Areas we cover

A page exists where the public data shows docks that ship on pallets: the Prince George’s supermarket and distribution parks, the I-270 biotech corridor, Frederick’s and Stafford’s distribution centers, the Route 28 and Springfield industrial belts, Front Royal’s inland port and DC’s New York Avenue corridor. Towns where we found neither demand nor industry data have no page. They are still in the area; just send a count.

• The ZIP where the pallets sit.
• The count and the size. A rough count is enough.
• How the load leaves: a dock door, an alley, a curb.
• Whether you are selling, buying or clearing a pile.

See sell and buy for the two main requests, and the Pile reader for a first call on a pile.

Each area page opens with the answer: who ships there and what that means for pallets. After that comes a table of the employers or land uses in the public data, a note on the roads, and the ZIP codes the market data attaches to the place. The data comes from county and state economic profiles, the DC Office of Planning, a commercial real estate report and the Census Bureau.

We have not visited every dock on every page and we do not claim to have. What the pages do is make the public record usable: they say which sites exist, what kind of freight they handle and what we would ask about a load before anyone plans a pickup.

The District keeps only about 5.2 percent of its land for production, distribution and repair, and most of that sits in Ward 5 near rail and New York Avenue NE. Maryland holds the older distribution belt from Landover and Beltsville out to Frederick. Northern Virginia holds the newer sprawl of fulfillment and warehouse buildings, from Springfield and Sterling to Manassas and the Fredericksburg corridor.

Each state page says which of those places are worth sending a pile to and why. The place pages go one level further.

If your dock is outside the places named, send the ZIP anyway. The list is where the desk has facts, not a boundary on where a pile can come from.

Distance matters less than direction. A load from the Northeast corridor of the District moves out along New York Avenue toward Prince George’s County, where trade, transportation and utilities hold 18.0 percent of all jobs. A load from Arlington or Alexandria goes south and west toward Springfield, Lorton and Manassas. A load from the Maryland suburbs tends to go up I-270 or out to Frederick.

The lane board on the home page shows these pairings. It describes how the desk thinks about a load, not a schedule of trucks.

• The ZIP codes the place covers, so you can check yours.
• Named employers from state commerce and workforce reports, with the source linked.
• A short note on the kind of freight that place produces and what it does to a pallet pile.
• A way to send a count that starts from that place.

A grocery warehouse leaves clean uniform pallets in large numbers. A laboratory supplier leaves fewer, lighter pallets that were kept indoors. A construction yard leaves heavy worn pallets in mixed sizes, often rained on. A data center site leaves crates and skids from equipment, which can be odd sizes. Place decides the freight, and freight decides the pallet, so the area pages describe the freight first.

Some entries are counties and some are towns, because the freight does not follow one kind of boundary. Fairfax County and Loudoun County are named whole since their docks are scattered across them. Springfield and Sterling are named on their own because a cluster of industrial parks defines them. Choose the entry nearest your dock; if two fit, either works, and the form asks for your exact ZIP anyway.

Beltway traffic, bridge closures and weather make the same trip take very different amounts of time on different days. Pickup timing depends on the lane and the site, and no window is promised before the address and the details have been read.

What area do you cover?

Washington, DC, suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia, from Frederick to Waldorf and from Alexandria to Front Royal.

Do you cover places that do not have a page?

Yes. A page only means we have something specific to say about that place.

How were the places chosen?

Where public data shows docks that ship on pallets; towns with neither demand nor industry data have no page.

Where does the area data come from?

County and state economic profiles, DC Office of Planning, Lee & Associates and the Census Bureau.