Used pallets in Montgomery County, MD

The county is home to over 300 biotech companies, with development continuing along the I-270 and Route 29 corridors. Manufacturing employed 14,692 people across 539 establishments in 2024. A biotech plant is picky about pallets: surface cleanliness and wood moisture matter, and some sites will not take used pallets at all.

The county is also an unusual place for farmland. Its Agricultural Reserve, created by the County Council in 1980, covers 93,000 acres, about a third of the county, and helps retain more than 500 farms. Farm supply and produce moving off those farms use a different kind of pallet, heavier and dirtier.

More than 130 local and long-distance trucking establishments operate in the county, which tells you it is a place trucks start and finish. I-270 runs north to Frederick; Route 29 runs to Silver Spring and the District line. Any pickup in the county runs along those two arteries.

For a lab or a plant, say whether the pallets are clean enough to go back into food or medical freight. Those are different from dock-grade stock and suit different buyers. For a store, give the count by size. Rockville, Gaithersburg and Germantown have their own pages; most county loads fall in one of them. See biotech and pharma for what a lab dock asks of a pallet.

The Agricultural Reserve covers about a third of the county, and the farms inside it move produce, feed and equipment. Farm pallets are heavier, dirtier and more often wet than a lab’s, and many are built for one season. A farm pile is read as a mixed load, and what the sort leaves is usually smaller than hoped.

Montgomery Planning’s page on the reserve is in the sources below. We mention it here because it explains why a county full of biotech also generates the kind of pallet that comes off a field.

• A lab or plant. Count, grade, storage and standard.
• A grocery store. Weekly empties by size.
• A farm. The season, the mix and whether anything is pooled.
• A contractor. Job end date and where the pallets sit.

Send the ZIP where the pallets sit. The county has 48, and pickup logistics follow roads, not county lines.

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.

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Do biotech companies reuse pallets?

Some do and some will not. If your dock does, say what grade it accepts and how clean the pallets must be.

How many ZIP codes does the county have?

The market data lists 48 across the county; send the one where the pallets sit.

What is the Agricultural Reserve?

A 93,000-acre area, created by the County Council in 1980, covering about a third of the county and helping retain more than 500 farms.

How many manufacturing jobs does the county have?

14,692 across 539 establishments in 2024, according to Maryland Commerce.

Do you serve Silver Spring and Bethesda?

Yes. They use this page; send a ZIP with the request.