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

Omaha in the numbers

Omaha had 5,157 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 0.27% of the national total and 45th of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 8 counties: Harrison, Mills, Pottawattamie, Cass, Douglas and Sarpy and others. Warehousing is 1.2% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 62.5% of Nebraska's 8,246 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 68138 (Omaha, 10).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Sarpy (3,613), Douglas (1,252) and Pottawattamie (292).

• Sarpy County3,613 jobs, 70.1% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Douglas County1,252 jobs, 24.3% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Pottawattamie County292 jobs, 5.7% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the Omaha metro. The most concentrated is meat and poultry processing, at 5.3 times the national share of employment.

• Food manufacturing14,636 jobs in 2025, 0.82% 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.
• Meat and poultry processing9,556 jobs in 2025, 1.72% of the US total. Grease and organic residue are contamination. Say how the pallets were cleaned. A degreased, dry load is a normal stream. A greasy one needs a conversation. Washdown, grease and thermal cycling. Pallets are retired when the surface cannot be sanitised. Plant remodels retire whole colour-coded sets. In a pile from here, photograph the surface condition, close up.

On the freight lanes: I-80

Omaha sits on I-80, which runs from I-80 is 2,900 miles long, from San Francisco, California, to I-95 at Teaneck, New Jersey, through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The metros we track on it hold 155,780 private warehousing jobs, 8.2% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: San Francisco (9,473), Chicago (59,586), Northern New Jersey (39,367), Scranton (18,912), Salt Lake City (6,623), Reno (12,269) and Des Moines (4,393).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Fresno (5,006), Austin (5,657) and Greenville (4,575).

What the size of the market means

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

What a Omaha load looks like

The biggest named industry is food manufacturing, with 14,636 jobs. Photograph the deck surface and any staining and, for meat and poultry processing, the surface condition, close up. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.