Plastic pallets delivered in Illinois

Chicago is where the railroads meet

Every Class I railroad in North America reaches Chicago, which no other city can say. That makes the region the country's main point for swapping containers between eastern and western railroads, and a large share of domestic intermodal freight passes through its yards.

The biggest intermodal ramps sit southwest of the city along I-55 and I-80. BNSF's Logistics Park Chicago at Elwood and Union Pacific's Joliet terminal are surrounded by distribution buildings that receive containers by rail and send pallets out by truck.

For a pallet order, this means Chicago-area buyers sit at the end of almost every national lane, which tends to keep freight options broad.

Illinois freight nodes

Food plants on the Chicago side

Chicago has long been one of the largest food processing centers in the country. Candy, baked goods, meat, snacks and frozen food all come out of plants in the city and the suburbs, many of them running washdown rooms where wood pallets are not welcome.

Meat and bakery lines want a deck that can be washed and sanitized between shifts. A solid deck keeps crumbs and fluids on top where they can be rinsed off, while an open deck drains faster in a cooler.

Frozen food warehouses in the region run below zero. HDPE stays tough at those temperatures, which is one reason the cold-chain trade leans toward it.

West of the city, Elgin, Aurora and Naperville hold packaging converters, printers and contract packagers along I-88 and I-90. Their finished goods usually leave on 48x40, wrapped tight for parcel hubs and retailers.

• Plastic pallets for bakeries →
• Meat and poultry plants →

Downstate: grain, equipment and the river towns

Outside the Chicago region, Illinois freight follows I-55 to Springfield and St. Louis, I-57 to Champaign and Cairo, I-74 through Bloomington and Peoria, and I-88 west toward the Quad Cities. I-80 crosses the north of the state and I-64 and I-70 cross the south.

Decatur is a corn and soybean processing center, and Peoria is known for heavy construction equipment. Rockford has a long base of machining and aerospace parts suppliers.

Moline and Rock Island, on the Illinois side of the Quad Cities, share a farm-equipment economy with Davenport across the Mississippi. Parts and subassemblies there often travel in returnable loops, where a durable plastic pallet goes out loaded and comes back empty.

Pharma and medical companies cluster in Lake County north of Chicago. Those buyers ask for smooth, wipeable decks without recesses where dust or residue can sit.

• Pharmaceutical distribution →

Truckload, LTL and racked storage

A truckload travels on a 53-foot dry van, about 52.5 feet long and 100 inches wide inside. Nestable models load the most per trailer because the legs nest; a published Rehrig Pacific heavy-duty nestable 40x48 loads 1,200 to one trailer.

Many Will County buildings store product in selective racking. For that, the pallet needs a published racked load, which is the weight it carries spanning two beams with nothing underneath. Most nestables are not rack-rated, so DCs here usually ask for rackable models with runners.

Smaller orders travel LTL. A downstate plant with one dock door can take a pallet order without waiting to fill a whole trailer.

• Rackable plastic pallets →

Selling surplus pallets from Illinois

Third-party logistics buildings in the Joliet area turn over clients often, and a departing client can leave a stack of plastic pallets behind. Send us the count, footprint, resin code, condition and pickup ZIP, and we come back with an offer for the pallets or for the material as regrind.

Pallets with split decks or snapped runners are still worth listing. HDPE and PP from broken pallets can be ground and molded again, so we price them by material rather than leaving the cost of disposal with you.

• Sell plastic pallets →