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

Chicago in the numbers

With 59,586 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, Chicago stands 3rd of 60 metros in our data, 3.13% of the country. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 13 counties: Cook, DuPage, Grundy, McHenry, Will and DeKalb and others. Warehousing is 1.5% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 74.4% of Illinois's 80,071 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 60446 (Romeoville, 36).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Will (25,357), Cook (16,057) and DuPage (8,368).

• Will County25,357 jobs, 42.6% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Cook County16,057 jobs, 26.9% of the metro's disclosed total.
• DuPage County8,368 jobs, 14.0% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Chicago metro. The most concentrated is pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, at 2.1 times the national share of employment.

• Chemical manufacturing40,767 jobs in 2025, 4.57% of the US total. Say what the pallets carried. A residue of an unknown chemical is a stop. A drum pallet that held a benign material is a normal stream. In a pile from here, photograph any staining and the drum seats.
• Grocery and related product wholesale35,891 jobs in 2025, 4.33% 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.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing21,442 jobs in 2025, 6.11% of the US total. Validation changes, cleanroom upgrades and audits retire pallets in lots. Pallets are often kept sound and retired for compliance, not damage. A sound, clean, documented pallet is worth more as a pallet. Say if paperwork exists. Say if any pallet touched product or chemicals. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any batch plates.

On the freight lanes: I-65, I-80 and I-94

Chicago sits on I-65, which runs from I-10 at Mobile, Alabama, to Gary, Indiana, joining the Gulf Coast to Chicago and passing Birmingham, Nashville, Louisville and Indianapolis. The metros we track on it hold 134,734 private warehousing jobs, 7.1% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Nashville (19,548), Louisville/Jefferson County (14,533) and Indianapolis (41,067).

Chicago sits on I-80, which runs from I-80 is 2,900 miles long, from San Francisco, California, to I-95 at Teaneck, New Jersey, through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The metros we track on it hold 155,780 private warehousing jobs, 8.2% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: San Francisco (9,473), Northern New Jersey (39,367), Scranton (18,912), Salt Lake City (6,623), Reno (12,269), Omaha (5,157) and Des Moines (4,393).

Chicago sits on I-94, which runs from east of Billings, Montana, to Port Huron, Michigan, at the Blue Water Bridge to Canada, and is the only east-west Interstate with a direct Canadian connection. The metros we track on it hold 104,530 private warehousing jobs, 5.5% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Detroit (30,083), Minneapolis (6,599) and Milwaukee (8,262).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Atlanta (49,050), Phoenix (42,340) and Indianapolis (41,067).

What the size of the market means

A market this size is made of many separate sites, so a pile in Chicago 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 Chicago load looks like

Expect chemical manufacturing first: 40,767 jobs in 2025. Photograph any staining and the drum seats and, for grocery and related product wholesale, every mark, logo and RFID bump. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Any Chicago pallet with a name, tag or odd colour waits for an owner check.