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

Yakima in the numbers

With 1,309 private warehousing and storage jobs in 2025, Yakima stands 57th of 60 metros in our data, 0.07% of the country.

It spans 1 county: Yakima. Being a one-county metro, its county and its metro counts are the same figure. Warehousing is 1.3% of private jobs there, and the metro holds 3.6% of Washington's 36,691 warehousing jobs. 2 ZIP codes stand out for sites, led by 98930 (Grandview, 4).

The industries behind the loads

4 industries are named for the Yakima metro. The most concentrated is fruit and vegetable preserving, at 8.9 times the national share of employment.

• Food manufacturing2,795 jobs in 2025, 0.16% of the US total. 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. 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. In a pile from here, photograph the deck surface and any staining.
• Grocery and related product wholesale1,602 jobs in 2025, 0.19% of the US total. 48 x 40 pallets of many styles and marks, nestables for returns and the rented pool pallets that arrive with suppliers’ freight. High volume and many inbound shippers. Strays collect at the back of the yard. Sets retire when a retailer changes its pallet standard. In a pile from here, photograph every mark, logo and RFID bump.
• Fruit and vegetable preserving1,125 jobs in 2025, 0.65% of the US total. A pack season ends and the yard is cleared. Sugar and acid residue stain decks. A customer standard change retires a footprint. In a pile from here, photograph a stack from the side, and a stained deck.
• Plastics product manufacturing1,005 jobs in 2025, 0.17% of the US total. Retired stock after a product line ends. Some processors regrind their own scrap, and a pallet pile is one more feedstock. Pallets for resin bags and finished goods, 48 x 40 and 43 x 43 for bulk bags. Moulders may also make pallets. In a pile from here, photograph moulded codes and maker marks.

Freight around Yakima

Yakima is not on one of the twelve corridors we read, so we place a load here by ZIP and by the distance to the nearest metro we cover, Knoxville.

Metros of a similar size

By warehousing jobs the nearest metros are Knoxville (1,751), Hagerstown (1,842) and Gainesville, Georgia (656).

Elsewhere in Washington

Seattle (23,062 jobs, 17.62 times Yakima, busiest ZIP 98032) is the other metro we cover in Washington, which has 36,691 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 Yakima, say whether it can be held and for how long, and whether the pallets are stacked where a truck can reach them.

What a Yakima load looks like

Food manufacturing comes first here, at 2,795 jobs. Photograph the deck surface and any staining and, for grocery and related product wholesale, every mark, logo and RFID bump. Say the ZIP, the count and the footprint. Marks are checked before anything is ground.