Sell plastic pallets in Hawaii

Hawaii in numbers

Warehousing and storage jobs, 2025

1,298 (47th of 50 states)

Warehousing establishments

57 (44th of 50); about 23 jobs each

Share of US warehousing jobs

0.07%

Food manufacturing jobs

6,032 (42nd of 50)

Most concentrated pallet-using industry

grocery and related product wholesale, 1.7x the national share of employment

Reading a Hawaii lot

57 establishments employ 1,298 people in Hawaii, about 23 each against 82 for the fifty states. It is one of the smaller warehousing states, so a lot here is rarely one of many on the same road. Small sites tend to mean a few stacks at a time.

Hawaii has 4.6 food manufacturing jobs for every warehousing job, against 0.9 across the fifty states. Plants outweigh the warehouses that serve them, which favours clean decks and stocks rotated on a schedule.

The county table is not published for Hawaii in the federal data used here, so a lot is read by its ZIP and the freight around it. None of the metros in the dossier sits inside Hawaii.

The October 2025 USDA table used here gives no separate figure for Hawaii, so cold-chain lots are read on their photos and what they carried.

What Hawaii's industries put on the dock

• Grocery and related product wholesale: 5,408 jobs, 2025
• Food manufacturing: 6,032 jobs, 2025

Of the industries counted, grocery and related product wholesale sits furthest above the national average in Hawaii, at 1.7 times. Read grocery wholesalers for how its pallets are sorted.

Where Hawaii sits among the fifty

The nearest mainland states to Hawaii

Hawaii has fewer warehousing jobs than each of these. The largest of them, California, has 183 times Hawaii's 1,298. A lot here is ruled on its own: freight to or from the mainland changes what a pickup means.

Sending a lot from Hawaii

Count the stacks, give the ZIP where they stand, and use the sorter or the form below. If the dock holds a mixed pooled and owned dock, say so in the message.

Words you will meet

Multi-trip pallet

A pallet designed to be returned and reused many times.

Nest ratio

How many empty pallets fit in the height of one.

ISPM 15

The international standard for treating wood packaging against pests. Plastic pallets are outside it.

UL 2335

UL fire-test standard for storage pallets, with an idle pallet test and a commodity storage test.

Creep

Slow bending of plastic under a heavy load held for a long time.

Thermoforming

Heated plastic sheet formed over a mould; lighter pallets.

PP

Polypropylene. More rigid than HDPE and better with heat and harsh chemicals; used where rack stiffness matters.

Virgin resin

New, unblended resin that has not been through a product before.

Closed deck

Solid top deck with no gaps; keeps small items from falling through.

Picture frame

A raised rim around the deck edge that keeps cartons from sliding off.

Heat treated (HT)

ISPM 15 treatment for wood: core at 56 C for 30 minutes. Not needed for plastic.

Commodity classification

Sprinkler design class of stored goods; an unlisted plastic pallet can raise it.

Profile extrusion

Pushing resin through a die to make long shapes that form pallet parts.

GMA pallet

The 48 x 40 in North American standard footprint.

Resin identification code

Number on a plastic part for the resin, which does not itself say whether it is recyclable.

Regrind

Plastic ground from used or scrap parts into flakes for moulding again.

Who asks, and what they need

Food and beverage distributors and bottlers

Clean, odour-free, washable pallets; open or closed deck; 56 x 44 beverage and 48 x 40 sizes; often asks about food-contact paperwork.

Warehouses with automated storage

Rackable pallets with a stated rack rating, cruciform base, consistent size for conveyors.

Plastic recyclers and pallet makers

Buy broken pallets by weight as HDPE or PP feedstock; want clean, sorted, separated by resin and colour.

What the sources say

• Counties with the most private fruit and vegetable preserving jobs (NAICS 3114) in 2025, BLS QCEW, counties with disclosed data only: Los Angeles County, California (3,695), Stanislaus County, California (3,669), Fresno County, California (3,355), Cook County, Illinois (2,861), Franklin County, Washington (2,520), Marion County, Oregon (2,273). (data.bls.gov)
• California AB 1760 (2022) lets recyclers take possession of stray proprietary pallets if the owner cannot be identified or fails to retrieve them in time, with a 35-day period before they can be declared abandoned. (palletenterprise.com)
• Private employers in the US averaged 173,844 jobs across 2,936 establishments in fruit and vegetable preserving (NAICS 3114) in 2025 (BLS QCEW). States with the most jobs: California (27,518), Wisconsin (11,014), Washington (10,988), Ohio (10,327), Texas (9,194). (data.bls.gov)
• States where dairy product manufacturing is the largest share of private jobs in 2025 (BLS QCEW): Wisconsin (1.1%), Vermont (0.8%), Idaho (0.7%), South Dakota (0.4%), Iowa (0.3%); the national share is 0.13%. (data.bls.gov)
• iGPS announced FM approval in 2008 for its all-plastic RFID-tagged pooled pallet, which had UL 2335 certification from 2007. (freightwaves.com)
• Resin identification codes do not indicate whether a product is recyclable; ASTM D7611 governs the coding. (en.wikipedia.org)
• A 48 x 40 pallet fits 30 stacks in a turned pattern on a 53 ft dry van, per one supplier. (nelsoncompany.com)
• 43 x 43 in pallets are designed for bulk bags; 45 x 45 in is the CP9 chemical standard. (nelsoncompany.com)
• Warehousing and storage (NAICS 493) was 1.4% of the 133,160,274 private-sector jobs QCEW counted in the US in 2025. (data.bls.gov)
• USDA NASS counted 3.99 billion cubic feet of gross refrigerated warehouse capacity in the US on October 1, 2025, with usable capacity of 3.25 billion cubic feet (82 percent of gross). (esmis.nal.usda.gov)
• The five states with the largest gross refrigerated warehouse capacity on October 1, 2025 were California (400 million cubic feet), Georgia (304 million), Washington (301 million), Wisconsin (297 million) and Texas (254 million), per USDA NASS. (esmis.nal.usda.gov)
• USDA NASS counted 931 refrigerated warehouses on October 1, 2025: 476 public and 455 private or semiprivate. Public warehouses held 2.46 billion gross cubic feet, 62 percent of the total. (esmis.nal.usda.gov)
• Refrigerated warehouse facility counts on October 1, 2025 (USDA NASS): California 106, Wisconsin 94, Georgia 62, Texas 56, Washington 52, Florida 50, Pennsylvania 38. (esmis.nal.usda.gov)
• The Northwest Seaport Alliance (Seattle and Tacoma) handled 3,156,598 TEUs of international and domestic containers in 2025, down 5.5 percent from 2024, with full imports down 10.3 percent and full exports down 4.9 percent. (nwseaportalliance.com)
• Georgia Ports Authority moved 5.7 million TEUs in fiscal year 2025 (July 2024 to June 2025), up 8.6 percent or 450,000 TEUs, the Port of Savannah's second-busiest year after 5.76 million in FY2022. (container-news.com)
• FDA's Food Traceability Rule (FSMA section 204) requires businesses that make, process, pack or hold foods on the Food Traceability List to keep Key Data Elements for Critical Tracking Events and share them within 24 hours of a request; FDA says Congress directed it not to enforce the rule before July 20, 2028. (fda.gov)

• BLS QCEW: warehousing and storage, 2025
• USDA: Cold Storage, refrigerated warehouse capacity

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