Plastic pallet recycling in Colorado: what the yards hold and where it goes

How Colorado compares

Counting 24,541 private jobs in warehousing and storage at 304 sites, Colorado stands 25th among the states, 1.29% of the country. The mean site holds 80.7 workers.

The state sits in the Mountain states, a Census division. Its sites average 80.7 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 1.30% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in Colorado

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: Adams (12,162), Denver (2,456) and Arapahoe (944).

• Adams County12,162 jobs, 49.6% of the Colorado total.
• Denver County2,456 jobs, 10.0% of the Colorado total.
• Arapahoe County944 jobs, 3.8% of the Colorado total.

What fills the yards in Colorado

2 further industries are named in the market data for Colorado. Each retires pallets for its own reasons.

• Food manufacturing26,569 private jobs in 2025, 1.5% of the US total. 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. 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. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Warehousing and storage24,541 private jobs in 2025, 1.3% 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. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.

The rest of Colorado's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 26,569, pharmaceutical manufacturing 4,960 and auto parts 1,123. Measured against the national share of employment, food manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 0.8 times.

What the size of the state means

Colorado is a mid-table warehouse state. The jobs sit in a few places, and a pile outside them is the exception. Give the ZIP early, because distance to the nearest cluster decides how a load is placed.

Big metros elsewhere in the Mountain states

Against Colorado's 24,541 warehousing jobs, the largest metros in the same division are Phoenix, Arizona (42,340, 1.73 times), Las Vegas, Nevada (28,250, 1.15 times), Reno, Nevada (12,269, 0.50 times) and Salt Lake City, Utah (6,623, 0.27 times).

Next to Colorado

The table sets the warehousing counts of Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming against Colorado.

Metros we cover in Colorado

Denver each have a page with ZIPs, counties and a corridor note.

• Denver-Aurora-Centennial15,858 warehousing jobs, 27th of 60 metros. ZIPs 80011, 80239, 80216.

Marked pallets in Colorado

Colorado has no rule we can cite on stray proprietary pallets. Until an owner is ruled out by the marks, nothing in a Colorado load is ground.

Describing a Colorado load

Three facts first for Colorado: ZIP, count, footprint. Pallets from warehousing and storage want the yard stacks, from the dock side photographed; food manufacturing pallets want the deck surface and any staining photographed.