Plastic pallets delivered in Minnesota

The Twin Cities hub

Minneapolis and St. Paul hold most of the state's distribution buildings and much of its manufacturing. I-94 runs through both downtowns on its way from Wisconsin to Fargo, and I-35 splits into I-35W through Minneapolis and I-35E through St. Paul before joining again north and south of the metro.

I-494 and I-694 form a beltway around the two cities, and the big DC clusters sit along it in Eagan, Shakopee, Maple Grove, Rogers and Blaine. BNSF, Union Pacific, CPKC and CN all serve the area by rail.

Several national retailers and food companies are headquartered in the metro, so the Twin Cities generate both inbound freight for their stores and outbound freight from their plants.

Minneapolis grew as a flour-milling city beside St. Anthony Falls, and grain still shapes its freight: milling, malting, oilseed crushing and the cereal and baking-mix plants that buy their output. Bagged flour and mixes are dense, so a pallet carrying them needs a dynamic rating that covers a full stack moving on forks, and a deck that keeps paper bags from snagging.

Industries across the state

Medical Alley and its clean rooms

The Twin Cities region has one of the country's largest clusters of medical-device companies, sometimes called Medical Alley, with pacemaker, catheter, stent and surgical-instrument makers across the suburbs. Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic, adds a large hospital and research system.

Device makers work in controlled environments where everything that comes in gets wiped down. They ask for pallets with closed, smooth decks and no recesses, molded from virgin resin, with the maker's paperwork on the material.

Many of these firms ship small, high-value loads. A lighter pallet with a modest rating often suits them better than a heavy-duty model, so tell us the actual load rather than a round number.

• Plastic pallets for medical devices →
• Cleanroom pallets →

Turkeys, pork and sugar

Minnesota raises more turkeys than any other state, with processing plants concentrated in the west-central counties around Willmar. Austin, in the southeast, is a pork town best known as the home of a famous canned meat. Both kinds of plant run cold, wet rooms cleaned every shift.

A plastic pallet in those rooms needs to survive hot water, chlorinated sanitizers and freezing temperatures. HDPE keeps its toughness in the cold, which suits blast freezers and cold docks.

Sugar beets grow along the Red River Valley on the North Dakota line, and processing plants there turn them into bagged and bulk sugar during a long winter campaign.

• Meat and poultry plants →

Duluth, the Range and the cold

The Duluth-Superior harbor at the western tip of Lake Superior is the westernmost port on the Great Lakes, linked to the Atlantic by the St. Lawrence Seaway. Most of its cargo is taconite from the Iron Range, grain and coal, rather than containers.

Winter defines Minnesota freight. Docks, trailers and yard storage can sit far below zero for weeks, and some resins get brittle in that cold. HDPE and PP copolymer hold up better than PP homopolymer, so give us the coldest temperature the pallets will face and check the maker's range.

• HDPE vs polypropylene →

Truckload, LTL and selling surplus

A full load moves on a 53-foot dry van, about 52.5 feet long and 100 inches wide inside. A Rehrig Pacific heavy-duty nestable 40x48 is published at 1,200 per trailer; rackable models with runners take far more room each. LTL brings smaller orders to a single plant in Mankato, St. Cloud or Bemidji.

Selling works the other way. Send count, footprint, resin, condition and pickup ZIP, and we reply with an offer as pallets or as regrind. Cracked pallets from a freezer still have value as flake.

• Plastic pallet recycling →