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

New Orleans in the numbers

With 2,090 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, New Orleans stands 53rd of 60 metros in our data, 0.11% of the country. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 7 counties: Jefferson, Orleans, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles and St. James and others. Warehousing is 0.5% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 13.6% of Louisiana's 15,312 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 70121 (New Orleans, 9).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Jefferson (1,148) and Orleans (680).

• Jefferson County1,148 jobs, 54.9% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Orleans County680 jobs, 32.5% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the New Orleans metro. The most concentrated is chemical manufacturing, at 1.9 times the national share of employment.

• Chemical manufacturing4,936 jobs in 2025, 0.55% 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.
• Food manufacturing3,516 jobs in 2025, 0.20% of the US total. 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.

On the freight lanes: I-10

New Orleans sits on I-10, which runs from I-10 is the southernmost transcontinental Interstate, 2,460 miles long, the fourth-longest in the country. The metros we track on it hold 255,943 private warehousing jobs, 13.5% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Los Angeles (27,225), Inland Empire (118,368), Houston (33,785), San Antonio (16,751), Jacksonville (15,384) and Phoenix (42,340).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Laredo (2,014), Hagerstown (1,842) and Knoxville (1,751).

What the size of the market means

A smaller market, with fewer sites within reach of each other. For a pile in New Orleans, say whether it can be held and for how long, and whether the pallets are stacked where a truck can reach them.

What a New Orleans load looks like

Chemical manufacturing comes first here, at 4,936 jobs. Photograph any staining and the drum seats and, for food manufacturing, the deck surface and any staining. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marks are checked before anything is ground.