Plastic pallets from cold storage: what a load needs

What cold storage use

Hygienic, easy-to-wash pallets in 48 x 40, often PP or HDPE with closed or solid decks, because cold stores need surfaces that drain and wash clean.

Why the pallets break or retire

Freezing can make some pallet materials brittle and reduce performance, per Nelson. A pallet that cycled between a freezer and a dock many times cracks at the corners and along the deck.

What a load from here needs

Say it came from cold storage. Brittle pallets grind fine. Wet pallets should be dry before they are stacked for a trailer.

Photograph the cracks at corners and along the deck. Then add the ZIP, the count and the footprint.

Where this industry is biggest

BLS counted 73,136 private jobs across 1,811 establishments in refrigerated warehousing (NAICS 49312) in 2025. The states with the most jobs were California (9,969), Texas (6,638), New Jersey (5,388), Georgia (4,453) and Pennsylvania (4,102).

Where refrigerated warehousing sits among the thirteen

Of the thirteen industries on this site, refrigerated warehousing ranks 13 by jobs, with 0.9% of the thirteen’s 8,423,298 combined jobs, and 10 by jobs per site, at 40.4 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 refrigerated warehousing

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 refrigerated warehousing, 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.