Pallets in Byhalia, Mississippi

BOX 01A crossroads town

Byhalia sits about 30 miles southeast of downtown Memphis by way of US 78, which is the main route to the city. Interstate 22 runs south of the town center with access at Exit 14, which is MS 309, and continues about 16 miles southeast to Holly Springs. Interstate 269, the Memphis beltway, runs along the northwest edge of town with access at Exit 18, also MS 309 (Wikipedia).

The town sits on the BNSF Railway. Population is small, so the pallet story is about what moves past and through it, not about local retail.

BOX 02Why the beltway matters

A beltway interchange next to a rail line is exactly where a warehouse developer looks, because trucks can skip Memphis traffic entirely and rail serves the building. The Marshall County market is therefore an edge of the larger DeSoto and Southeast Memphis belt, with newer buildings and fewer neighbors.

Newer buildings tend to have fewer shed pallets in the early years: racks are being filled, not cleared. The pile that does appear is usually an inbound one, with pallets that came with imported or rail freight and have to be moved on.

BOX 03Rail-served freight and pallets

• Freight arriving by rail is often on 48 x 48 or 48 x 40 pallets in boxcars, and the receiving dock wants the cores out.
• Truck docks off the interchange see the mixed 48 x 40 grade that Memphis docks see.
• Large-volume pickups are a truckload question; see truckloads and the pallets per trailer guide.

BOX 04Writing from Byhalia

Say which interchange or road the building is on, the count, the size and whether the pallets are in a trailer, on a dock or in a yard. A building off an interstate exit is easy for a driver to find, and that is worth putting in the request. Related: intermodal and rail and Rossville, the other rail-served town to the northeast.

BOX 05Reading the interchange numbers

Byhalia has two exits on MS 309: exit 14 on I-22 and exit 18 on I-269. Both exits sit on the same state route, MS 309. I-22 itself begins at I-269 near Byhalia, per the I-269 article.

That makes the town the western end of I-22 and the place where the beltway meets it. A trailer there can head northwest to Memphis, southeast along I-22 toward Holly Springs, or around the beltway.

BOX 06A request that carries the road

"Building off MS 309 near the I-269 exit in Byhalia receiving boxcar and truck loads; about 120 mixed pallets a month, mostly 48 x 40 and 48 x 48; roughly a quarter cracked." The road, the exit, the freight modes, the volume, the sizes and the damage rate are all in one line.

BOX 07Population and scale

The 2020 census puts Byhalia at 1,339 residents in one table and 1,440 in another section of the same article, so the figure is soft. Either way the town is small, and its pallets come from freight, not from household or retail life. A request from Byhalia is most likely from a warehouse or a rail-served plant.