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

How New Mexico compares

Counting 5,725 private jobs in warehousing and storage at 66 sites, New Mexico stands 38th among the states, 0.30% of the country. The mean site holds 86.7 workers.

The state sits in the Mountain states, a Census division. Its sites average 86.7 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 0.28% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in New Mexico

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: Ana (411) and Santa Fe (16).

• Ana County411 jobs, 7.2% of the New Mexico total.
• Santa Fe County16 jobs, 0.3% of the New Mexico total.

What fills the yards in New Mexico

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

• Food manufacturing6,374 private jobs in 2025, 0.4% of the US total. Say what the pallets carried. A load that touched edible oil is a different bin from a load that sat under sealed cartons. FDA does not approve pallet models, and recycled regrind is not made for food contact. 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.
• Dairy product manufacturing1,732 private jobs in 2025, 1.0% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 pallets in HDPE or PP, closed deck, easy to wash, used through chill rooms and dispatch. Say if pallets were washed with strong chemicals. Say if any are coloured to mark zones. Dairies often retire sets of one colour. In a pile from here, photograph the colour code and any cracks.

The rest of New Mexico's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 6,374, pharmaceutical manufacturing 839 and auto parts 10. Measured against the national share of employment, dairy product manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 2.0 times.

What the size of the state means

New Mexico 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.

Big metros elsewhere in the Mountain states

Against New Mexico's 5,725 warehousing jobs, the largest metros in the same division are Phoenix, Arizona (42,340, 7.40 times), Las Vegas, Nevada (28,250, 4.93 times), Denver, Colorado (15,858, 2.77 times), Reno, Nevada (12,269, 2.14 times) and Salt Lake City, Utah (6,623, 1.16 times).

Next to New Mexico

The table sets the warehousing counts of Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah against New Mexico.

Loads from the rest of New Mexico

New Mexico 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 New Mexico

We found no New Mexico law on abandoned pooled pallets in the sources behind this page. A mark still means a likely owner, so New Mexico loads get the same ownership check as any other.

Describing a New Mexico load

Begin with the New Mexico ZIP and the count, then the footprint. A food manufacturing pile calls for photos of the deck surface and any staining. For dairy product manufacturing, take the colour code and any cracks.