Plastic pallet recycling in Vermont: what the yards hold and where it goes

How Vermont compares

Vermont ranks 48th of the 50 states for private warehousing and storage jobs, with 1,057 in 2025 across 42 establishments. A typical site employs 25.2 people.

The state sits in New England, a Census division. Its sites average 25.2 jobs against 81.5 across the country, and it holds 0.18% of the nation's warehousing establishments.

Where the warehousing jobs sit in Vermont

The counties with the most warehousing jobs, from the same BLS count: Franklin (342), Chittenden (227) and Windham (21).

• Franklin County342 jobs, 32.4% of the Vermont total.
• Chittenden County227 jobs, 21.5% of the Vermont total.
• Windham County21 jobs, 2.0% of the Vermont total.

What fills the yards in Vermont

2 further industries are named in the market data for Vermont. Each retires pallets for its own reasons.

• Food manufacturing5,348 private jobs in 2025, 0.3% of the US total. Sanitation audits remove cracked or stained pallets. A change of packaging line retires a colour-coded set. Pallets that held ingredients with strong odours or oils are culled early. 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. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Dairy product manufacturing2,148 private jobs in 2025, 1.3% of the US total. Hygienic 48 x 40 pallets in HDPE or PP, closed deck, easy to wash, used through chill rooms and dispatch. In a pile from here, photograph the colour code and any cracks.

The rest of Vermont's pallet economy

Private jobs in 2025: food manufacturing 5,348, pharmaceutical manufacturing 480 and auto parts 299. Measured against the national share of employment, dairy product manufacturing is the most concentrated pallet-using industry here, at 6.7 times.

Cold storage in Vermont

USDA counted 5 million cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse space in Vermont on October 1, 2025, 35th of 36 states. Cold stores wear pallets differently, and the refrigerated warehousing page says how.

What the size of the state means

Vermont is among the smaller warehouse states, so a pile here may be far from the next one. Say whether the load can be held, whether the pallets are reachable by truck, and how many there are.

Next to Vermont

The table sets the warehousing counts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York against Vermont.

Loads from the rest of Vermont

Vermont has no metro page yet. A load from anywhere in the state goes the same way: ZIP, count, what the pallets carried, and we say which lane suits it.

Marked pallets in Vermont

No Vermont-specific rule on stray proprietary pallets appears in our sources. Check every pallet for marks first; California's AB 1760 is the one rule we cite.

Describing a Vermont load

For a Vermont pickup: ZIP, count, footprint. From food manufacturing, photograph the deck surface and any staining. From dairy product manufacturing, photograph the colour code and any cracks.