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

Lehigh Valley in the numbers

Lehigh Valley had 19,122 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 1.01% of the national total and 21st of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 4 counties: Warren, Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton. Warehousing is 5.7% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 15.5% of Pennsylvania's 123,481 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 18031 (Breinigsville, 12).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Lehigh (9,774), Northampton (9,164) and Warren (184).

• Lehigh County9,774 jobs, 51.1% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Northampton County9,164 jobs, 47.9% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Warren County184 jobs, 1.0% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

4 industries are named for the Lehigh Valley metro. The most concentrated is warehousing and storage, at 4.0 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage19,122 jobs in 2025, 1.01% 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. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Chemical manufacturing3,920 jobs in 2025, 0.44% of the US total. Chemical resistance is why plastic is chosen. Wear, leaks and spills retire them. CP9 changes retire a whole footprint. In a pile from here, photograph any staining and the drum seats.
• Beverage manufacturing2,486 jobs in 2025, 0.78% of the US total. Heavy pallets weigh a lot. Say the footprint and model if you know it. Stack sound ones apart, since a sound heavy-duty stackable can be worth reusing. 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.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing1,258 jobs in 2025, 0.36% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 and 43 x 43 pallets, sometimes PP for sterilisation, with documents on resin and colour. Validation changes, cleanroom upgrades and audits retire pallets in lots. Pallets are often kept sound and retired for compliance, not damage. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any batch plates.

Freight around Lehigh Valley

Lehigh Valley is not on one of the twelve corridors we read, so we place a load here by ZIP and by the distance to the nearest metro we cover, Scranton.

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Scranton (18,912), Nashville (19,548) and Charlotte (18,437).

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania

Harrisburg (17,241 jobs, 0.90 times Lehigh Valley, busiest ZIP 17050), Philadelphia (38,250 jobs, 2.00 times Lehigh Valley, busiest ZIP 08102), Pittsburgh (9,826 jobs, 0.51 times Lehigh Valley, busiest ZIP 16066), Lancaster (6,994 jobs, 0.37 times Lehigh Valley, busiest ZIP 17601) and Scranton (18,912 jobs, 0.99 times Lehigh Valley, busiest ZIP 18640) are the other metros we cover in Pennsylvania, which has 123,481 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

A mid-sized warehouse market. Loads around Lehigh Valley 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 Lehigh Valley load looks like

The biggest named industry is warehousing and storage, with 19,122 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for chemical manufacturing, any staining and the drum seats. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.