Sell plastic pallets in Rhode Island
Rhode Island had 5,152 warehousing jobs in 2025, 39th among the states, and its most concentrated pallet-using industry is warehousing and storage. 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
Rhode Island in numbers
- Warehousing and storage jobs, 2025
- 5,152 (39th of 50 states)
- Warehousing establishments
- 40 (48th of 50); about 129 jobs each
- Share of US warehousing jobs
- 0.27%
- Food manufacturing jobs
- 3,769 (46th of 50)
- Most concentrated pallet-using industry
- warehousing and storage, 0.8x the national share of employment
- Pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs
- 1,258
- Auto parts jobs
- 228
Reading a Rhode Island lot
40 establishments employ 5,152 people in Rhode Island, about 129 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. Big sites tend to mean whole-stock lots.
Rhode Island has 0.7 food manufacturing jobs for every warehousing job, against 0.9 across the fifty states. Warehouses outweigh the food plants around them, which favours mixed docks and strays from many suppliers. Among the other industries counted here, pharmaceutical manufacturing (1,258 jobs) is 5.5 times the size of auto parts (228).
The county table is not published for Rhode Island 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 Rhode Island.
The October 2025 USDA table used here gives no separate figure for Rhode Island, so cold-chain lots are read on their photos and what they carried.
What Rhode Island's industries put on the dock
- Warehousing and storage: 5,152 jobs, 2025
- Food manufacturing: 3,769 jobs, 2025
Of the industries counted, warehousing and storage sits furthest above the national average in Rhode Island, at 0.8 times. Read distribution centers for how its pallets are sorted.
Where Rhode Island sits among the fifty
| Measure, 2025 | Rhode Island | Next state above | Next state below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warehousing jobs | 39th: 5,152 | New Mexico, 5,725 (+573) | Maine, 3,774 (-1,378) |
| Warehousing establishments | 48th: 40 | Vermont, 42 (+2) | Alaska, 30 (-10) |
| Food manufacturing jobs | 46th: 3,769 | Vermont, 5,348 (+1,579) | West Virginia, 3,636 (-133) |
States next to Rhode Island
| State | Warehousing jobs | Largest county for warehousing | Food manufacturing jobs | Top concentration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Connecticut | 25,127 | Not published | 9,671 | warehousing and storage |
| Massachusetts | 20,695 | Essex (5,323) | 29,036 | refrigerated warehousing |
Rhode Island has fewer warehousing jobs than each of these. The largest of them, Connecticut, has 4.9 times Rhode Island's 5,152. A lot near a state line can be read against either side, so give the exact ZIP.
Other pallet-using industries counted in Rhode Island
| Industry | Jobs, 2025 | Against warehousing jobs |
|---|---|---|
| Pharmaceutical manufacturing | 1,258 | 0.2 to 1 |
| Auto parts | 228 | 0.0 to 1 |
Sending a lot from Rhode Island
Count the stacks, give the ZIP where they stand, and use the sorter or the form below. If the dock holds strays and a mixed dock, say so in the message.
How many warehousing jobs does Rhode Island have?
5,152 private-sector jobs across 40 establishments in 2025, 0.27% of the US total, which ranks Rhode Island 39th of 50.
Do you take plastic pallets from Rhode Island?
Yes. The desk reads lots from every state, and the ZIP lets it read the route in Rhode Island. This site states no price or pickup date.
Which Rhode Island industry is most concentrated?
Warehousing and storage, at 0.8 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Profile extrusion
- Pushing resin through a die to make long shapes that form pallet parts.
- Welding repair
- Plastic is hard to glue, so cracked parts are normally welded.
- Regrind
- Plastic ground from used or scrap parts into flakes for moulding again.
- Picture frame
- A raised rim around the deck edge that keeps cartons from sliding off.
- Stackable
- Loaded pallets can sit on top of each other, up to the static rating.
- Heat treated (HT)
- ISPM 15 treatment for wood: core at 56 C for 30 minutes. Not needed for plastic.
- Pooling
- Renting pallets from a company that owns, tracks and collects them instead of buying.
- Captive pallet
- A pallet owned and kept inside one company or loop.
- Creep
- Slow bending of plastic under a heavy load held for a long time.
Who asks, and what they need
- Chemical and drum shippers
- 48 x 48 and 45 x 45 pallets for drums and bags; chemical resistance.
- Closed-loop and captive pallet users
- Large uniform lots of one size and style; repair and replacement parts.
- Automotive plants and suppliers
- 48 x 45 pallets that match bulk containers; closed-loop reuse; heavy dynamic and static loads.
What the sources say
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- 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)
- States where food manufacturing is the largest share of private jobs in 2025 (BLS QCEW): Nebraska (4.9%), Arkansas (4.7%), Iowa (4.6%), Alaska (3.4%), Wisconsin (3.2%); the national share is 1.33%. (data.bls.gov)
- In December 2011 a Los Angeles County Sheriff task force recovered over $250,000 of illegally obtained plastic pallets, including iGPS pallets, from a plastic recycler. (eponline.com)
- 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)
- 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)
- NFPA requires wood and plastic pallets to be stored outdoors or in a detached structure unless sprinklers protect them. (en.wikipedia.org)
- Advanced composite material pallets are 100 percent recycled polyolefins, cheaper with a shorter life, and suit export where the pallet is not returned. (nelsoncompany.com)
- Nestable pallets can cut empty-pallet storage space by up to 75 percent. (blog.containerexchanger.com)
- In 2011 a Quebec court ruled that CHEP's identified blue pallets belong to CHEP and cannot be sold. (palletenterprise.com)
- Private employers in the US averaged 521,212 jobs across 6,414 establishments in motor vehicle parts manufacturing (NAICS 3363) in 2025 (BLS QCEW). States with the most jobs: Michigan (111,465), Ohio (62,025), Indiana (52,146), Tennessee (38,791), Kentucky (32,261). (data.bls.gov)
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.