Corrugated boxes shipped to Iowa
Food manufacturing is 4.6 percent of Iowa's private jobs, among the highest shares in the country: 60,161 people in 2025. Meat and poultry processing accounted for 33,386 of them.
Who orders boxes in Iowa
Meat plants buy heavy cases that must hold up in freezers and coolers; Iowa had 70 million cubic feet of refrigerated warehouse space. Plastics products, 8,910 jobs, and dairy add other box types. Polk, Scott and Black Hawk counties led warehousing.
Delivery and freight
Most Iowa orders go to plants in small towns; give us the plant's ZIP.
Boxes delivered in Iowa: ask for a price
Add the Iowa ZIP the boxes go to, the inside size, grade and count. Freight is part of the quote.
- Inside size
- length x width x depth, in inches
- Style
- RSC, full overlap, telescope, die-cut or bulk
- Wall and grade
- read it off the stamp on your current box
- Count
- boxes per order, and how often you reorder
- Packed weight
- box plus contents
- ZIP
- where the boxes are delivered
After you send it
- We reply by email, usually with questions first if anything is unclear
- You confirm the specification, and a sample or drawing if it is a new design
- We send the price, the delivery window and the count tolerance
- On approval the order is scheduled and shipped to your dock
Worth knowing in Iowa
Pork and egg processing dominate Iowa's heavy case demand. Egg shippers use cartons built around filler flats, and pork processors use heavy cases that sit in blast freezers and cold storage. Seed, agricultural equipment parts and ethanol by-products add other packaging needs. Rural plants often have one dock and a fixed receiving time; tell us, and we schedule the truck to suit.
Most freight here runs east and west on I-80 and north and south on I-35, which cross at Des Moines; the Mississippi River towns on the eastern edge add barge and rail traffic.
Trades here and the boxes they order
- Meat and poultry processing: Heavy double wall cases for chilled and frozen product
- Food manufacturing: Shipping cases sized to the product and the palletizer
- Refrigerated warehousing: Cases that keep their strength in coolers and freezers
- Dairy product manufacturing: Cheese, butter and ice cream cases for cold rooms
- Plastics product manufacturing: Large light boxes and pallet-size bins for molded parts
Sources: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2025; Census ZIP Code Business Patterns, 2023.