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

How North Dakota compares

North Dakota ranks 46th of the 50 states for private warehousing and storage jobs, with 1,438 in 2025 across 61 establishments. A typical site employs 23.6 people.

The state sits in the West North Central states, a Census division. Its sites average 23.6 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 0.26% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in North Dakota

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: Cass (1,186), Grand Forks (73) and Traill (28).

• Cass County1,186 jobs, 82.5% of the North Dakota total.
• Grand Forks County73 jobs, 5.1% of the North Dakota total.
• Traill County28 jobs, 1.9% of the North Dakota total.

What fills the yards in North Dakota

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

• Food manufacturing5,564 private jobs in 2025, 0.3% 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. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Grocery and related product wholesale1,946 private jobs in 2025, 0.2% of the US total. High volume and many inbound shippers. Strays collect at the back of the yard. Sets retire when a retailer changes its pallet standard. 48 x 40 pallets of many styles and marks, nestables for returns and the rented pool pallets that arrive with suppliers’ freight. In a pile from here, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.

The rest of North Dakota's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 5,564 and auto parts 678. Measured against the national share of employment, food manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 1.2 times.

Cold storage in North Dakota

USDA counted 10 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in North Dakota on October 1, 2025, 31st of 36 states. Cold stores wear pallets differently, and the refrigerated warehousing page says how.

What the size of the state means

North Dakota 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 West North Central states

Against North Dakota's 1,438 warehousing jobs, the largest metros in the same division are Kansas City, Missouri (20,676, 14.38 times), St. Louis, Missouri (16,879, 11.74 times), Minneapolis, Minnesota (6,599, 4.59 times), Omaha, Nebraska (5,157, 3.59 times), Des Moines, Iowa (4,393, 3.05 times) and Sioux Falls, South Dakota (2,930, 2.04 times).

Next to North Dakota

The table sets the warehousing counts of Minnesota, Montana and South Dakota against North Dakota.

Loads from the rest of North Dakota

North Dakota 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 North Dakota

No North Dakota-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 North Dakota load

For a North Dakota pickup: ZIP, count, footprint. From food manufacturing, photograph the deck surface and any staining. From grocery and related product wholesale, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.