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

Louisville in the numbers

Louisville had 14,533 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 0.76% of the national total and 29th of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 12 counties: Clark, Floyd, Harrison, Washington, Bullitt and Henry and others. Warehousing is 2.4% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 38.0% of Kentucky's 38,281 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 47130 (Jeffersonville, 19).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Bullitt (7,642), Jefferson (6,859) and Floyd (18).

• Bullitt County7,642 jobs, 52.6% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Jefferson County6,859 jobs, 47.2% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Floyd County18 jobs, 0.1% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Louisville metro. The most concentrated is motor vehicle parts manufacturing, at 2.0 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage14,533 jobs in 2025, 0.76% of the US total. 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. General-purpose 48 x 40 pallets, nestables for empty storage and rackables on beams. Warehouses hold the widest mix of styles of any industry here, so mixed resin and mixed colour piles are normal. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing4,707 jobs in 2025, 0.90% of the US total. End of a vehicle programme, change of a customer container, wear on heavy loads. A supplier that served one assembler can hold thousands of one footprint. 48 x 45 pallets matching heavy auto parts bulk containers, and 48 x 40 for general parts flows. Often heavy-duty HDPE with high static ratings. In a pile from here, photograph the stack and a runner close up.
• Beverage manufacturing2,117 jobs in 2025, 0.67% of the US total. Heavy glass and can loads crush runners over time. Route changes and returnable programmes retire whole sets. Weather in outdoor yards ages the surface. In a pile from here, photograph the runners and the model plate.

On the freight lanes: I-65

Louisville 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 Indianapolis (41,067).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Orlando (13,928), Jacksonville (15,384) and Cleveland (13,652).

What the size of the market means

A mid-sized warehouse market. Loads around Louisville tend to come from a handful of big sites and a long tail of small ones, and a full trailer from one site is a different job from three part-loads from three. Say which yours is.

What a Louisville load looks like

The biggest named industry is warehousing and storage, with 14,533 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for motor vehicle parts manufacturing, the stack and a runner close up. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.