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

Stockton in the numbers

The Stockton metro counts 28,518 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 1.50% of the US industry and 11.7% of private jobs in the metro, 12th of 60 here.

It spans 1 county: San Joaquin. Being a one-county metro, its county and its metro counts are the same figure. Warehousing is 11.7% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 12.0% of California's 236,923 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 95206 (Stockton, 24).

The industries behind the loads

5 industries are named for the Stockton metro. The most concentrated is warehousing and storage, at 8.2 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage28,518 jobs in 2025, 1.50% of the US total. Check the strays first. Then separate the rackables, which are usually PP, from the nestables, which are usually HDPE. Describe each stack as its own line. Forklift tines split decks and chip corners. A racking change retires one style at once. Strays arrive on inbound trailers from shippers who use pooled pallets, and sit in the yard until someone asks whose they are. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Food manufacturing6,026 jobs in 2025, 0.34% 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. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Grocery and related product wholesale3,356 jobs in 2025, 0.40% of the US total. Sort marked from unmarked first. Count the unmarked by style. This industry is where the ownership check matters most. 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.
• Beverage manufacturing3,063 jobs in 2025, 0.97% of the US total. Beverage pallets at 56 x 44 and 48 x 40, stackable for heavy static loads. PHS lists a 56 x 44 beverage pallet at 30,000 lb static. In a pile from here, photograph the runners and the model plate.
• Fruit and vegetable preserving1,000 jobs in 2025, 0.58% of the US total. A pack season ends and the yard is cleared. Sugar and acid residue stain decks. A customer standard change retires a footprint. 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.

On the freight lanes: I-5

Stockton 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: Los Angeles (27,225), Seattle (23,062) and Portland (8,157).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Las Vegas (28,250), Memphis (27,742) and Los Angeles (27,225).

Elsewhere in California

Los Angeles (27,225 jobs, 0.95 times Stockton, busiest ZIP 90670), Inland Empire (118,368 jobs, 4.15 times Stockton, busiest ZIP 91761), Fresno (5,006 jobs, 0.18 times Stockton, busiest ZIP 93725), San Francisco (9,473 jobs, 0.33 times Stockton, busiest ZIP 94545) and Salinas (298 jobs, 0.01 times Stockton, 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 Stockton 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 Stockton load looks like

Warehousing and storage comes first here, at 28,518 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for food manufacturing, the deck surface and any staining. 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.