Plastic pallet recycling in Greenville-Spartanburg: ZIPs, industries and the loads they leave behind

Greenville-Spartanburg in the numbers

The Greenville-Spartanburg metro counts 4,575 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 0.24% of the US industry and 1.2% of private jobs in the metro, 47th of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 4 counties: Anderson, Greenville, Laurens and Pickens. Warehousing is 1.2% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 16.9% of South Carolina's 27,150 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 29651 (Greer, 20).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Greenville (2,870), Laurens (986) and Anderson (719).

• Greenville County2,870 jobs, 62.7% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Laurens County986 jobs, 21.6% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Anderson County719 jobs, 15.7% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

3 industries are named for the Greenville-Spartanburg metro. The most concentrated is motor vehicle parts manufacturing, at 2.8 times the national share of employment.

• Chemical manufacturing6,048 jobs in 2025, 0.68% 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.
• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing4,058 jobs in 2025, 0.78% of the US total. Uniform stock is easy to describe: one footprint, one colour, one maker. Say if oil or metal swarf was on the decks. End of a vehicle programme, change of a customer container, wear on heavy loads. A supplier that served one assembler can hold thousands of one footprint. In a pile from here, photograph the stack and a runner close up.
• Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing2,140 jobs in 2025, 0.61% 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-85

Greenville-Spartanburg sits on I-85, which runs from I-65 in Montgomery, Alabama, to I-95 near Petersburg, Virginia, and is a regional route serving Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. The metros we track on it hold 72,718 private warehousing jobs, 3.8% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Atlanta (49,050), Gainesville, Georgia (656) and Charlotte (18,437).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Des Moines (4,393), Fresno (5,006) and Omaha (5,157).

Elsewhere in South Carolina

Charleston (3,242 jobs, 0.71 times Greenville-Spartanburg, busiest ZIP 29456) is the other metro we cover in South Carolina, which has 27,150 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

A smaller market, with fewer sites within reach of each other. For a pile in Greenville-Spartanburg, say whether it can be held and for how long, and whether the pallets are stacked where a truck can reach them.

What a Greenville-Spartanburg load looks like

Expect chemical manufacturing first: 6,048 jobs in 2025. Photograph any staining and the drum seats and, for motor vehicle parts manufacturing, the stack and a runner close up. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Any Greenville-Spartanburg pallet with a name, tag or odd colour waits for an owner check.