Pallets in Detroit
Detroit holds three vehicle assembly complexes, the US ends of both Windsor bridges, port terminals, a refinery and the wholesale food district of Eastern Market, and every one of them ships on pallets.
The city in numbers
- Population
- 639,111 at the 2020 census
- Assembly
- Jefferson North, Mack and Factory Zero, all inside city limits or on its border
- Bridges
- The Ambassador Bridge, opened in 1929, and the Gordie Howe International Bridge, opened July 27, 2026
- Districts with pages
- Eastern Market and Southwest Detroit with Delray
- ZIPs
- 48201 to 48240
What the plants and the bridges mean for pallets
Stellantis' Jefferson North Assembly opened in 1991 and builds the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango, with 5,096 employees in 2022. The Detroit Assembly Complex on Mack builds the Jeep Grand Cherokee with 4,103 employees. GM's Factory Zero, on the Detroit-Hamtramck border, covers 365 acres and 4,500,000 square feet of floor space and builds electric pickups and SUVs. A plant of that scale draws a ring of supplier docks, and those docks produce the pallets that matter here.
The Ambassador Bridge carries more than 25% of US-Canada merchandise trade by value and more than 10,000 trucks a day. The Gordie Howe bridge, linking I-75 with Ontario Highway 401, adds a second crossing. Trucks waiting for a bridge are trucks with pallets on them, and the warehouses and yards that serve the approaches deal in cross-border stamps and heat-treated wood. See pallets to Canada.
Which sizes show up
| Where | Likely size | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supplier docks near the plants | 48 x 45 and 48 x 40 | Automotive parts, often on four-way or block builds |
| Eastern Market | 48 x 40 Grade A | Clean, dry stock for wholesale food |
| River and port terminals | Block pallets, heavy Grade B | Steel and bulk goods |
| Cross-border yards | Heat-treated 48 x 40 | Ontario-bound freight and the stamp question |
Industries inside the city
- Vehicle assembly, with its supplier docks. Assembly plants.
- Port terminals and steel. Steel is the Port of Detroit's most valuable commodity. Steel and metals.
- Oil refining. Marathon's refinery sits in 48217, south of the River Rouge.
- Wholesale food. Eastern Market and the distribution buildings around it.
- Cross-border trucking, at both bridges. Southwest Detroit.
Starting a pickup or an order
Say where
A street address or an intersection is enough to start. Detroit is large, and a pickup near the river is a different run from one on the east side.
Say what
Size, grade and a rough count. Photos of the pile are the quickest way to a yes.
Say when
Weekday, shift, and any dock appointment. Many Detroit docks are tight and run on windows.
If you are not sure what you have, the sorter takes a mixed pile apart in a few questions. To get going, use the request page.
Questions Detroit docks ask
Does it matter which side of the city the dock is on?
Yes, because Detroit is wide. The river and the bridges pull one kind of freight to the southwest, the assembly complexes pull another along the east side, and Eastern Market sits near the middle. Naming the neighborhood or the nearest cross streets lets a buyer judge the run before anything else.
We ship to Windsor. Which pallet do we need?
That depends on the direction and the date. Wood packaging coming into Canada from the continental United States is currently exempt from CFIA policy D-98-08, pending a phased move to full ISPM 15 implementation. Heat-treated pallets with a stamp avoid the question entirely.
Our dock is tight and trucks queue on the street. Can that work?
It can, if the pickup is booked for a quiet hour and the stack is staged where a driver can see it. Say how many trucks the apron holds and whether a liftgate or dock plate is needed.
What if we have only a few hundred pallets?
A few hundred is a normal Detroit stack. Many docks produce about that in a week, and a recurring arrangement is built around exactly that size.
Two districts with their own pages
Eastern Market and Southwest Detroit are different enough from the rest of the city to deserve their own descriptions: one is a night wholesale market for produce and meat, the other is a bridge, refinery and steel corridor. If your address is in either, read that page first.
Getting more from a Detroit dock
Large cities hide opportunity in their small places. A print shop, a bakery or a hardware wholesaler in Detroit may each have only a dozen pallets, but together they fill a truck. If you run a small dock, say what your neighbors have; the more a driver can collect on one street, the likelier a pickup is to happen.
What changes with the bridges
With the Gordie Howe bridge open since July 27, 2026, traffic patterns near Delray are still settling. Yards that served only one crossing now see choices, and cross-border freight can move between the two. Anyone shipping to Ontario from Detroit should check which crossing their carrier uses before planning a pickup near either.
Reading the districts
Detroit's neighborhoods have their own character: the river and bridges southwest, the market near the center, the assembly plants east and north. A request that names its district gets a quicker answer.
On this page
- Eastern Market Pallets for Eastern Market in Detroit: a 43-acre district with over 150 businesses and a night wholesale market. Clean, dry Grade A for produce and meat.
- Southwest Detroit and Delray Pallets in Southwest Detroit and Delray: the Gordie Howe bridge port of entry, a refinery, Zug Island steel and cross-border trucking yards.