Pallets on the Westside of Jacksonville
The Westside is Jacksonville's cold dock: grocery distribution, refrigerated and frozen-food warehousing, e-commerce fulfillment and tire and home goods distribution. The pallet it wants is clean, dry 48x40 stringers.
West Beaver Street
Publix's West Beaver Street distribution campus covers 127 acres with more than 950,000 square feet of buildings, and a frozen foods warehouse targeted to open in West Jacksonville in late 2027 would add about 150 jobs (Daily Record). The company says it will serve Central and North Florida and southern Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. C&S Wholesale Services closed its West Beaver Street distribution center in Baldwin in 2025, cutting 490 jobs.
What a Westside dock asks of a pallet
- Dry wood: under about 20% moisture content.
- Grade A or a clean Grade B in 48x40.
- No staining, no soft boards, no protruding nails.
- Deck coverage that holds cartons.
Tire and home goods distribution and aviation maintenance also sit in the district, and Cecil Commerce Center adds fulfillment. Baldwin, at the Westside's western edge, is covered on the Duval County page.
Rain and cold rooms
Westside summers are wet. Pallets left in a yard take on water and go moldy; stock for a cold room should come from covered storage. See the mould guide and grocery and frozen food.
The Westside also generates surplus: cores and mixed stacks from busy docks, which mixed dock loads describes.
Reading a Westside load
A trailer backing onto a Westside grocery dock in August carries damp air with it. Cartons of frozen product arrive on pallets that have been in a cold room, and the receiving crew moves them to a dry area. If the incoming pallet is wet, the damp transfers to the carton, the carton grows soft, and the load is flagged. For that reason Westside buyers focus on the moisture of the wood more than its age.
What to ask a supplier
- Where was the stock stored and under what cover?
- Is the lot 48x40 four-way, all Grade A or B?
- How many in the first delivery and how many a week afterward?
- Any marks of staining or soft stringers?
Cecil Commerce Center
Cecil Commerce Center (ZIP 32221) is a roughly 17,000-acre commercial and industrial center on the former Naval Air Station Cecil Field. The Cecil Commerce Center Parkway interchange with Interstate 10 gives direct access, and New World Avenue links Normandy Boulevard with the parkway. The center has no railroad service, so everything arrives and leaves by truck on I-10: the lane here is the truck lane.
Tenants cover tire, aviation and fulfillment: Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, Boeing, Saft America, Northrop Grumman, Flightstar Aircraft Services, Fleet Readiness Center Southeast and Amazon, whose fulfillment center of about 1 million square feet sits beside Bridgestone and Wayfair buildings of about the same size. Cecil Airport, where aviation companies lease former Navy hangars, is part of the center.
| Flow | Pallet need |
|---|---|
| Inbound fulfillment freight | Mixed sizes arrive; cores and Grade B build up |
| Outbound parcel and bulk | Sorted 48x40 stock |
| Tire distribution | Sorted 48x40 or spec builds |
| Aerospace parts | Crates, or custom and new builds to a spec |
Each flow leaves its own kind of pile: crate wood, tire-stack pallets, parcel-dock cores. A dock that clears weekly can set up scheduled pickups, and e-commerce fulfillment covers how those buildings run.
Questions
Does a Westside grocery dock need HT?
Not for domestic freight.
Which size?
48x40, nearly always.
Sources, reviewed 12 November 2026: Publix campus (Daily Record); Publix frozen foods (Daily Record); C&S Baldwin closing (Daily Record); Cecil Commerce Center (Wikipedia).