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

Indianapolis in the numbers

The Indianapolis metro counts 41,067 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 2.16% of the US industry and 4.2% of private jobs in the metro, 6th of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 11 counties: Boone, Brown, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks and Johnson and others. Warehousing is 4.2% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 60.8% of Indiana's 67,506 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 46168 (Plainfield, 39).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Boone (12,552), Hendricks (11,774) and Marion (7,943).

• Boone County12,552 jobs, 30.6% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Hendricks County11,774 jobs, 28.7% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Marion County7,943 jobs, 19.3% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Indianapolis metro. The most concentrated is pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, at 6.4 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage41,067 jobs in 2025, 2.16% 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.
• Chemical manufacturing18,829 jobs in 2025, 2.11% of the US total. 48 x 48 pallets for four 55-gallon drums without overhang, 45 x 45 CP9 pallets for bags and boxes, often heavy-duty with sumps. 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.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing16,345 jobs in 2025, 4.66% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 and 43 x 43 pallets, sometimes PP for sterilisation, with documents on resin and colour. Validation changes, cleanroom upgrades and audits retire pallets in lots. Pallets are often kept sound and retired for compliance, not damage. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any batch plates.

On the freight lanes: I-65 and I-70

Indianapolis 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: Chicago (59,586), Nashville (19,548) and Louisville/Jefferson County (14,533).

Indianapolis sits on I-70, which runs from I-15 near Cove Fort, Utah, to I-695 near Baltimore, Maryland. The metros we track on it hold 135,057 private warehousing jobs, 7.1% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Columbus (34,200), Kansas City (20,676), St. Louis (16,879), Denver (15,858) and Baltimore (6,377).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Phoenix (42,340), Northern New Jersey (39,367) and Philadelphia (38,250).

What the size of the market means

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

Expect warehousing and storage first: 41,067 jobs in 2025. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for chemical manufacturing, any staining and the drum seats. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Any Indianapolis pallet with a name, tag or odd colour waits for an owner check.