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

Philadelphia in the numbers

Philadelphia had 38,250 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 2.01% of the national total and 8th of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 11 counties: Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Bucks, Chester and Montgomery and others. Warehousing is 1.5% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 31.0% of Pennsylvania's 123,481 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 08102 (Camden, 33).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Burlington (10,713), Gloucester (9,948) and Philadelphia (4,671).

• Burlington County10,713 jobs, 28.0% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Gloucester County9,948 jobs, 26.0% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Philadelphia County4,671 jobs, 12.2% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the Philadelphia metro. The most concentrated is pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, at 2.3 times the national share of employment.

• Chemical manufacturing28,734 jobs in 2025, 3.22% of the US total. 48 x 48 pallets for four 55-gallon drums without overhang, 45 x 45 CP9 pallets for bags and boxes, often heavy-duty with sumps. Say what the pallets carried. A residue of an unknown chemical is a stop. A drum pallet that held a benign material is a normal stream. In a pile from here, photograph any staining and the drum seats.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing15,593 jobs in 2025, 4.44% 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.

On the freight lanes: I-95

Philadelphia sits on I-95, which runs from I-95 is the main north-south Interstate on the East Coast, running from Miami, Florida, to the Houlton-Woodstock border crossing between Maine and New Brunswick. The metros we track on it hold 127,866 private warehousing jobs, 6.7% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Savannah (6,384), Northern New Jersey (39,367), Miami (22,104), Jacksonville (15,384) and Baltimore (6,377).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Northern New Jersey (39,367), Indianapolis (41,067) and Columbus (34,200).

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania

Lehigh Valley (19,122 jobs, 0.50 times Philadelphia, busiest ZIP 18031), Harrisburg (17,241 jobs, 0.45 times Philadelphia, busiest ZIP 17050), Pittsburgh (9,826 jobs, 0.26 times Philadelphia, busiest ZIP 16066), Lancaster (6,994 jobs, 0.18 times Philadelphia, busiest ZIP 17601) and Scranton (18,912 jobs, 0.49 times Philadelphia, 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 market this size is made of many separate sites, so a pile in Philadelphia 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 Philadelphia load looks like

The biggest named industry is chemical manufacturing, with 28,734 jobs. Photograph any staining and the drum seats and, for pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, the deck surface and any batch plates. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marked pallets get the ownership check first.