Method
Every figure on this site comes from a public dataset named on the page that shows it. Computed values show their working here. Nothing on the site is a price quote, and nothing is legal advice.
Place pages and the build gate
A town, community-area or corridor page is built only when it carries at least three data fields of its own, and the build fails if a page that should have them doesn't. On top of that:
- Illinois towns are the 284 municipalities in CMAP's Community Data Snapshots, less Chicago. A town gets a page when CMAP's 2023 land-use inventory shows at least 25 acres of industrial land or LEHD counted at least 2,500 jobs located there in 2023. 220 pass; 63 don't.
- Indiana towns are the incorporated places in Lake and Porter counties with 5,000 or more residents in the Census Bureau's 2024 estimates. 20 pass.
- Chicago community areas get a page when a City industrial corridor crosses them or they hold at least 25 acres of industrial land. 59 of 77 pass.
Opening paragraphs are written from each place's own figures: which sentences appear depends on the numbers (for example, a town with 1.5 or more jobs per resident is described as a workplace town). Bordering towns are those whose Census boundaries come within about 0.1 mile; when a town has fewer than five bordering pages, the nearest towns by distance are listed as "nearby".
Towns left out: Barrington Hills (IL), Beach Park (IL), Beecher (IL), Big Rock (IL), Braceville (IL), Braidwood (IL), Bull Valley (IL), Burlington (IL), Campton Hills (IL), Clarendon Hills (IL), Coal City (IL), Deer Park (IL), Diamond (IL), Flossmoor (IL), Fox River Grove (IL), Godley (IL), Golf (IL), Greenwood (IL), Hainesville (IL), Hawthorn Woods (IL), Highwood (IL), Hometown (IL), Indian Creek (IL), Indian Head Park (IL), Inverness (IL), Johnsburg (IL), Kaneville (IL), Kenilworth (IL), Kildeer (IL), La Grange Park (IL), Lily Lake (IL), Lindenhurst (IL), Long Grove (IL), McCullom Lake (IL), Maple Park (IL), Midlothian (IL), Millbrook (IL), Millington (IL), Newark (IL), North Barrington (IL), Oakwood Hills (IL), Old Mill Creek (IL), Orland Hills (IL), Palos Park (IL), Plattville (IL), Port Barrington (IL), Richton Park (IL), Riverside (IL), Robbins (IL), Round Lake Heights (IL), Sleepy Hollow (IL), South Barrington (IL), Stone Park (IL), Symerton (IL), Third Lake (IL), Tower Lakes (IL), Trout Valley (IL), Virgil (IL), Wadsworth (IL), Wayne (IL), Winthrop Harbor (IL), Wonder Lake (IL), Worth (IL), New Chicago (IN), Schneider (IN), Whiting (IN), Beverly Shores (IN), Burns Harbor (IN), Dune Acres (IN), Hebron (IN), Kouts (IN), Ogden Dunes (IN), Town of Pines (IN).
Distances
Distances are straight-line miles, not road miles: from a town's Census internal point, a community area's centre, a corridor's nearest edge, or a ZIP code's Census internal point, to the facility point in the BTS intermodal atlas. On the Load Line, "nearest corridor" is measured to the nearest edge point of a City corridor or to the nearest member town's internal point of a suburban grouping.
Truck fill
The Load Line's trailer drawing assumes a 53-foot dry van with an inside length of about 630 inches, width of 98 inches and height of 108 inches. Trailers vary; these are assumptions, not a spec.
