Send it over dirty.
Get it back certified.
If you own totes and want them cleaned, re-gasketed, and re-certified rather than replaced — send them to the reconditioning bay. We run fleet accounts for a handful of regional operators and process one-offs as well.
Skip the phone tag. Leave a note — we'll reply by email.
The bay, step by step
Intake
Prior contents logged. Tank ID tagged.
Hot caustic
140°F, 2% sodium hydroxide, 12-minute dwell.
Detergent wash
Biodegradable surfactant, brush agitation.
Potable rinse
Clean municipal water, volumetric verification.
UN31A test
Hydrostatic pressure hold, fresh cert printed.
Standard reconditioning
Full bay pass, valve & gasket refresh, fresh UN31A paperwork. Turnaround: 48 hours in-yard; longer for bulk.
Rebottled (food-grade)
We keep your existing cage and pallet and drop in a new virgin-HDPE inner bottle. Faster and cheaper than a new tote, full FDA-compliant contact surface.
What the wash
actually does.
HDPE is chemically stubborn, which is exactly why it makes a good storage resin and exactly why cleaning it requires real chemistry rather than a hot-water hose. Our wash stack is the result of a decade of blown-out shortcuts. A quick tour of what each step actually attacks:
- Hot caustic (3% NaOH, 140°F). Saponifies organic films — fatty acids, plant oils, most food residues. Twenty-minute dwell at temperature. The steam cabinet reclaims water at 62% recovery.
- Surfactant wash. Biodegradable non-ionic blend at 0.8% active. Brush agitation on the inside wall — the mechanical action matters more than the soap.
- Citric neutralizer (4%). Brings surface pH back to 6.8–7.2. Without this step, residual alkalinity bleeds into the next load and tastes terrible. Food-grade applications depend on it.
- Potable rinse. Clean municipal water at 60 gallons per tote, volumetrically verified. Last conductivity reading recorded on the cert sheet.
- 48 – 96 h dry bay. Ambient airflow through a louvered drying room. The range is there because humidity varies; we don't retest until moisture meter reads under 0.3%.
- Food & beverage
- Full stack + potable rinse + COA letter
- Glycol / coolant
- Caustic + surfactant + triple rinse
- Detergent / surfactant
- Rinse-heavy, skip hot caustic
- Fertilizer (liquid)
- Citric-forward, tight pH verification
- Agrichem (non-listed)
- Full stack + dedicated last-in-line slot
- Industrial water / brine
- Rinse + pH check only
- Unknown prior
- Declined to reconditioning; recycle only
Agrichem loads run at end of day to protect the morning's food-grade stream. It's a scheduling rule we don't break.
UN31A, every
2.5 years.
The UN31A mark is the difference between a tote that can legally hold packaged liquid and a tote that's just a nice-looking cube. The retest cycle is 30 months from last test date — not from manufacture. A lot of customers lose track; we don't.
Leakproofness test
27.5 kPa internal air pressure, 10-minute hold, submersion or soap-film check for escape. Pass requires zero continuous bubble stream.
Hydrostatic test
100 kPa gauge, 30-minute hold at ambient temperature. We record both peak and hold pressure on the cert sheet.
Internal inspection
Borescope sweep of interior wall, corners, bottom. Looking for stress whitening, chemical crazing, or abrasion beyond 0.2 mm depth.
External walkthrough
Cage squareness, weld integrity, pallet condition, valve operation, gasket supple-check, UN badge legibility.
Gasket & valve swap
EPDM or silicone gasket depending on prior contents, 2″ butterfly valve rebuild or replacement, fresh cap with o-ring.
Cert sheet & stamp
Printed certificate with tester ID, test date, next due date (30 months out), and the tank's ledger ID. Stamp pressed on the cage badge.
Photo record
Three angles, filed against the tank's ledger entry. If you sell the tote in two years, that photo is still retrievable.
Reject criteria
Any visible bottle crack, any cage weld fracture, any prior hazmat without a licensed cleaning manifest — tote fails and moves to the recycling line.
The honest math
on recondition vs. replace.
A new Mauser or Schütz IBC lands in western PA at current market rates, varying with freight and spec. A full standard reconditioning at our bay costs a small fraction of that. At first glance that's a dramatic savings — but the real answer depends on how long the tote has been in your fleet and what it held.
The cage is straight, the bottle is under four years old, the prior contents are documented, and you're not jumping from industrial to food-grade. Break-even vs. new is usually one reuse cycle.
You need food-grade contact but want to keep the existing cage, pallet, and corporate asset tag. Rebottling with virgin HDPE inner at volume still comes in at well under a third of new-tote cost.
The cage has bent verticals beyond a single weld's repair, the bottle shows visible stress whitening, or the prior contents cross a regulatory line the wash bay can't guarantee. Honesty here saves money later.
A tote that enters service new and gets reconditioned at each 30-month cycle typically runs 10–12 years before the HDPE is too fatigued to pass hydro. That's three to four reconditionings per tank — cumulative wash cost is a small fraction of what four replacement tanks would run.
Booking time
in the wash bay.
The bay runs two shifts, five days a week, and stays booked about 70% ahead. For small jobs (under 10 units) we can usually slot you inside a week. Fleet runs of 30+ usually slip into the calendar three weeks out, sometimes sooner if another account cancels.
- · 1–9 units: 3–7 day lead, 48-hour in-bay turnaround.
- · 10–49 units: 7–14 day lead, usually split across two days.
- · 50+ units: 14–28 day lead, dedicated wash slot, split-shift if urgent.
- · Rush (< 72 h): +25% on the per-unit rate, subject to bay availability.
- · Standing fleet accounts: Recurring calendar slot, monthly invoicing, priority slip into rush queue.
Drop-off is any weekday 7 AM – 3:30 PM. Pickup at finish is by appointment. We'll email you the day before with a two-hour window for load-out.
- Hydrostatic pass sheet. Signed, dated, next-due marked. Valid 30 months.
- Wash log. Caustic bath lot, citric lot, rinse volume, dry-bay exit moisture reading.
- Gasket & valve record. New or rebuilt, part number, material (EPDM / silicone / PTFE).
- Photo dossier. Interior borescope still, exterior three-quarter, cage detail. Stored against ledger ID.
- Food-grade letter (optional). 21 CFR 177.1520 compliance summary for rebottled tanks, on letterhead.
The paperwork packet comes bound in a manila folder or as a single PDF — your choice on the intake form.
Protocols we run
every bay shift.
Confined-space rules
No entry into a tote interior under any circumstance. All internal cleaning is wand-driven from outside the 6″ fill port. Kept us out of the OSHA confined-space standard entirely.
Hot caustic PPE
Nitrile over cotton gloves, face shield, chemical apron, boots. Emergency eyewash and safety shower within 10 ft of every bay station, inspected weekly.
Cross-contamination rule
Agrichem and food-grade never share a shift. Bay gets a full break-down, water flush, and bath swap between the two. Slows throughput by about 40 minutes, prevents the recall-scale mistake.
Respirator protocol
Half-face cartridge (organic vapor + acid gas) mandatory for the first rinse of any unknown-chemistry load. Cartridges change at 4-hour intervals or odor breakthrough, whichever comes first.
Effluent handling
All wash water goes through a 1,500-gal settling tank and a pH neutralizer before discharge under our municipal POTW permit. Sludge removed quarterly by a licensed hauler.
Near-miss log
Every stumble, splash, or unexpected pressure release gets an entry. Reviewed weekly by the bay lead. It's the single biggest reason the bay has zero recordables in the last 3 years.