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

Portland in the numbers

The Portland metro counts 8,157 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 0.43% of the US industry and 0.8% of private jobs in the metro, 38th of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 7 counties: Clackamas, Columbia, Multnomah, Washington, Yamhill and Clark and others. Warehousing is 0.8% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 48.7% of Oregon's 16,750 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 97230 (Portland, 26).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Multnomah (7,435), Clark (350) and Clackamas (324).

• Multnomah County7,435 jobs, 91.1% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Clark County350 jobs, 4.3% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Clackamas County324 jobs, 4.0% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the Portland metro. The most concentrated is food manufacturing, at 1.0 times the national share of employment.

• Food manufacturing13,772 jobs in 2025, 0.78% 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.
• Grocery and related product wholesale8,259 jobs in 2025, 1.00% of the US total. 48 x 40 pallets of many styles and marks, nestables for returns and the rented pool pallets that arrive with suppliers’ freight. Sort marked from unmarked first. Count the unmarked by style. This industry is where the ownership check matters most. In a pile from here, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.

On the freight lanes: I-5

Portland sits on I-5, which runs from I-5 is the West Coast's main north-south Interstate through California, Oregon and Washington, and the only continuous Interstate joining the Mexican and Canadian borders. The metros we track on it hold 86,962 private warehousing jobs, 4.6% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Los Angeles (27,225), Stockton (28,518) and Seattle (23,062).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Milwaukee (8,262), Oklahoma City (8,336) and Lancaster (6,994).

What the size of the market means

A mid-sized warehouse market. Loads around Portland tend to come from a handful of big sites and a long tail of small ones, and a full trailer from one site is a different job from three part-loads from three. Say which yours is.

What a Portland load looks like

The biggest named industry is food manufacturing, with 13,772 jobs. Photograph the deck surface and any staining and, for grocery and related product wholesale, every mark, logo and RFID bump. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.