58 answers,
including the ones
suppliers avoid.

No, and please do not. You will spend labour and water doing badly what a caustic circuit at 150 °F does properly in eighteen minutes. Drain what drains easily, keep the caps on, and declare the previous contents accurately. That is the whole requirement.

It depends on five things, in this order: previous contents, quantity and consistency, whether a freight lane runs past you, your loading conditions, and cage and pallet condition. Not weight — we buy containers, not material. See the full breakdown.

Almost certainly. 93.9% of our intake returns to service as a container, and weather damage is mostly cosmetic — a bottle that sat empty under a tarp for six years usually still holds pressure. Customers consistently underestimate their own empties.

Declare it. Depending on the material it may be captured and profiled at no cost, or it may carry a disposal charge we quote upfront. What causes problems is undeclared liquid found at our intake pad.

Most hazardous residues, yes. Our declared exclusions are acutely toxic and P-listed materials, radiological and biohazardous residues, unstabilised reactive monomers and PCBs. Send the declaration and we confirm before a truck is booked.

Company cheque on pickup or ACH within two business days, whichever suits. Where a grade-dependent element is involved, that portion settles within five business days of grading with the per-unit breakdown attached.

Within 150 miles of Harvey, yes — our minimum is four. Further out, six units usually only work if we have a lane passing you. Ask; the worst outcome is an honest no and a suggestion.

Yes, and they are worth real money. The galvanised steel cage carries more embodied carbon than the bottle and lasts three times as long — a sound cage feeds our rebottling line.

Leave the Grade field blank and describe the duty instead. Nine times out of ten the answer is grade B — tested, washed, structurally sound and considerably cheaper than A-. Full criteria on the grading scale.

Reconditioned keeps the original bottle, washed to the programme its residue demanded and pressure tested. Rebottled fits a brand-new bottle into a reclaimed, straightened steel cage — new interior, 44% of the embodied carbon of a fully new unit.

Not if the wash programme matched the residue. The real risk is permeation, where a previous content absorbed into the polyethylene wall and migrates back out. That is why the previous-contents declaration matters so much — see our article on permeation.

Yes, and most volume customers do — grade A- for product fills and grade B- for washdown water on the same trailer. The manifest shows which units are which.

Typically two to eight years from manufacture. Age is the fourth-best predictor of condition, behind previous contents, storage conditions and fill count. We will tell you the range in a lot.

Yes, graded and racked. Standard 275 and 330 gallon reconditioned units in grades B and B- are almost always available immediately; grade A- moves fast and sometimes runs two weeks out.

Yes. Site visits are welcome by appointment, and we photograph the actual staged units for every order before it loads — every load, not just the first.

We replace it or credit it, your choice, and we want to know about it. A mis-grade is our process failure rather than a negotiation. Our rate is 0.4%.

Yes, and we will tell you when you do not need them. The three legitimate reasons are a regulatory first-fill mandate, a documented customer requirement, and a packing group at the edge of the design type. See new totes.

Within 150 miles of Harvey, from four units. Further out, partial loads are possible on lanes we already run — always ask, because our backhauls are the cheapest freight available.

Forty-eight single-stacked for any capacity on the 48 × 40 inch footprint. Empty units with sound cages generally double-stack to ninety-six — but only the 275 gallon and shorter, because a double-stacked 330 exceeds the 110-inch trailer interior.

About 2,418 lb with water, including the 125 lb tare. For your own product, multiply 2,294 lb by your specific gravity and add the tare. Check that against forklift capacity at the fork centre, not the nameplate rating.

Two high is the standard rating for composite IBCs in good condition. Never stack a unit with any cage deformation, and reconditioned stock is rated on actual cage condition — we will tell you if a lot should not be stacked.

140 °F is the practical limit for the whole assembly. Above it the bottle softens enough to deform under its own contents, which permanently distorts geometry. For hot fills you need stainless.

Fluorinated HDPE handles many aromatics and some hydrocarbons, but the barrier is a surface treatment that degrades with repeated exposure. For long contact times or many cycles, stainless is the durable answer. Send us the product, concentration, temperature and contact time.

Oils and petroleum: Viton or Buna-N, never EPDM. Aromatic or chlorinated solvents: Viton. Food or high temperature: silicone. Aqueous, caustic, surfactant, glycol or brine: EPDM. Full table on the fittings page.

Because IBC outlets use buttress thread, which is not compatible with pipe thread. You need a buttress-to-NPT adapter and then an NPT camlock or hose tail. Photograph the outlet and we will name the two parts.

To the working fill level, yes. Brimful is nearer 290. The difference is designed thermal expansion headspace and should not be filled.

Standard composite IBCs cannot — the 31HA1 design type is explicitly non-pressurised. Pressure-rated stainless IBCs exist and carry their own inspection regime.

