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

Gainesville, GA in the numbers

The Gainesville, GA metro counts 656 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 0.03% of the US industry and 0.7% of private jobs in the metro, 58th of 60 here.

It spans 1 county: Hall. Being a one-county metro, its county and its metro counts are the same figure. Warehousing is 0.7% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 0.8% of Georgia's 84,730 warehousing jobs. 2 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 30507 (Gainesville, 5).

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Gainesville, GA metro. The most concentrated is meat and poultry processing, at 28.9 times the national share of employment.

• Food manufacturing13,771 jobs in 2025, 0.78% 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.
• Meat and poultry processing11,123 jobs in 2025, 2.00% of the US total. Washdown-grade 48 x 40 pallets, often HDPE, in cold and wet rooms. Colour coding separates raw from cooked zones. In a pile from here, photograph the surface condition, close up.
• Grocery and related product wholesale1,069 jobs in 2025, 0.13% 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. 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-85

Gainesville, GA sits on I-85, which runs from I-65 in Montgomery, Alabama, to I-95 near Petersburg, Virginia, and is a regional route serving Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. The metros we track on it hold 72,718 private warehousing jobs, 3.8% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Atlanta (49,050), Greenville (4,575) and Charlotte (18,437).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Green Bay (584), Salinas (298) and Yakima (1,309).

Elsewhere in Georgia

Atlanta (49,050 jobs, 74.77 times Gainesville, GA, busiest ZIP 30253) and Savannah (6,384 jobs, 9.73 times Gainesville, GA, busiest ZIP 31407) are the other metros we cover in Georgia, which has 84,730 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 Gainesville, GA, say whether it can be held and for how long, and whether the pallets are stacked where a truck can reach them.

What a Gainesville, GA load looks like

Food manufacturing comes first here, at 13,771 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. Marks are checked before anything is ground.