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

Hagerstown in the numbers

Hagerstown had 1,842 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 0.10% of the national total and 55th of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 3 counties: Washington, Berkeley and Morgan. Warehousing is 2.1% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 6.1% of Maryland's 29,966 warehousing jobs. 1 ZIP code stands out for sites, led by 21740 (Hagerstown, 14).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Washington (1,842).

• Washington County1,842 jobs, 100.0% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Hagerstown metro. The most concentrated is plastics product manufacturing, at 4.3 times the national share of employment.

• Chemical manufacturing2,378 jobs in 2025, 0.27% 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.
• Warehousing and storage1,842 jobs in 2025, 0.10% of the US total. 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. 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.
• Plastics product manufacturing1,661 jobs in 2025, 0.29% of the US total. Retired stock after a product line ends. Some processors regrind their own scrap, and a pallet pile is one more feedstock. Pallets for resin bags and finished goods, 48 x 40 and 43 x 43 for bulk bags. Moulders may also make pallets. In a pile from here, photograph moulded codes and maker marks.

On the freight lanes: I-81

Hagerstown sits on I-81, which runs from I-40 at Dandridge, Tennessee, to the Canadian border at Wellesley Island, New York. The metros we track on it hold 39,746 private warehousing jobs, 2.1% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Knoxville (1,751), Harrisburg (17,241) and Scranton (18,912).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Knoxville (1,751), Laredo (2,014) and New Orleans (2,090).

Elsewhere in Maryland

Baltimore (6,377 jobs, 3.46 times Hagerstown, busiest ZIP 20794) is the other metro we cover in Maryland, which has 29,966 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

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

What a Hagerstown load looks like

The biggest named industry is chemical manufacturing, with 2,378 jobs. Photograph any staining and the drum seats and, for warehousing and storage, the yard stacks, from the dock side. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.