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

How Mississippi compares

Across 305 establishments, warehousing and storage in Mississippi employed 25,454 people in 2025. That is 1.34% of the national total and puts the state 23rd of 50, with an average of 83.5 jobs per site.

The state sits in the East South Central states, a Census division. Its sites average 83.5 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 1.31% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in Mississippi

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: DeSoto (11,634), Madison (4,239) and Marshall (3,876).

• DeSoto County11,634 jobs, 45.7% of the Mississippi total.
• Madison County4,239 jobs, 16.7% of the Mississippi total.
• Marshall County3,876 jobs, 15.2% of the Mississippi total.

What fills the yards in Mississippi

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

• Warehousing and storage25,454 private jobs in 2025, 1.3% 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. 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. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Food manufacturing24,727 private jobs in 2025, 1.4% 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.
• Meat and poultry processing18,648 private jobs in 2025, 3.4% of the US total. Washdown, grease and thermal cycling. Pallets are retired when the surface cannot be sanitised. Plant remodels retire whole colour-coded sets. Washdown-grade 48 x 40 pallets, often HDPE, in cold and wet rooms. Colour coding separates raw from cooked zones. In a pile from here, photograph the surface condition, close up.
• Motor vehicle manufacturing5,745 private jobs in 2025, 2.0% of the US total. A model change or a supplier change retires a footprint. Heavy dynamic loads wear runners. Plants run returnable programmes, so pallets that leave the loop are noticed. In a pile from here, photograph the plant or supplier markings.
• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing4,926 private jobs in 2025, 0.9% 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. Uniform stock is easy to describe: one footprint, one colour, one maker. Say if oil or metal swarf was on the decks. In a pile from here, photograph the stack and a runner close up.

The rest of Mississippi's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 24,727, pharmaceutical manufacturing 1,138, motor vehicle assembly 5,745 and auto parts 4,926. Measured against the national share of employment, meat and poultry processing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 4.7 times.

Cold storage in Mississippi

USDA counted 14 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in Mississippi on October 1, 2025, 30th of 36 states. Cold stores wear pallets differently, and the refrigerated warehousing page says how.

What the size of the state means

Mississippi is a mid-table warehouse state. The jobs sit in a few places, and a pile outside them is the exception. Give the ZIP early, because distance to the nearest cluster decides how a load is placed.

Big metros elsewhere in the East South Central states

Against Mississippi's 25,454 warehousing jobs, the largest metros in the same division are Memphis, Tennessee (27,742, 1.09 times), Nashville, Tennessee (19,548, 0.77 times), Louisville/Jefferson County, Kentucky (14,533, 0.57 times) and Knoxville, Tennessee (1,751, 0.07 times).

Next to Mississippi

The table sets the warehousing counts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee against Mississippi.

Loads from the rest of Mississippi

Mississippi 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 Mississippi

No Mississippi-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 Mississippi load

For a Mississippi pickup: ZIP, count, footprint. From warehousing and storage, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side. From food manufacturing, photograph the deck surface and any staining.