Plastic pallet recycling in Maine: what the yards hold and where it goes

How Maine compares

Across 72 establishments, warehousing and storage in Maine employed 3,774 people in 2025. That is 0.20% of the national total and puts the state 40th of 50, with an average of 52.4 jobs per site.

The state sits in New England, a Census division. Its sites average 52.4 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 0.31% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in Maine

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: Cumberland (1,731), Kennebec (419) and York (391).

• Cumberland County1,731 jobs, 45.9% of the Maine total.
• Kennebec County419 jobs, 11.1% of the Maine total.
• York County391 jobs, 10.4% of the Maine total.

What fills the yards in Maine

2 further industries are named in the market data for Maine. Each retires pallets for its own reasons.

• Food manufacturing5,673 private jobs in 2025, 0.3% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 and 40 x 48 pallets in HDPE or PP, often with closed decks and colour-coding by zone. Some are listed as food safe but not approved for direct food contact. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing2,783 private jobs in 2025, 0.8% of the US total. A sound, clean, documented pallet is worth more as a pallet. Say if paperwork exists. Say if any pallet touched product or chemicals. 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.

The rest of Maine's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 5,673, pharmaceutical manufacturing 2,783 and auto parts 528. Measured against the national share of employment, pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 1.9 times.

Cold storage in Maine

USDA counted 8 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in Maine on October 1, 2025, 34th of 36 states. Cold stores wear pallets differently, and the refrigerated warehousing page says how.

What the size of the state means

Maine is among the smaller warehouse states, so a pile here may be far from the next one. Say whether the load can be held, whether the pallets are reachable by truck, and how many there are.

Next to Maine

The table sets the warehousing counts of New Hampshire against Maine.

Loads from the rest of Maine

Maine has no metro page yet. A load from anywhere in the state goes the same way: ZIP, count, what the pallets carried, and we say which lane suits it.

Marked pallets in Maine

No Maine-specific rule on stray proprietary pallets appears in our sources. Check every pallet for marks first; California's AB 1760 is the one rule we cite.

Describing a Maine load

For a Maine pickup: ZIP, count, footprint. From food manufacturing, photograph the deck surface and any staining. From pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, photograph the deck surface and any batch plates.