Plastic pallets delivered in Colorado

Most freight lands on the Front Range

Colorado's population and warehousing run in a line along I-25, from Fort Collins and Greeley through Denver to Colorado Springs and Pueblo. That corridor carries the state's north-south freight between Wyoming and New Mexico.

Denver is the only large metro for hundreds of miles in any direction, so it acts as the distribution center for much of the Mountain West. Big DCs sit near I-70 and I-76 northeast of downtown, around Denver International Airport, and south along E-470. BNSF and Union Pacific both run intermodal ramps in the Denver area.

Weld County, east of Greeley, is also Colorado's largest oil and gas field. Service yards there handle lubricants, drilling additives and frac chemicals in steel drums and IBC totes, which call for drum or heavy-duty pallets rather than a light grocery model.

• Drum plastic pallets →

Beer, cheese and beef

Golden is home to the Coors brewery, one of the largest single brewing sites in the world, and the state's craft breweries run from Fort Collins to Durango. Beverage loads are heavy and dense, so brewers and distributors look hard at the dynamic rating and at footprints like 48x40 and the smaller half pallets used for display.

Leprino Foods, a major mozzarella maker, is based in Denver and runs a large cheese plant in Greeley. JBS USA, the beef and pork packer, has its US headquarters in Greeley and a beef plant in the same city. Those buildings need pallets that survive daily caustic washdown and cold rooms.

In meat and dairy rooms, a solid HDPE deck with no hollow spaces that hold water is the common choice. The maker's documents for the exact model tell you its food-contact status; 21 CFR 177.1520 governs the resin, not the finished pallet.

• Plastic pallets for beverage →
• Plastic pallets for meat and poultry →

Over the mountains on I-70

Grand Junction, Palisade and the Western Slope sit on the far side of the Continental Divide. Trucks from Denver climb through the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel and over Vail Pass, and winter storms can close the route or put chain laws in force.

Palisade is known for peaches, and the Grand Valley grows grapes and other fruit for packing houses and wineries. In the south, the San Luis Valley grows potatoes that are stored and shipped through the winter.

For a Western Slope or San Luis Valley delivery, build a cushion into the schedule and tell us if the site is a farm shed rather than a commercial dock. Rural receivers often need a liftgate or a forklift on site to unload.

• Plastic pallets for fresh produce →

Altitude, dry air and plastic

Denver's dry air and strong sun are hard on anything left outdoors. Pallets stored in a yard take UV exposure, which fades color and can make some plastics brittle over years; makers add UV stabilizers to many models, and their sheets say so.

Cold snaps on the plains drop well below zero, and HDPE stays tougher than many other plastics in that cold. If pallets will live outside, ask for a UV-stabilized model and check the resin.

• HDPE vs polypropylene →

Truckload and smaller orders

A truckload arrives on a 53-foot van to the dock address. Nestable pallets fit many more per trailer than rackables with full runners. Orders under a trailer move LTL, which reaches the Front Range metros quickly and the mountain towns on longer schedules.

Aurora and Commerce City hold food distributors, beverage wholesalers and cold storage serving the metro's grocery stores. A buyer there often splits an order: rackable models for freezer selective rack, and stackable ones for floor-loaded staging, cross-dock lanes and outbound cooler loads.

Selling surplus from Colorado

Breweries change packaging, DCs consolidate, and food plants retire cracked pallets. Send us the count, footprint, resin code, condition and pickup ZIP, and we answer with an offer to buy them as pallets or as regrind.

• Plastic pallet recycling →