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

Scranton in the numbers

The Scranton metro counts 18,912 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 0.99% of the US industry and 8.4% of private jobs in the metro, 22nd of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 3 counties: Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wyoming. Warehousing is 8.4% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 15.3% of Pennsylvania's 123,481 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 18640 (Pittston, 28).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Luzerne (13,602) and Lackawanna (5,310).

• Luzerne County13,602 jobs, 71.9% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Lackawanna County5,310 jobs, 28.1% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Scranton metro. The most concentrated is warehousing and storage, at 5.9 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage18,912 jobs in 2025, 0.99% 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.
• Food manufacturing4,798 jobs in 2025, 0.27% 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. 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.
• Beverage manufacturing1,378 jobs in 2025, 0.43% 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.

On the freight lanes: I-81 and I-80

Scranton sits on I-81, which runs from I-40 at Dandridge, Tennessee, to the Canadian border at Wellesley Island, New York. The metros we track on it hold 39,746 private warehousing jobs, 2.1% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Knoxville (1,751), Harrisburg (17,241) and Hagerstown (1,842).

Scranton sits on I-80, which runs from I-80 is 2,900 miles long, from San Francisco, California, to I-95 at Teaneck, New Jersey, through California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The metros we track on it hold 155,780 private warehousing jobs, 8.2% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: San Francisco (9,473), Chicago (59,586), Northern New Jersey (39,367), Salt Lake City (6,623), Reno (12,269), Omaha (5,157) and Des Moines (4,393).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Lehigh Valley (19,122), Charlotte (18,437) and Nashville (19,548).

Elsewhere in Pennsylvania

Lehigh Valley (19,122 jobs, 1.01 times Scranton, busiest ZIP 18031), Harrisburg (17,241 jobs, 0.91 times Scranton, busiest ZIP 17050), Philadelphia (38,250 jobs, 2.02 times Scranton, busiest ZIP 08102), Pittsburgh (9,826 jobs, 0.52 times Scranton, busiest ZIP 16066) and Lancaster (6,994 jobs, 0.37 times Scranton, busiest ZIP 17601) 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 Scranton 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 Scranton load looks like

Warehousing and storage comes first here, at 18,912 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for food manufacturing, the deck surface and any staining. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marks are checked before anything is ground.