| Floor spots, 48x40 loaded two across | 2 across × 13 deep (630 ÷ 48 = 13.1, rounded down) = 26 |
|---|---|
| Pallets per stack | 108 ÷ 5.5 = 19.6, capped at 18 for loading clearance = 18 |
| Empty pallets per trailer | 26 × 18 = 468 |
| Pile estimate | stack height in inches ÷ 5.5, rounded down, × number of stacks |
Load Line verdict rules (v1, 2026-10-27)
Chi Pallets rules of thumb, not market data. Thresholds await owner review (see REVIEW.md). The verdict is a sum of points:
| Factor | Points |
|---|---|
| Share of the load that is Grade A or B/C (pooled pallets left out) | 75% or more: +2; 50% or more: +1; 25% or more: 0; 0% or more: -2 |
| Count (pooled left out) | 400+: +2; 150+: +1; 50+: -1; 0+: -3 |
| Loading | dock-high with forklift +1; ground with forklift 0; hand-load -1 |
| Frequency | one time 0; weekly +1; monthly +1 |
| Miles to the nearest corridor | 3 or less: +1; up to 12: 0; further: -1; ZIP unknown: 0 |
| Likely paid pickup | score of 5 or more, and at least half the load is Grade A or B/C |
|---|---|
| Likely free pickup | score of 1 or more |
| Combine with neighbours | score of -1 or 0, fewer than 150 pallets, and within 6 miles of a corridor |
| Likely a fee | everything else |
When the request goes out, a load that is at least half Grade A or B/C is sent as a sale; anything else as recycling.
The price sheet
The monthly sheet is built from listings on Repackify, the marketplace run by the same owner as this site. It will report asking prices, cleaned by ZIP code into counties, with the 10th percentile, median and 90th percentile per grade and county, and the number of listings behind each cell. Cells with fewer than five listings are not shown; the Load Line then falls back to the regional row and says so. The sheet is not live yet, so no prices appear anywhere on the site.
Grades
Pallet grades have no single industry standard. This site uses Grade A for a pallet ready to reuse with no visible repairs, Grade B for a sound pallet with repairs, Grade C for a worn pallet still usable for one-way moves, and cores for pallets that need repair before reuse. See pallet types and the glossary. The scoring below drives the Load Line; the place pages start from the county hubs.
Sources
- CMAP Community Data Snapshots 2026. Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Population from the 2020 Census (P.L. 94-171); jobs located in the place from LEHD 2023 (primary jobs); private-sector jobs from IDES Where Workers Work 2025; land use from the CMAP 2023 Land Use Inventory; industrial equalized assessed value from the Illinois Department of Revenue, 2024.
- Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 population estimates. Subcounty resident population estimates, July 1, 2024 (file sub-est2024.csv).
- Census Bureau 2023 Gazetteer files. Land area and internal point for places and ZIP Code Tabulation Areas.
- Census Bureau 2020 ZCTA relationship files. ZCTA-to-place and ZCTA-to-county land overlaps. A ZIP is listed for a town when at least 20% of the ZIP's land, or 10% of the town's land, overlaps.
- Census Bureau cartographic boundary files, 2023. 1:500,000 county and place boundaries, simplified for the maps. Bordering towns are those whose boundaries come within about 0.1 mile of each other.
- BTS National Transportation Atlas Database: Intermodal Freight Facilities, Rail TOFC/COFC. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, compiled 2018 and updated July 2022. Distances are straight-line miles from the place's internal point to the facility point.
- BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2024 annual averages. Private ownership. Establishment counts and average employment by county and NAICS industry. Employment the BLS withholds for confidentiality is shown as not disclosed.
- City of Chicago: Boundaries, Community Areas. Chicago Data Portal.
- City of Chicago: Boundaries, Industrial Corridors (current). Chicago Data Portal, January 2013 corridor boundaries (data table 3tu3-iesz). The City has since revised parts of some corridors under its Industrial Corridor Modernization work; this map shows the published dataset.
- City of Chicago: Boundaries, ZIP Codes. Chicago Data Portal. A ZIP is listed for a community area when it covers at least 10% of the area.
- Natural Earth 1:10m lakes. Lake Michigan outline for the maps. Public domain.
Last reviewed 2026-10-27. Not legal advice and not a price quote. See how the figures are built.