Plastic bulk containers in Yakima

Yakima County grows apples, pears, cherries and hops, and packs and stores most of what it grows. Fruit and vegetable preserving runs at 8.9 times its national share of jobs here, and the county had 1,125 such jobs in 2025, with 1,602 in grocery wholesale and 2,795 in food manufacturing.

The container here is the macro bin. Bins go out to the orchard empty, nested 150 to a truck, come back full on a forklift, and spend the winter stacked in cold and controlled-atmosphere rooms. They need solid walls for fruit that bruises, a high stack load, and the footprint the packing house's dumpers take, 48 x 40 or 48 x 48 in. Bins that sit in yards between seasons need UV-stabilised resin.

Yakima also has 1,005 plastics product jobs. The warehousing ZIPs, Grandview's 98930 and Yakima's 98903, are where the packing sheds and cold stores are.

The Yakima Valley grows apples, pears and cherries, but also most of the US hop crop, picked in late summer and dried in kilns before baling. Wine grapes have spread across its slopes. Apple packers and storages ring the city and run through Wapato, Selah and Naches. Harvest bins are filled in orchards, trucked to storage, then held in controlled-atmosphere rooms for months, so bins here must stack high and steadily through a long winter. Dry, sunny summers make UV-stabilised resin worth asking for.

Yakima buyers want macro bins for apples, pears and cherries, and bins for hops.

Hop kilns need bales, not bins.

Sunnyside and Toppenish have dairies.