Pallets in Boise, ID. Delivered by the truckload.

Boise freight runs along I-84 through the Treasure Valley: onion, hop and seed farms around Wilder and Parma, a sugar-beet factory and rail interchange in Nampa, and warehouses spreading west through Meridian and Caldwell toward the Oregon line.

Boise is Idaho's capital and the headquarters city for two supermarket chains, an agribusiness and potato-processing company, several lumber firms and a memory-chip maker. West of town, Canyon County farms grow onions, hops, seed corn, beans and alfalfa seed, most of it watered by irrigation canals. Nampa grew up as the valley's railroad town after the Oregon Short Line arrived in 1883, and a short line still gathers carloads of potatoes, lumber, fertilizer and fuel from Boise, Meridian and Wilder for Union Pacific interchanges at Nampa and Caldwell.

That mix splits pallet buying three ways. Onion and seed packers need wood when their sheds and cleaners start shipping, and their customers range from grocery DCs to overseas buyers. Rail-served plants in Nampa and Caldwell move heavy sacks and bulk bags that punish thin deck boards. Distribution buildings along I-84 run standard 48x40s all year. Southwest Idaho sits hundreds of miles from salt water, so export pallets have to be right before the truck or railcar leaves for a Pacific Northwest terminal.