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

San Antonio in the numbers

The San Antonio metro counts 16,751 private jobs in warehousing and storage for 2025. That is 0.88% of the US industry and 1.8% of private jobs in the metro, 26th of 60 here. Only counties with disclosed figures are counted, so the true number is a little higher.

It spans 8 counties: Atascosa, Bandera, Bexar, Comal, Guadalupe and Kendall and others. Warehousing is 1.8% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 9.5% of Texas's 175,579 warehousing jobs. 5 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 78218 (San Antonio, 29).

County by county

The largest warehousing counties in the metro: Bexar (14,487) and Comal (2,264).

• Bexar County14,487 jobs, 86.5% of the metro's disclosed total.
• Comal County2,264 jobs, 13.5% of the metro's disclosed total.

The industries behind the loads

2 industries are named for the San Antonio metro. The most concentrated is motor vehicle manufacturing, at 3.0 times the national share of employment.

• Warehousing and storage16,751 jobs in 2025, 0.88% of the US total. Check the strays first. Then separate the rackables, which are usually PP, from the nestables, which are usually HDPE. Describe each stack as its own line. 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 manufacturing6,165 jobs in 2025, 2.14% of the US total. 48 x 45 pallets matched to bulk containers for parts, heavy duty, closed loop with known sites. A model change or a supplier change retires a footprint. Heavy dynamic loads wear runners. Plants run returnable programmes, so pallets that leave the loop are noticed. In a pile from here, photograph the plant or supplier markings.

On the freight lanes: I-35 and I-10

San Antonio sits on I-35, which runs from Laredo, Texas, at the Mexican border to Duluth, Minnesota, splitting into I-35E and I-35W at Dallas-Fort Worth and again at the Twin Cities. The metros we track on it hold 147,019 private warehousing jobs, 7.7% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Dallas (82,593), Laredo (2,014), Austin (5,657), Kansas City (20,676), Minneapolis (6,599), Oklahoma City (8,336) and Des Moines (4,393).

San Antonio sits on I-10, which runs from I-10 is the southernmost transcontinental Interstate, 2,460 miles long, the fourth-longest in the country. The metros we track on it hold 255,943 private warehousing jobs, 13.5% of the US total (disclosed counties only). Also on it: Los Angeles (27,225), Inland Empire (118,368), Houston (33,785), Jacksonville (15,384), Phoenix (42,340) and New Orleans (2,090).

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are St. Louis (16,879), Harrisburg (17,241) and Denver (15,858).

Elsewhere in Texas

Dallas (82,593 jobs, 4.93 times San Antonio, busiest ZIP 75050), Houston (33,785 jobs, 2.02 times San Antonio, busiest ZIP 77571), Laredo (2,014 jobs, 0.12 times San Antonio, busiest ZIP 78045) and Austin (5,657 jobs, 0.34 times San Antonio, busiest ZIP 78744) are the other metros we cover in Texas, which has 175,579 warehousing jobs in all.

What the size of the market means

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

Warehousing and storage comes first here, at 16,751 jobs. Photograph the yard stacks, from the dock side and, for motor vehicle manufacturing, the plant or supplier markings. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marks are checked before anything is ground.