Plastic pallets delivered in Texas

The Texas Triangle and the roads that close it

Three interstates form a triangle that holds most of the state's freight volume. I-35 runs from Laredo through San Antonio and Austin to Dallas-Fort Worth, I-45 links Dallas with Houston, and I-10 joins Houston and San Antonio before heading west across the Hill Country and the Trans-Pecos desert to El Paso.

Outside the triangle, I-20 carries freight from the Louisiana line through Longview, Dallas, Abilene, Midland and Odessa. I-30 runs from DFW toward Texarkana and Little Rock, I-27 and I-40 serve Lubbock and Amarillo, and US-59, now partly I-69, connects Houston with the Rio Grande Valley.

Gateways that decide the lane

Houston: resin, chemicals and drums

The Gulf Coast between Houston, Baytown, Freeport and Beaumont-Port Arthur holds one of the densest groupings of refineries and petrochemical plants in the world. Much of the polyethylene and polypropylene that pallet makers mold starts as resin from plants along this coast.

Chemical shippers here move drums, pails and bulk totes. Drums ride on 48x48 or 44x44 footprints, and the chemical trade also uses 48x42. A drum pallet's deck and its static rating matter more than looks, and the static figure must come from the maker's sheet for the model you buy.

Plastic decks do not take up spilled liquid the way wood does, which makes them easier to clean between loads. Confirm the resin's chemical resistance with the maker for the specific product you ship.

• Plastic pallets for chemical plants →
• Drum pallets →

Freight crossing into Mexico

Laredo is the busiest land port on the US border with Mexico by trade value, and trucks there carry auto parts, appliances and electronics both ways. Mexico applies ISPM 15 to wood packaging, so every wood pallet crossing south needs heat treatment and the IPPC mark.

Plastic pallets fall outside ISPM 15. That removes one inspection risk for shippers who cross the border every day with the same returnable fleet.

Auto assembly in San Antonio and Arlington draws parts from both sides of the border, and the auto trade often runs on 48x45.

• Plastic export pallets →

Getting a load to a Texas ZIP

Full orders ship on a 53-foot dry van, about 52.5 feet long and 100 inches wide inside. A heavy-duty nestable 40x48 published by Rehrig Pacific loads 1,200 to the trailer; a rackable model with three runners takes far more room each and loads in much smaller counts.

LTL suits a single plant or a shop in a smaller town such as Tyler, Waco or San Angelo. Distances in West Texas are long, so a delivered price to El Paso or the Permian Basin can differ a lot from one to Dallas.

Grocery, beverage and food in the metros

• Dallas-Fort Worth: grocery and retail DCs along I-20, I-35E and I-45 south of Dallas, most using 48x40.
• San Antonio: food distribution and auto assembly on the city's south side.
• Houston: beverage bottling, grocery and import transloading near the Bayport and Barbours Cut terminals.
• Rio Grande Valley: produce coolers in McAllen and Pharr that want open decks.
• Austin and nearby Taylor: semiconductor fabrication, where cleanroom handling favors smooth decks that shed no fibers or splinters.
• El Paso: warehousing tied to the maquiladora plants of Ciudad Juarez across the river.
• Amarillo and the Panhandle: cattle feedyards and beef packing, which want decks that survive caustic sanitizing.

Selling surplus pallets in Texas

Plants on the Gulf Coast and DCs in DFW often retire whole fleets when a contract changes. Send the count, footprint, resin, condition and pickup ZIP, and we reply with an offer as pallets or as regrind; cracked HDPE still has resale value as flake.

• Sell used plastic pallets →