Structural and Geographic Shifts in the Washington Warehousing Industry: Transportation Impacts for the Green River Valley

Establishment level employment data indicate that the warehousing industry has experienced rapid growth and restructuring since 1998. This restructuring has resulted in geographic shifts at the national, regional, and local scales. Uneven growth in warehousing establishments across the Pacific Northwest has likely exerted a significant impact on the regional transportation system, but the extent of these transportation impacts remains unknown. Identifying these impacts is the goal of our proposed study. Recent and ongoing research indicates that growth in the warehousing industry is profound. County Business Patterns data published by the US Census Bureau indicates that at the national level, the number of warehousing establishments grew by just over 100 percent from 1998 to 2005. In 1998 there were 6,712 warehousing establishments in the US. By 2005, that number had increased to 13,483. Although a wide range exists within the warehousing industry, interview data collected by the authors of this proposal indicate that each warehouse handles between 25 and 100 trucks, or 50 and 200 trips, hence the location of warehousing establishments has a significant impact on transportation systems. At the county level, we see that in Washington, King County experienced the strongest absolute growth, adding 59 establishments to the 61 reported in 1998. In relative terms, however, Pierce County added warehousing establishments at a faster rate (159 percent) than any other county. The preliminary data produced in Goodchild and Andreoli’s report clearly indicate that there has been strong growth in warehousing establishments at the national and state levels, but that the growth has not been even across states and counties. From a transportation perspective, these findings suggest that future research needs to focus on how these structural and geographic shifts impact regional and local transportation systems.