Cash for your empties.
No judgement about condition.
If you've got five or five hundred used IBC totes sitting in a corner of your facility, we'll buy them. We bring the forklift, the paperwork, and the check.
Skip the phone tag. Leave a note — we'll reply by email.
We come to your dock. We bring the forklift.
A typical intake morning: fifty-plus totes staged outside a specialty coatings warehouse, waiting for three box trucks and a flatbed to shuttle them back to McKees Rocks. Our driver grades on your dock — not in our yard. You get paid from the same checkbook that funded the trip.
Any condition
Dirty, dented, mislabeled — bring it. We grade on the truck, not on your loading dock.
Volume pricing
Per-unit rates tier up at 10+ and 50+ totes. 200+: by-quote pricing, typically best in the region.
Same-week pickup
Email Monday morning, we're usually on your dock by Thursday. Emergency clear-outs: next day.
How a buy-back works, start to finish
- Email us. Count, previous contents (if known), address, and whether a forklift is on site. A photo helps but isn't required.
- Quote in 24 hours. We reply with a per-unit offer and a pickup window. No haggling, no surprise fees.
- We show up. One of our trucks arrives in the promised window. Driver verifies count and condition, signs a short bill of lading, and hands you the check.
- Back at the yard. Every tank gets logged into the ledger. You get a confirmation email with your tanks' IDs — which lets you see where they ended up, if you're curious.
One of our favorite things about the ledger is that customers who sold us totes five years ago can still look up what happened to them. It's the receipt for a promise we make.
What we actually pay
per tote.
We don't post a single flat rate because condition and prior contents move the number by a factor of four. Below is the honest range for the western-PA market as of Q2 2026. Quotes past 120 days may shift with HDPE commodity pricing.
A standard pickup fee applies on loads under 10 totes or beyond Zone 1. On buy-backs of 20+, the pickup fee is absorbed into the per-unit price.
- Grade A (clean, food-safe prior) — top of the range
- Grade B (industrial, rinsable) — middle of the range
- Grade C (stained, dented, usable) — lower of the range
- Recycle-only (cracked / unknown) — token recovery
- Caged 330-gallon (any grade) — small premium over 275
- Broken pallet / missing cage — minor deduction
- Mauser / Schütz / Greif branded — small branded premium
Rates are per tote, paid on pickup by check or ACH. Cash available on request for smaller loads.
Grading, without mystery.
Prior contents
Cage condition
HDPE body
Valve & fittings
Pallet
Labels & markers
UN31A date
Smell test
Worked example —
a Butler County coatings plant.
A real job from November 2025, anonymized. A coatings blender in Saxonburg had accumulated 34 totes over six months — a mix of food-grade pretreatment, pigment slurry, and one quarantine pallet of unknown returns. Here's how the ledger line looked at close of day.
- 14 × Grade A (food-safe)
- 9 × Grade B (pigment)
- 7 × Grade C (rinsable)
- 4 × Recycle-only (unknown)
- Cage premium on 9 Schütz
- Pickup fee (34 units) — absorbed
- Forklift hire at dock — none (driver used ours)
- Check cut on pickup: by quote
Truck on dock at 9:40 AM, loaded and pulling out by 10:55. Check signed and handed to the plant manager before departure.
What we hand you
on the dock.
- Bill of sale + BOL. One page, signed both ways. Ledger IDs are assigned per tote at this moment, which is why we need your count accurate before the driver leaves.
- Prior-contents declaration. Short form, you sign for what each pallet group last held. Satisfies 25 Pa. Code §75.33 for container transfer recordkeeping.
- Payment. Check printed in-truck, or ACH initiated same-day by our accounting desk. Net terms only by prior arrangement.
- Ledger confirmation. Email within 48 hours listing every tank ID we picked up and the disposition (wash queue, resale, granulator). That email is your receipt of responsible handling.
- ·Drain all totes below 1″ of residue; closed caps.
- ·Stage them somewhere a 26-foot straight truck can back to within 30 feet.
- ·Separate any tank that held a listed hazardous waste — those go to a licensed TSDF, not to us.
- ·If you can label pallets by prior contents, great; if not, we'll ask when we arrive.
- ·Have someone with signing authority on site from the start of the arrival window until load-out.
- ·If forklift access is tight, say so — we'll send the box truck with a liftgate instead of the straight.
None of these are hard rules. They just shave 20–40 minutes off the pickup, which usually shows up as a better per-unit rate.
The eight questions
we get every week.
Will you buy totes that held pesticides?
EPA-registered agrichem only (herbicide, fungicide, fertilizer blends). Restricted-use pesticides require a licensed TSDF handoff; we'll help coordinate but can't take the tank ourselves.
What about residue I can't identify?
Send a photo of the label or a short description. Unknown residue defaults to recycle-only pricing. We don't gamble on mystery liquids, and neither should you.
Can you pick up on weekends?
Saturdays yes, by prior appointment, within 60 miles of the yard. Sundays no — drivers are on DOT rest.
Do you take damaged totes at any price?
Almost always. Even a tank with a blown-out bottle has a cage and pallet with residual value. The only hard no is a tote that leaks contaminated liquid during transit, which becomes our liability.
How fast is payment?
Check on pickup for smaller loads. Larger loads go to ACH, same day if we close before 2 PM, next day otherwise.
Do you beat competitor quotes?
Sometimes. If you have a written quote from another regional buyer, send it; we'll match closely when the condition description matches. We won't chase lowball quotes from out-of-state brokers.
Will my company's name show up in the ledger?
No. The ledger shows tank IDs and dispositions, never the selling company. Privacy is part of what we sell.
Can you handle totes off a rail siding?
Yes, with two days of notice. Our straight truck has dock-height and we've loaded out of rail facilities in Leetsdale, Clairton, and Warren OH without issue.