 0.01 times Los Angeles, 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 Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles load looks like

Food manufacturing comes first here, at 46,988 jobs. Photograph the deck surface and any staining 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.