Sell plastic pallets in Maine
Maine had 3,774 warehousing jobs in 2025, 40th among the states, and its most concentrated pallet-using industry is pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing. Send the lot with its ZIP; the desk reads size, style, grade and marks, and rules it sold, returned or scrapped.
Last reviewed November 12, 2026
Maine in numbers
- Warehousing and storage jobs, 2025
- 3,774 (40th of 50 states)
- Warehousing establishments
- 72 (41st of 50); about 52 jobs each
- Share of US warehousing jobs
- 0.20%
- Food manufacturing jobs
- 5,673 (43rd of 50)
- Most concentrated pallet-using industry
- pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, 1.9x the national share of employment
- Pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs
- 2,783
- Auto parts jobs
- 528
- Refrigerated warehouse space, October 1, 2025
- 8 million cubic feet (34th of 50)
Reading a Maine lot
Count the warehouses and Maine comes 41st; count the jobs in them and it comes 40th. It is one of the smaller warehousing states, so a lot here is rarely one of many on the same road. With about 52 people a site against a national 82, a lot is often a few stacks from one of many small docks.
Maine has 1.5 food manufacturing jobs for every warehousing job, against 0.9 across the fifty states. The plants are the bigger half of the picture, and they swap pallets on a schedule more than on wear. Among the other industries counted here, pharmaceutical manufacturing (2,783 jobs) is 5.3 times the size of auto parts (528).
Cumberland County holds 45.9% of Maine's warehousing jobs, and the top 3 listed hold 67.3%. Three counties carry most of the market, and a lot near any of them is close to the most dock activity. None of the metros in the dossier sits inside Maine, so a lot is read by its ZIP.
USDA counted 8 million cubic feet of refrigerated warehouse space in Maine, 34th of 50 and about 2,120 cubic feet for each warehousing job, against 2,254 across the states it reports. Cold storage is a smaller part of the picture here, so most lots come off ambient docks.
Where Maine's warehousing jobs sit
| County | Warehousing jobs | Share of the state's total |
|---|---|---|
| Cumberland | 1,731 | 45.9% |
| Kennebec | 419 | 11.1% |
| York | 391 | 10.4% |
What Maine's industries put on the dock
- Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing: 2,783 jobs, 2025
- Food manufacturing: 5,673 jobs, 2025
By location quotient pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing leads in Maine, with 1.9 times the national share of employment. The page on pharmaceutical plants shows what that industry sets down on a dock.
Where Maine sits among the fifty
| Measure, 2025 | Maine | Next state above | Next state below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warehousing jobs | 40th: 3,774 | Rhode Island, 5,152 (+1,378) | West Virginia, 3,631 (-143) |
| Warehousing establishments | 41st: 72 | New Hampshire, 96 (+24) | New Mexico, 66 (-6) |
| Food manufacturing jobs | 43rd: 5,673 | Hawaii, 6,032 (+359) | North Dakota, 5,564 (-109) |
States next to Maine
| State | Warehousing jobs | Largest county for warehousing | Food manufacturing jobs | Top concentration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire | 3,283 | Rockingham (1,838) | 2,774 | plastics product manufacturing |
Maine has more warehousing jobs than any of these. The largest of them, New Hampshire, has 0.9 times Maine's 3,774. A lot near a state line can be read against either side, so give the exact ZIP.
Other pallet-using industries counted in Maine
| Industry | Jobs, 2025 | Against warehousing jobs |
|---|---|---|
| Pharmaceutical manufacturing | 2,783 | 0.7 to 1 |
| Auto parts | 528 | 0.1 to 1 |
Sending a lot from Maine
Count the stacks, give the ZIP where they stand, and use the sorter or the form below. If the dock holds a clean closed-loop stock, say so in the message.
How many warehousing jobs does Maine have?
3,774 private-sector jobs across 72 establishments in 2025, 0.20% of the US total, which ranks Maine 40th of 50.
Do you take plastic pallets from Maine?
Yes. The desk reads lots from every state, and the ZIP lets it read the route in Maine. This site states no price or pickup date.
Which Maine industry is most concentrated?
Pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing, at 1.9 times the national share of employment in the 2025 federal data used here.
Words you will meet
- Nestable
- Empty pallets stack inside one another, cutting empty storage space by up to 75 percent.
