Pallets near Memphis International Airport

BOX 01A field that never really closes

Memphis International Airport covers 3,900 acres about seven miles southeast of downtown Memphis. FedEx calls the field its superhub, and most of its flights run between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. UPS has had a regional hub there since 1999 (Wikipedia, reviewed 2026).

The field handled 3,754,236 metric tons of cargo in 2024, the most of any airport in North America, per ACI North America 2024 rankings.

BOX 02Getting there, and the roads around it

The terminal is reached from I-240 by Plough Boulevard and Jim McGehee Parkway, and also by Winchester Road. Across from the field sits Democrat Road, where broker listings place the Airport Business Park and other warehouse parks next to the FedEx hub. Airways Boulevard, as one real-estate summary describes it, mixes office, retail and some industrial property.

BOX 03What the docks ship on and shed

Parcel and express docks live on standard 48 x 40 pallets, usually Grade A or B stringers, and a night-shift hub turns a lot of them. Forwarders consolidate loads for export, which brings in the 1200 x 800 mm Euro pallet and the need for heat-treated wood with the ISPM 15 mark.

A forwarder in this district should read export pallets and ISPM 15 first, and a dock with a pile should send a sell or clear request with the ZIP code.

BOX 04Worth knowing

FedEx and UPS run the overnight hubs that make the field what it is. The same airport freight reaches air cargo and forwarding docks across the metro, and the request is the same from any ZIP code.

BOX 05Four runways and an authority

The field has four concrete runways: 18C/36C at 11,120 feet, 18R/36L at 9,320 feet, 18L/36R at 9,000 feet and 9/27 at 8,946 feet. It is owned and operated by the Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority (Wikipedia).

FedEx moved its base to Memphis in 1973, and the superhub opened in 1981. Wikipedia gives the hub's sorting capacity as 484,000 shipments an hour. Those are the airline's numbers about a sorting system. They explain why so many warehouse buildings stand within a few minutes of the fence line.

BOX 06A cargo airport with a small passenger side

The passenger numbers are modest by comparison: 4,751,026 passengers in 2025, down from 11,258,682 in 2007, with passenger flights averaging about 80 a day. The contrast is useful for pallets. The traffic that fills the district's docks is freight, so the buildings around the airport are built for trucks, not for visitors.

For a dock, that means the busiest hours are not business hours. A night-shift building receives trucks after dark and clears them before dawn, and a pile of pallets can grow in a single shift.

BOX 07Pallets that never leave the ground

Air freight itself travels in aircraft containers and on airline pallets, which are not wooden shipping pallets. The wooden 48 x 40s in this district are the ones under cartons on trucks before and after a flight. A forwarder building a consolidation may use heat-treated wood for the leg that leaves the country.

Distinguishing the two keeps a request clear: say "wood pallets" and give the size. If your pile includes metal or plastic airline pallets, name them separately and note that the request is about wooden pallets only.

BOX 08Naming where you are

The district's four ZIP codes cover the airport itself, the warehouse parks on its edges and older neighborhoods around it. A building on Democrat Road is not in the same place as one on Airways Boulevard, though both are near the field.

For a night-shift dock, add the shift: "pallets accumulate between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m." helps explain why a pile looks different in the morning than in the afternoon.

BOX 09A short word on the neighborhoods

The district's ZIP codes, 38116, 38118, 38131 and 38132, include residential streets as well as freight land. A request that names a residential address will read as a small pile; one that names a freight address will read as a dock. Be clear which you are.