Plastic for general and hygienic duty, steel for the heaviest products or longest life, timber only for lowest initial cost. Avoid timber entirely if the containers may be exported, because of ISPM-15. See pallet types.

Yes, where it has been inspected and tested by a competent reconditioner and the periodic inspection record is current. The marking indicates the reconditioner and the test date.

Suitability for transport within the design type — and nothing else. It says nothing about chemical compatibility with your product, food-contact suitability, previous contents, or whether the unit has been washed. Those are four separate evidence chains. See the full decode.

The Y suffix means the design type is approved for packing groups II and III. X covers groups I, II and III; Z covers III only. Almost all composite IBCs are Y-rated.

The unit cannot legally transport hazardous materials until re-inspected and re-tested. It remains perfectly usable for non-regulated liquids and for storage. We can perform the inspection as part of reconditioning.

No. Not in our operation and, in our view, not in anyone’s. HDPE permeates; a wash removes residue but cannot reach what has absorbed into the wall. One industrial fill disqualifies a bottle from our food-grade path permanently.

The resin is compliant, but the unit is only food-grade if it was also handled on a segregated path and documented. A new bottle washed in shared industrial water is not a food-grade unit.

A resin compliance reference against 21 CFR 177.1520, per-unit fill history, the wash circuit record, a segregation attestation, and the pressure and leak test record per unit.

No. We run the document control, records and internal audit cycle the standard asks for, and we describe ourselves as ISO-aligned rather than certified because that is the truth. See certifications.

Usually. Send it through and it reaches our QA lead. We read them properly and flag clauses we cannot meet rather than signing and hoping.

Yes, by appointment. Several of our larger accounts audit the food-grade path annually. Bring your checklist.

Yes. We send a flatbed with an onboard forklift, or a box truck with a liftgate for smaller counts. Tell us the site conditions and the quote includes the right equipment rather than a surprise.

Two to four business days locally, up to two weeks for the furthest bands. A flexible window gets you onto an existing lane and costs less than a fixed date.

Ask whether a lane is running. An empty return leg passing your site is the cheapest freight in this industry, and nobody volunteers it. See our article on backhauls.

That is our preferred arrangement and our most common wholesale setup. Stock in, empties out, one freight leg, netted invoice.

Yes, with an accurate declaration of the product and fill weight. Placarded hazmat movements are possible by arrangement — tell us the UN number and packing group.

Only if you can achieve 90%+ return. Below that, one-way reconditioned stock is better commercially and environmentally. The deciding factor is the commercial mechanism — a deposit or a contract clause. See asset programs.

Yes — toll reconditioning. Your assets stay yours, serials are recorded at collection and reported at return, and you get a serial-level report of wash programme, test result and repairs.

No. Quotes are free including for cleanouts, and we will do a photo-based assessment without a site visit in most cases. Large or complex cleanouts sometimes warrant a visit, which is also free.

Regularly — they are a significant share of our intake. We can take the container stream and you keep the residue work.

No. We do not run a phone line — every enquiry comes through the form or by email to info@ibc-pickup.com, and is answered by a named person within one business day. It means nothing gets lost in a voicemail nobody checks.

Substantially. 53 lb CO₂e against 315 lb for a new unit, cradle to gate — a net saving of 262 lb per unit. Most of a tote’s carbon is in moulding, welding and galvanising, which reuse keeps entirely.

Recycling recovers material; reuse recovers material and manufacturing. Roughly 60% of a tote’s carbon is in forming, welding and galvanising — processes recycling discards. See the full argument.

No component of any tote entering our yard leaves it for a landfill — not a bottle, cage, pallet board or valve body, since 2016. Liquid residues are a separate, regulated stream and we say so explicitly. See the pledge.

Yes, as supplier-provided estimates with the factors and sources cited from our impact report. If you need an attestation of the quantities you actually sent us, ask — we can produce it from intake records.

None. Every figure we publish is an emission that did not happen rather than one that happened and was paid for elsewhere. It is a narrower claim and a sturdier one.

Crediting recovered HDPE as displacing virgin resin one-for-one. Our flake is single-stream and hot-washed, which justifies a high ratio, but 1.0 is the top of the defensible range. Discount the reprocess figure by up to 20% for a conservative view.

A 71% reuse rate on timber pallet bases. Hardwood deck repair is uneconomic below a threshold, so 29% gets chipped to animal bedding and mulch — a material cascade, not reuse, and we call it that.

148 gallons gross, 11.8 gallons net after 92% recirculation. For comparison, producing a new bottle takes roughly 1,862 gallons of process water — a ratio of about 158 to 1.

2.4% of intake becomes an upcycled build if watertight at atmospheric pressure. 3.7% is granulated, hot-washed and pelletized into recycled HDPE on site. None is landfilled.

All of it. The Reclaim Ledger runs our published factors live, and the methodology page gives the boundary, allocation rules and the four places the model is soft.