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

Kansas City in the numbers

Kansas City had 20,676 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 1.09% of the national total and 18th of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 14 counties: Johnson, Leavenworth, Linn, Miami, Wyandotte and Bates and others. Warehousing is 2.2% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 77.4% of Missouri's 26,726 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 64161 (Kansas City, 18).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Johnson (6,642), Wyandotte (6,378) and Cass (3,306).

• Johnson County6,642 jobs, 32.1% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Wyandotte County6,378 jobs, 30.8% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Cass County3,306 jobs, 16.0% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the Kansas City metro. The most concentrated is warehousing and storage, at 1.5 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage20,676 jobs in 2025, 1.09% of the US total. 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.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing3,433 jobs in 2025, 0.98% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 and 43 x 43 pallets, sometimes PP for sterilisation, with documents on resin and colour. A sound, clean, documented pallet is worth more as a pallet. Say if paperwork exists. Say if any pallet touched product or chemicals. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any batch plates.

On the freight lanes: I-70 and I-35

Kansas City sits on I-70, which runs from I-15 near Cove Fort, Utah, to I-695 near Baltimore, Maryland. The metros we track on it hold 135,057 private warehousing jobs, 7.1% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Columbus (34,200), Indianapolis (41,067), St. Louis (16,879), Denver (15,858) and Baltimore (6,377).

Kansas City sits on I-35, which runs from Laredo, Texas, at the Mexican border to Duluth, Minnesota, splitting into I-35E and I-35W at Dallas-Fort Worth and again at the Twin Cities. The metros we track on it hold 147,019 private warehousing jobs, 7.7% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Dallas (82,593), Laredo (2,014), San Antonio (16,751), Austin (5,657), Minneapolis (6,599), Oklahoma City (8,336) and Des Moines (4,393).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Cincinnati (19,940), Nashville (19,548) and Miami (22,104).

Elsewhere in Missouri

St. Louis (16,879 jobs, 0.82 times Kansas City, busiest ZIP 63042) is the other metro we cover in Missouri, which has 26,726 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

A market this size is made of many separate sites, so a pile in Kansas City is rarely the only one nearby. Large distribution clusters bring pooled pallets and mixed footprints into the same trailer, which is why the marks and the sizes get listed before anything else.

What a Kansas City load looks like

Warehousing and storage comes first here, at 20,676 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, the deck surface and any batch plates. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marks are checked before anything is ground.