Plastic pallets from meat and poultry plants: what a load needs

What meat and poultry plants use

Washdown-grade 48 x 40 pallets, often HDPE, in cold and wet rooms. Colour coding separates raw from cooked zones.

Why the pallets break or retire

Washdown, grease and thermal cycling. Pallets are retired when the surface cannot be sanitised. Plant remodels retire whole colour-coded sets.

What a load from here needs

Grease and organic residue are contamination. Say how the pallets were cleaned. A degreased, dry load is a normal stream. A greasy one needs a conversation.

Photograph the surface condition, close up. Then add the ZIP, the count and the footprint.

Where this industry is biggest

BLS counted 556,647 private jobs across 4,689 establishments in meat and poultry processing (NAICS 3116) in 2025. The states with the most jobs were Texas (44,780), Georgia (42,030), North Carolina (35,715), Arkansas (34,773) and Iowa (33,386).

Where meat and poultry processing sits among the thirteen

Of the thirteen industries on this site, meat and poultry processing ranks 6 by jobs, with 6.6% of the thirteen’s 8,423,298 combined jobs, and 2 by jobs per site, at 118.7 against 42.6 for all thirteen together. Big sites usually mean big piles and fewer, larger loads. Small sites mean more calls and smaller trailers.

Writing the request for meat and poultry processing

Name the plant type, the pallet size you hold and the count, give the pickup ZIP and say whether trucks can reach a dock. For meat and poultry processing, add what the pallets carried and whether they were washed, since that history shapes how a recycler grades the lot. Photographs of a typical pallet and of the pile make the reply faster and more exact.