- Edge rack
- Resting on the rack beams by the pallet's edges only, with no support in the middle.
- Open deck
- Top deck with gaps between slats or ribs; lighter and drains.
- Cruciform base
- Bottom with a cross-shaped member as well as a perimeter, for strength and automated handling.
- Anti-slip
- Textured deck or rubber grommets that reduce load slip.
- 2-way entry
- Forks enter from two opposite sides only.
- Rackable
- Rated to sit on rack beams, with a stated racking load.
- Multi-trip pallet
- A pallet designed to be returned and reused many times.
- Structural foam
- Low-pressure moulding where a blowing agent expands the resin in the mould.
- Compression moulding
- Moulding by pressing resin in a closed mould; one of six processes in use.
- HDPE
- High-density polyethylene, resin code 2. The most common resin in plastic pallets; tough and moisture resistant.
- 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.
- Closed loop
- Pallets that travel between known sites and come back, so they are never lost to a downstream user.
- UL 2335
- UL fire-test standard for storage pallets, with an idle pallet test and a commodity storage test.
- Thermoforming
- Heated plastic sheet formed over a mould; lighter pallets.
Who asks, and what they need
- Pharmaceutical and healthcare shippers
- Hygienic pallets that can be sanitised; documents on resin and colour; PP sometimes preferred for sterilisation.
- Closed-loop and captive pallet users
- Large uniform lots of one size and style; repair and replacement parts.
- 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.
What the sources say
- Pennsylvania had 228 million cubic feet and New Jersey 137 million of gross refrigerated warehouse space on October 1, 2025 (USDA NASS). (esmis.nal.usda.gov)
- Private employers in the US averaged 350,886 jobs across 7,786 establishments in pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing (NAICS 3254) in 2025 (BLS QCEW). States with the most jobs: California (42,575), New Jersey (30,062), North Carolina (26,998), New York (25,087), Illinois (24,257). (data.bls.gov)
- EPA's 2018 municipal solid waste data: plastics generation was 35.68 million tons, of which 3.09 million tons (8.7 percent) were recycled and 26.97 million tons landfilled; natural HDPE bottles were recycled at 29.3 percent. The page gives no pallet-specific or polypropylene figure. (epa.gov)
- Counties with the most private pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing jobs (NAICS 3254) in 2025, BLS QCEW, counties with disclosed data only: Lake County, Illinois (16,883), Marion County, Indiana (16,292), Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (11,878), Suffolk County, New York (10,760), Los Angeles County, California (8,300), San Diego County, California (8,028). (data.bls.gov)
- Nestable pallets can cut empty-pallet storage space by up to 75 percent. (blog.containerexchanger.com)
- 48 x 48 plastic pallets hold four 55-gallon drums without overhang; 48 x 45 matches North American auto parts bulk containers. (nelsoncompany.com)
- 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)
- 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)
- Port of Los Angeles handled 9,447,731 TEUs from January through November 2025, 1 percent more than the same months of 2024; its executive director called 2025 firmly a top-three year in the port's history. (portoflosangeles.org)
- Port Houston says it supports 1.54 million jobs in Texas and 3.37 million nationwide, and that its 2025 growth included petrochemical and industrial shipments, manufacturing-related freight and consumer imports. (porthouston.com)
- Fastmarkets estimates 3.7 billion pallets were in circulation in the US in 2025, and that annual pallet production rose from about 800 million before the pandemic to nearly one billion afterward. (fastmarkets.com)
- Private warehousing and storage (NAICS 493) paid an average of $56,706 a year across 1,901,976 jobs in 2025 (BLS QCEW). (data.bls.gov)
- The five states with the most warehousing and storage jobs held 39% of the national total in 2025, and the top ten held 58% (California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, Indiana, New York), BLS QCEW. (data.bls.gov)
- Steel, aluminum, plastic and engineered-wood pallets are exempt from ISPM 15; wood must reach a core temperature of 56 C for at least 30 minutes for heat treatment. (en.wikipedia.org)
- Only pallets designed for unsupported racking carry a racking rating. (nelsoncompany.com)
- Plastic pallets can deform (creep) under heavy long-term loads and are hard to repair. (en.wikipedia.org)
Keep reading
Send a lot from your state
Size, count, grade, branding and ZIP. Photos help, and you can reply to the first answer with them. This site states no price or pickup date.