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History
Seventeen years, one idea, added to slowly.
Nothing here was a strategy. Each stage was a response to a container we could not do anything useful with — first we could not clean them, then we could not fix the cages, then we could not certify them, then we could not collect them economically. The company is essentially a list of solved bottlenecks.
Short answer
Founded 2009 collecting landfill-bound totes in Cuyahoga County. Wash line 2011, cage shop 2013, current yard 2015, in-house recertification 2017, own fleet 2019, managed programmes 2023.
- Years
- 17
- Yards
- 2
- Wash stations
- 9
- States on own trucks
- 6
Form 01 · Spec request
Working with us for the first time?
Everything above exists so that one form covers whatever you need. Send it and a specialist will scope the whole job.
- 2009Founded
One yard, one truck, one problem worth solving
A west-side chemical blender was paying a hauler to landfill empty IBCs. We offered to take them instead. Within four months we were collecting from eleven plants in Cuyahoga County with a borrowed flatbed and a rented half-acre. There was no wash line — sound containers were rinsed, graded and resold; the rest were dismantled by hand with a grinder and a pair of bolt cutters.
- 2011Processing
The first wash line
Reselling rinsed containers put a ceiling on what we could take in, because half of what we collected was too dirty to resell honestly. A second-hand rotating spray head, a heated caustic tank and a lot of plumbing changed that. Inbound acceptance roughly doubled in a year, and the phrase 'we cannot take those' largely disappeared from the vocabulary.
- 2013Fabrication
Cage shop opens
The wash line exposed the next bottleneck: containers with sound bottles and bent cages were still being scrapped. A welding bay, a straightening jig and one very patient fabricator turned that stream into rebottling stock. This was the year the operating philosophy became explicit — reuse, rebottle, repair, reclaim, in that order.
- 2015Relocation
Moved to 4750 W 160th Street
The current yard. Dock height, hard standing, a covered wash bay and enough room to segregate food-grade stock physically from industrial stock — which is the only way that separation actually means anything. Capacity roughly tripled and the food-grade programme became a real line of business rather than an occasional favour.
- 2017Compliance
UN recertification brought in house
Sending containers out for leakproofness testing was slow and expensive, and it meant customers with expiring plates quietly replaced their fleets instead. Bringing testing and re-marking in house kept thousands of rated containers in regulated service that would otherwise have been sold down or scrapped.
- 2019Logistics
Own fleet across six states
Contract freight worked, but it made small and awkward collections uneconomic, and those are exactly the loads other people refuse. Running our own trucks across Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia let us say yes to the forty-tote pile behind a plant in a town nobody routes through.
- 2021Transparency
Diversion statements and the reporting era
Customers started asking a new question: not what did you pay us, but what happened to our containers. We began weighing and recording outcomes by stream and issuing diversion statements as standard. It changed our own behaviour too — when you publish the reuse-versus-reclaim split, you work harder on the reuse half.
- 2023Managed fleets
Container management programmes
Several long-standing customers were losing containers permanently into their own customers' yards and replacing them every quarter. Serial-level registers, scheduled retrieval and quarterly reporting turned that leak into a loop, and turned us from a supplier into part of their packaging operation.
- 2026Today
Where things stand
Nine wash stations, a cage shop, in-house recertification, six states of own-truck coverage and contract freight nationwide. Roughly 94% of everything that comes through the gate leaves as a working container or as recovered material. The remaining 6% is the number we are still working on, and we would rather publish it than round it away.
What did not change
The order of operations, since the first month.
Reuse, rebottle, repair, reclaim. It was obvious in 2009 with a grinder and bolt cutters and it is still the rule with nine wash stations and a certification bench.
The only thing that has really changed is how far down that ladder we can act. In 2009 a container with a bent cage was scrap because we had no way to fix it. Today it is rebottling stock. Every piece of equipment in the yard exists to move the cut-off line one step further down the ladder — which is another way of saying every capital decision we have made was an environmental decision first and a commercial one second.
Seventeen years, measured
What each capability actually changed.
Equipment does not make an operation more efficient so much as it makes more of the inbound stream usable. These are the step changes.
| Year | Investment | Previously scrapped | Now recoverable | Effect on diversion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Wash line | Any container with residue | Documented, washable stock | Inbound acceptance roughly doubled |
| 2013 | Cage shop and jig | Bent frames, split decks | Anything structurally repairable | Largest single jump |
| 2015 | Segregated food pad | Food-history containers, sold as industrial | Documented food-grade stock | New line of business |
| 2017 | Certification bench | Rated containers with lapsed testing | Anything with a legible plate | Thousands of units kept rated |
| 2019 | Own fleet | Small and remote loads | Awkward collections nobody else takes | Wider inbound catchment |
| 2021 | Diversion reporting | — | — | Changed what we optimise for |
| 2023 | Managed programmes | Containers lost at customer sites | Fleet stock, retrieved | Turned a leak into a loop |
| Mistake | How long it ran | What it cost | The fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grading containers warm | Years | A share of units shipped wrong | Hold 24 h before an odour call |
| Wash capacity before repair capacity | Two years | Several thousand containers scrapped | Cage shop, which we should have bought first |
| Treating unknowns as a pricing problem | Years | Reusable stock sent to reclaim | Push sellers for paperwork instead |
| Not measuring the remainder | Two years | Nobody worked on the 6% | Publish it every quarter |
Answered · 4 questions
Questions we get about this
01How did the company start?
In 2009 a Cleveland chemical blender was paying a hauler to landfill empty IBC totes. We offered to take them instead, and within four months were collecting from eleven plants in Cuyahoga County with a borrowed flatbed and a rented half-acre.
02What changed the operation most?
The cage shop in 2013. The wash line let us reuse containers that were already sound; the welding bay and straightening jig let us reuse containers that were not, which moved the cut-off line much further down the reuse ladder.
03Has the philosophy changed?
No. Reuse, rebottle, repair, reclaim — in that order — was obvious in 2009 with a grinder and bolt cutters and it is still the rule with nine wash stations and a certification bench. What changed is how far down that list we can act.
04What would you do differently?
Buy repair capability before cleaning capability, hold containers before grading them, push sellers for paperwork rather than pricing unknowns cheaply, and publish the unrecoverable remainder years earlier than we did.
Next step
Have totes to move? So do we.
Send one form and a yard specialist prices the whole job — purchase, pickup, wash, recert or haul.