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

Nashville in the numbers

Nashville had 19,548 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, 1.03% of the national total and 20th of the 60 metros we cover. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 14 counties: Cannon, Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Hickman and Macon and others. Warehousing is 2.0% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 36.6% of Tennessee's 53,427 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 37086 (La Vergne, 30).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Wilson (9,641), Rutherford (5,778) and Davidson (2,381).

• Wilson County9,641 jobs, 49.3% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Rutherford County5,778 jobs, 29.6% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Davidson County2,381 jobs, 12.2% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the Nashville metro. The most concentrated is motor vehicle parts manufacturing, at 1.5 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage19,548 jobs in 2025, 1.03% of the US total. Forklift tines split decks and chip corners. A racking change retires one style at once. Strays arrive on inbound trailers from shippers who use pooled pallets, and sit in the yard until someone asks whose they are. In a pile from here, photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side.
• Motor vehicle parts manufacturing5,885 jobs in 2025, 1.13% of the US total. 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.

On the freight lanes: I-65 and I-40

Nashville sits on I-65, which runs from I-10 at Mobile, Alabama, to Gary, Indiana, joining the Gulf Coast to Chicago and passing Birmingham, Nashville, Louisville and Indianapolis. The metros we track on it hold 134,734 private warehousing jobs, 7.1% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Chicago (59,586), Louisville/Jefferson County (14,533) and Indianapolis (41,067).

Nashville sits on I-40, which runs from I-40 is a transcontinental Interstate 2,556 miles long through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina, the third-longest in the country. The metros we track on it hold 57,377 private warehousing jobs, 3.0% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Memphis (27,742), Knoxville (1,751) and Oklahoma City (8,336).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Cincinnati (19,940), Lehigh Valley (19,122) and Scranton (18,912).

Elsewhere in Tennessee

Memphis (27,742 jobs, 1.42 times Nashville, busiest ZIP 38118) and Knoxville (1,751 jobs, 0.09 times Nashville, busiest ZIP 37921) are the other metros we cover in Tennessee, which has 53,427 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

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

Expect warehousing and storage first: 19,548 jobs in 2025. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for motor vehicle parts manufacturing, the stack and a runner close up. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Any Nashville pallet with a name, tag or odd colour waits for an owner check.