A railway town with a modern freight map
Ogden grew as a junction for east-west and north-south rail. Union Station once ran trains to Portland, Seattle and Chicago, and the freight side never left: the city still handles a large amount of rail traffic. I-15 passes near the western edge, with Ogden served by exits 341 to 344, and I-84 meets it at Riverdale. Washington Boulevard carries US-89 through the middle, and 12th Street (SR-39) leads east into Ogden Canyon.
Who works here
The IRS regional facility is the largest employer, with over 5,000 people, followed by McKay-Dee Hospital, Weber State University, Ogden City School District, Autoliv and Fresenius. Headquartered firms include ENVE Composites, which makes bicycle components, Goode Ski Technologies, and Autoliv North America, an automotive safety equipment maker. The city's industrial areas are concentrated in the west.
Autoliv and other automotive safety suppliers matter to the pallet trade because their parts travel to car plants, and the North American trade lists 48 x 45 as the automotive size. Medical and food makers, by contrast, ask for cleanliness. Composites, as in Layton and Clearfield, tend to need stock built to a spec sheet.
Weighing up the options
| If you are | Look at | Because |
|---|---|---|
| An automotive supplier | 48 x 45 pallets | It is the size the trade lists for auto freight |
| A food or medical maker | Food plant pallets | Clean, dry decks are the usual specification |
| A warehouse tenant | Truckload orders | Volume and a weekly schedule |
The airport and the rest
Ogden-Hinckley Airport lies in the southwest of the city and is Utah's busiest municipal airport; its only commercial service is Breeze Airways. It matters for geography more than freight. For the big western park, see Business Depot Ogden.
The rail yard and the dock
Union Pacific's Riverdale Yard, which began in the early 1940s as the East Yard and sits between 33rd and 50th Streets, replaced the older West Yard between 21st and 29th Streets as the city's main classification yard. Freight that arrives by rail in Ogden still transfers to trucks at warehouses nearby, and that handoff is where pallets enter the local stock.
Utah State Railroad Museum occupies Union Station, a reminder of how much of the city's identity rests on freight. For a pallet request, the practical consequence is a mix of old industrial buildings, new distribution sheds and light-industrial parks, each with docks of different heights and different gate widths.
A plain request from Ogden
- Give the ZIP, and the plant type in a word: food, composite, medical, automotive.
- Say the footprint. Automotive-safety suppliers often work in 48 x 45; most others in 48 x 40.
- Say whether the pallets stand indoors or in a yard, because snow on a yard stack lowers its value.
- Say how often. A weekly flow is a different arrangement from a one-time clean-out.
Ogden also sits beside Hill Air Force Base to the south and Business Depot Ogden to the west, so a dock manager may serve two very different customers within a few miles. Which of the two drives the pallet need decides the grade and treatment.
Seasons on the dock
Ogden's pallet year follows its freight. Retail and food shipping swell in the autumn, construction slows in the winter, and spring brings clean-outs after the thaw. Describing which part of the year your pile comes from shows what condition to expect.