Used pallets in Gaithersburg, MD

Gaithersburg’s top employers, as the city’s 2020 financial report lists them, include AstraZeneca with 4,000 employees, the National Institute of Standards and Technology with 2,798, Leidos with 1,515, GeneDx with 350 and Emergent BioSolutions with 347. That is a city built around research, testing and manufacturing at the biopharmaceutical end of the market.

Vaccine manufacturing and genetic testing ship cold, packaged goods on pallets that are generally new or tightly controlled. Used pallets from the plants are rarer than from a grocery dock, but supply shipments in and packaging out still add up.

Gaithersburg sits north of Rockville on I-270 and is part of the corridor Montgomery County calls its technology corridor. Delivery trucks reach it from the Beltway in one run, and a pickup is simple to plan when the dock is on a business campus with a gate and a schedule.

Say who the pallets belong to. Many campuses use pooled pallets or contract carriers whose pallets are blue or red, and those are never ours to take; the pooled-pallet guide shows how to spot them. For plain wood pallets, give the size and the condition. A sorted pile of 48x40 stringer pallets is a sale.

Large campuses often buy through contract carriers and pooled pallet programs. When a pallet is blue or red, or carries a pooler’s name, it is not the campus’s to sell. We ask about this early because it changes the count more than any other fact. A hundred pallets on a dock may be forty of yours and sixty that belong to a pooler.

The pooled-pallet guide shows what to look for. If your site runs a pool program, tell us who runs it and how returns are handled, and those pallets are left for the owner.

• Give the gate or security contact and the hours.
• Say whether the dock is at ground level or raised.
• Say how many trailers of empties a month the dock fills.
• Note anything that needs a release from the site’s own office.

The big employers use contractors for construction, cleaning and equipment installation, and contractors leave pallets behind. A campus pickup sometimes begins with a call from the facilities manager rather than the dock. Send the contractor’s contact, the date the work ends and the count.

Give the ZIP, the size, a rough count and how the load leaves. A reply may name it as a sale, a buy-back or a clear-out. See sell and buy.

20878 20877 20879 20899

Do you take pallets from labs and plants?

Yes, when the pallets are plain wood and free to release. Pooled pallets go back to their owner.

What ZIP codes are Gaithersburg?

20877, 20878, 20879 and 20899.

Which employers are largest in Gaithersburg?

AstraZeneca (4,000), NIST (2,798), Leidos (1,515), GeneDx (350) and Emergent BioSolutions (347), per the 2020 city financial report.

Do vaccine plants sell used pallets?

It depends on the site’s rules. Many use controlled or new stock; what they release is still worth a request.

What are Gaithersburg’s ZIP codes?

20877, 20878, 20879 and 20899.