Pallets across Utah County, around the shore of Utah Lake

A lake in the middle

Utah Lake sits in the centre of Utah Valley, with the Wasatch Range on its eastern side. I-15 was built in 1956 beside the older US-89 and became the dominant route. US-6 comes down Spanish Fork Canyon to meet I-15 in Spanish Fork, and US-189 climbs Provo Canyon toward Heber.

FrontRunner stops at Lehi, American Fork, Vineyard, Orem and Provo, where it ends.

City by city

Inland Port areas

The Utah Inland Port Authority has two project areas in the county: Verk Industrial Park in Spanish Fork, created in July 2023, and Pony Express in Utah County, created in June 2025. Industrial parks mean new loading docks, and new docks mean pallets.

ZIP codes

Requests from this county use codes such as 84043 for Lehi, 84601 to 84606 for Provo, 84057, 84058 and 84097 for Orem, and 84660 for Spanish Fork.

Sizes in demand

Electronics and medical makers often want new or heat-treated stock in standard and custom sizes; see electronics and medical devices. Food processors lean on clean Grade A boards.

Lehi

Lehi is a Utah County city that moved from farms to technology, and it ships on new or heat-treated pallets more than most of the valley. A request from ZIP 84043 should say whether the pallet needs to be new, what size, and how many a week.

• ZIP: 84043
• I-15 exits: 4 inside the city
• Rail transit: FrontRunner, since 2012

Four exits on one freeway

I-15 runs through Lehi with four city exits: Lehi Main Street (SR-73), 2100 North (SR-194), Triumph Boulevard and Timpanogos Highway (SR-92). Pioneer Crossing (SR-145) is just south in American Fork. The FrontRunner station opened on December 12, 2012, near Thanksgiving Point.

Chips, code and consumer goods

Adobe, Ancestry.com, Vivint, Microsoft and Purple Innovation have offices or headquarters in the city, in places such as Thanksgiving Park and the Corporate Center at Traverse Mountain.

Some of these are office campuses with little freight, and others ship products. Electronics and medical equipment typically travel in smaller recurring batches, often on new pallets built to a sheet, or on heat-treated ones for overseas customers. A mattress or consumer-goods e-commerce operation behaves more like a warehouse, with weekly counts of 48 x 40 pallets.

The three kinds of Lehi request

• A recurring buy of new pallets, covered at new pallets.
• A custom size for a product that does not fit a 48 x 40, at custom pallets.
• A one-time clear-out after a move or build-out, at pallet removal.

Ask for the IPPC stamp only if the crate or load leaves the country; otherwise it only adds a line to the request.

Orem

Orem is a city of about 18 square miles on the east shore of Utah Lake, 45 miles south of Salt Lake City. Its docks mostly serve retail, parcels and one industrial diamond maker, in ZIPs 84057, 84058 and 84097.

• ZIPs: 84057, 84058, 84097
• Roads: I-15, State Street, University Pkwy
• Transit: FrontRunner, UVX

Roads and transit

I-15 runs along Orem's west side with four interchanges. US-89 is State Street, cutting northwest to southeast through the city centre. Four state routes pass through: SR-52 (800 North), SR-114 (Geneva Road), SR-241 (1600 North) and SR-265 (University Parkway). FrontRunner serves Orem Station and UVX bus rapid transit runs along University Parkway.

Top employers in 2023

The city's 2023 financial report lists Utah Valley University (3,030), Alpine School District (1,222), the City of Orem (569), Timpanogos Regional Hospital (507), Avetta (500), Walmart (499), Target (409), UPS (360), Costco (350) and U.S. Synthetic (347). Together the top ten hold 15.3 percent of the city's jobs. Walmart, Target, UPS and Costco all run docks, which points to the pallet flow.

Retail and parcel docks produce piles of 48 x 40 stringer pallets, usually Grade B or C after a trip or two. The city also hosts industrial diamond product manufacturing, where the shipped goods are small and heavy and tend to want sturdy, well-built boards rather than throwaways.

Where to start

Orem is quite dense; say the cross streets, so a hauler can tell uptown from the Geneva Road side.

Retail and light industry

Orem has a great deal of retail and some light industry. Its pallet piles come from delivery docks and from small manufacturers.

• Big-box docks: large piles of standard 48 x 40 pallets.
• Small plants: odd sizes and light loads.
• Offices and clinics: very few pallets.

Spanish Fork

Spanish Fork lies at the southern end of the service area, where US-6 meets I-15. Meat processors, an aluminium extruder, metal fabricators and paper packaging plants make its pallet traffic heavier than its size suggests, all in ZIP 84660.

• ZIP: 84660
• Snowfall: About 66 in a year

Where it sits

Spanish Fork is in Utah Valley with the Wasatch to the east and Utah Lake to the northwest. Payson is about six miles southwest, Springville about four miles northeast and Salem about 4.5 miles south. I-15 passes along the northwest side, and US-6 comes down Spanish Fork Canyon and converges with I-15 here.

Employers named in the public record

Mountain Country Foods was the city's largest private employer with 350 employees. Eight other businesses employed 100 or more: SAPA, Klune Industries, Longview Fibre, Nature's Sunshine, Rocky Mountain Composites, J.C. Penney, Western Wats and Provo Craft. The list is dated, so read it as background and not a current census.

Verk Industrial Park, a Utah Inland Port project area in Spanish Fork created in July 2023, shows where new buildings are coming. The plants that already exist ship metal, food and packaging, which are heavy and, for meat processing, hygiene-sensitive.

Snow and storage

Annual snowfall averages 66 inches here, higher than Salt Lake City's 60. Stacks kept outside through the season get wet and can grow mold; wood with moisture content below 20 percent will not support mold, and that is a fair target for stock destined for a food line. See winter storage.

The food and beverage industry covers the first row in depth.