Buying your first pallet of used IBC totes

Buying used containers is not complicated, but it has a vocabulary and a set of assumptions that everybody in the trade shares and nobody writes down. Here is the version for somebody doing it for the first time.

Decide the grade before the price

There are broadly five things you can buy, and the right one is decided by what is going in the container.

Specify five things on the order

1. 01Size — 275 or 330 gallon. They share a footprint and differ by seven inches of height.
2. 02Grade — using the seller's own definitions, which you should ask them to state.
3. 03Base type — composite, all-steel or all-plastic. Food service and washdown areas need plastic or steel.
4. 04Outlet fitting — bare buttress, camlock, hose thread, NPT or tri-clamp, plus the fluid so the elastomer is right.
5. 05Your lowest vertical clearance — door, rack beam, mezzanine. This single number prevents the most common rejected delivery.

What to expect on the dock

Cosmetic variation within a grade. Used containers are not manufactured to look alike, and a pallet of grade B will include some units that look better than others. What should be consistent is the functional condition, and a seller who grades properly will have described the range before you paid.

Staining is the thing first-time buyers query most. Dyes and iron colour HDPE permanently without affecting it. It is cosmetics, not contamination.

Five things nobody tells you

• Freight per unit is punishing below about twenty containers. If you are near the yard, collect — it is often half the delivered cost.
• Empty containers stack two or three high safely. Full ones generally do not.
• The lid is the part most often missing on used stock. Ask whether caps are included.
• A 330 will fit your rack footprint and may not clear the beam above it.
• If you tell the seller what is going in, they will fit the right gasket. If you do not, they will fit EPDM and hope.

Before the first fill

Rinse, check the interior with a torch for crazing, operate the valve through its full travel, and replace the outlet gasket if you have any doubt about it. That is fifteen minutes for a pallet and it catches nearly everything.

Record the serial numbers against what you put in them. It costs nothing now and turns any future quality question into a lookup.

What arrives, and what to do in the first hour

The load lands, the driver leaves, and there is a short window in which any problem is easy to resolve and after which it is your problem. Use it.

1. 01Count them against the bill of lading before the driver goes.
2. 02Walk the load and look for transit damage — a bowed bar or a cracked base that was not on the grading note.
3. 03Open two or three at random and put a torch inside.
4. 04Operate two or three valves through their full travel.
5. 05Photograph anything that does not match what you were told.
6. 06Sign for the count, and note any discrepancy on the paperwork rather than raising it later.

Fifteen minutes. Any legitimate supplier will resolve a discrepancy raised in that window without argument and will be much less helpful about one raised three weeks later.

Storing them properly from day one

• Cap everything, including containers you plan to fill next week. An uncapped container collects water and debris.
• Store empty and upright. Stacked upside down they collect rain in the base.
• Two or three high empty is fine; do not stack on a bowed cage.
• Keep them out of direct sun if the bottles are natural, or wrap them.
• If they will overwinter empty outdoors, leave the valve open so nothing collects and freezes in it.

A first-order shopping list

Things people order two weeks after their first pallet, which could have come on the same truck.

The mistake almost everybody makes once

Ordering the right containers with the wrong outlet, discovering it on the day the product is ready, and losing a week to an adapter.

Tell your supplier what your pump or hose connects with, in words, before the order is confirmed. "Two inch" is not enough information — it describes the bore, not the thread.

Questions from first-time buyers

How many containers is a pallet? One. An IBC is its own pallet — the base is an integrated 48 by 40 inch pallet, which is why they are handled as single units. When we say a pallet position, we mean one container's footprint.

Can I inspect before buying? Yes, by appointment at the yard, and we photograph representative units for customers who cannot travel.

What if a container is not as described? Raise it within a day or two with photographs and the serial number, and it gets resolved. That is what the grading note and the unit record exist for.

Do prices move much? Slowly. Used container pricing tracks inbound supply and scrap markets rather than anything volatile, which is why waiting for a better price is rarely a good strategy and storing containers outdoors while you wait is a bad one.