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

How New York compares

New York ranks 10th of the 50 states for private warehousing and storage jobs, with 55,371 in 2025 across 833 establishments. A typical site employs 66.5 people.

The state sits in the Middle Atlantic, a Census division. Its sites average 66.5 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 3.57% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in New York

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: Onondaga (6,329), Monroe (5,986) and Erie (3,237).

• Onondaga County6,329 jobs, 11.4% of the New York total.
• Monroe County5,986 jobs, 10.8% of the New York total.
• Erie County3,237 jobs, 5.8% of the New York total.

What fills the yards in New York

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

• Food manufacturing60,316 private jobs in 2025, 3.4% 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.
• Warehousing and storage55,371 private jobs in 2025, 2.9% 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. 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.

The rest of New York's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 60,316, pharmaceutical manufacturing 25,087, motor vehicle assembly 452 and auto parts 8,145. Measured against the national share of employment, food manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 0.5 times.

Cold storage in New York

USDA counted 56 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in New York on October 1, 2025, 22nd of 36 states. Cold stores wear pallets differently, and the refrigerated warehousing page says how.

What the size of the state means

New York is one of the ten biggest warehouse states, so a load here usually comes from a cluster and not an outlier. Expect several footprints and a mix of owned and pooled pallets, and describe each stack as its own line.

Big metros elsewhere in the Middle Atlantic

Against New York's 55,371 warehousing jobs, the largest metros in the same division are Northern New Jersey, New Jersey (39,367, 0.71 times), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (38,250, 0.69 times), Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania (19,122, 0.35 times), Scranton, Pennsylvania (18,912, 0.34 times), Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (17,241, 0.31 times) and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (9,826, 0.18 times).

Next to New York

The table sets the warehousing counts of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Vermont against New York.

Loads from the rest of New York

New York 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 York

New York has no rule we can cite on stray proprietary pallets. Until an owner is ruled out by the marks, nothing in a New York load is ground.

Describing a New York load

Three facts first for New York: ZIP, count, footprint. Pallets from warehousing and storage want the yard stacks, from the dock side photographed; food manufacturing pallets want the deck surface and any staining photographed.