What Jacksonville's industries ship on

Jacksonville freight splits into eight industries that each want a different pallet: grocery and frozen food, export, fulfillment, automotive import, beverage, paper and mills, retail and restaurants, and construction supply.

The Jacksonville region counts more than 85,700 transportation and logistics workers, and Foreign Trade Zone No. 64 covers more than 5,000 square miles and 156 million square feet of distribution and warehouse space (JAXUSA). That volume is why the loads differ so much. Grocery and frozen food, the biggest pallet buyer on the Westside, has its own page.

Export and freight forwarding

Most destinations require every wood pallet in an export container to meet ISPM 15: heat treated to a core temperature of at least 56 °C for 30 minutes, or fumigated, and marked. JAXPORT handled 1,388,841 TEUs in fiscal year 2025, up 4% from 1,340,412 the year before, through three cargo terminals on the St. Johns River and two intermodal container transfer facilities, and CSX, Norfolk Southern and Florida East Coast Railway serve the region (JAXPORT). A 40 ft box takes 20 48x40s or 23 Euro pallets on the floor (see the container planner).

Pallets go wrong for a forwarder because they are cheap and last on the list: a late order leaves a box waiting, a wrong one leaves unstamped wood in it. Name the size, the HT and DB marks, any extra rules at the destination, the count per container, containers per week and the cut-off at booking time. Heat treatment does not stop mould, so ask for dry wood too (HT and mould), and order on the heat-treated pallets page.

E-commerce fulfillment

Cecil Commerce Center holds an Amazon fulfillment center of about 1 million square feet, with Bridgestone and Wayfair buildings of about the same size, and Airport 295 Logistics Park at I-295 and Lem Turner Road holds three buildings of 499,000 square feet. The region delivered 6.8 million square feet of industrial space in 2023, as much as from 2019 to 2022 combined (Daily Record).

Monday brings inbound freight from a dozen vendors, each on a different pallet; by Wednesday receiving is full of empties; Thursday the outbound trailers want clean 48x40s. A building that stages empties by size, grade and pooled status can use its own surplus as outbound stock, as long as the pallets match, because conveyors and scanners jam on an inch of difference. The inbound side is a mixed load to sell or a scheduled pickup; give a normal week and a peak week, since volumes swing around holidays and promotions.

Automotive import

JAXPORT moved 506,237 vehicles in fiscal year 2025 against 509,091 the year before (Florida Auditor). The cars handled at Dames Point and Blount Island are not pallet freight, but processing, accessories and supplier parts are, arriving in containers on stamped wood and leaving by truck on the 48x45 or the 48x40.

Many suppliers use steel returnable racks, so wood carries what does not fit a rack and requests often cover odd sizes: measure before writing, and sort 48x40 from 48x45 before anyone counts a stack.

Beverage

Beverage is among the industries Duval County lists, and it runs on 42 x 42 and 48 x 42 pallets as well as the 48 x 40. A pallet of canned drinks is heavy: a 48 x 40 carries a static load of about 3 short tons and a dynamic load of about 1, so a cracked stringer on a beverage line fails quickly. Cases sit in a pinwheel or column pattern that holds only on a flat deck, and a raised nail or proud plug lifts a case and unbalances the layer.

Spills and condensation surround a bottling line; wet wood damages cartons and labels, which is why plastic is sometimes chosen. Volume rises in summer and around holidays, so a distributor buying 300 a week in January may need twice that in July: state the swing in the request.

Paper and mills

Nassau County lists paper and pulp and rail-served manufacturing, and Crawford Diamond Industrial Park there is the only industrial site in Florida where CSX and Norfolk Southern main lines intersect (Nassau County). Paper moves as rolls on end, bales or bundled sheet: a flat, full-deck block for rolls, a spec stringer pallet for bundles, by rail car or truck.

• Rated load, static and dynamic, and the tolerance on deck flatness.
• Moisture control: paper picks up water from a wet pallet.
• New or combo for consistency; used only for non-critical shipments.
• ISPM 15 for export.

Mills generate their own wood waste, and one with an on-site grinder may keep broken pallets as fuel while one without wants them moved.

Retail and restaurants

Deliveries to a restaurant supplier, a hardware store or a drugstore arrive on wood pallets and leave them behind, and the stack grows until it blocks the dock. Here the question is clearing, not buying. Pooled pallets often leave with the driver on the next delivery, suppliers sometimes want their own back, and a delivery list of who left how many answers who owns what. Piles grow before holidays and summer events; count what remains once a week and see small loads.

Construction supply

Site work began in January 2024 on three shell warehouses totalling almost 510,000 square feet on International Golf Parkway off I-95 in St. Johns County (Daily Record), and Clay County lists building materials among its industries. Brick, block, bagged cement and roofing ride on pallets that take abuse.

Supply yards store outdoors, and a pallet under cement bags takes rain and goes heavy, soft or mouldy within a season; a collapsed stack on a wet pallet is a loss and a hazard. Rotate stock, keep pallets off the ground, and write a weekly order as a bulk spec with the weight rating. Deliveries are heavier in the dry months, and piles build after a run to a big job.

Missing a sector?

Describe the freight, the receiving method and the town, and the same questions apply: where the pallet goes next, how often it returns and what the receiver rejects.

Questions

Keep reading

• Grocery and frozen food

Sources, reviewed 12 November 2026: JAXUSA logistics; ISPM 15 (Wikipedia); JAXPORT; JAXPORT FY2025 report; Cecil Commerce Center (Wikipedia); Crawford Diamond.