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

Columbus in the numbers

The Columbus metro counts 34,200 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 1.80% of the US industry and 3.6% of private jobs in the metro, 9th of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 10 counties: Delaware, Fairfield, Franklin, Hocking, Licking and Madison and others. Warehousing is 3.6% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 34.8% of Ohio's 98,354 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 43137 (Lockbourne, 39).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Franklin (18,179), Madison (7,480) and Licking (6,644).

• Franklin County18,179 jobs, 53.2% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Madison County7,480 jobs, 21.9% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Licking County6,644 jobs, 19.4% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Columbus metro. The most concentrated is dairy product manufacturing, at 2.7 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage34,200 jobs in 2025, 1.80% of the US total. Forklift tines split decks and chip corners. A racking change retires one style at once. Strays arrive on inbound trailers from shippers who use pooled pallets, and sit in the yard until someone asks whose they are. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Dairy product manufacturing3,229 jobs in 2025, 1.92% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 pallets in HDPE or PP, closed deck, easy to wash, used through chill rooms and dispatch. Cold-room cycles and wash chemistry. Dairy residue and milk fats cling to textured decks. Pallets are replaced on a schedule or when a crack harbours residue. In a pile from here, photograph the colour code and any cracks.
• Beverage manufacturing3,154 jobs in 2025, 1.00% of the US total. Beverage pallets at 56 x 44 and 48 x 40, stackable for heavy static loads. PHS lists a 56 x 44 beverage pallet at 30,000 lb static. Heavy glass and can loads crush runners over time. Route changes and returnable programmes retire whole sets. Weather in outdoor yards ages the surface. In a pile from here, photograph the runners and the model plate.

On the freight lanes: I-70

Columbus 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: Indianapolis (41,067), Kansas City (20,676), St. Louis (16,879), Denver (15,858) and Baltimore (6,377).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Houston (33,785), Philadelphia (38,250) and Detroit (30,083).

Elsewhere in Ohio

Cincinnati (19,940 jobs, 0.58 times Columbus, busiest ZIP 41048) and Cleveland (13,652 jobs, 0.40 times Columbus, busiest ZIP 44139) are the other metros we cover in Ohio, which has 98,354 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 Columbus 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 Columbus load looks like

Warehousing and storage comes first here, at 34,200 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for dairy product manufacturing, the colour code and any cracks. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marks are checked before anything is ground.