Reuse ledger, year to date: 41,200 totes diverted from Texas landfills this year. 2,060k lb of HDPE kept in service. 1,772k lb of steel cage recovered. 3,140 tons of CO₂e avoided. 92% of our wash water recycled on site. 68 Texas counties served from one Austin yard. Full methodology at /sustainability/reuse-ledger.

Service · fleet management

The hardest part
of a tote program
is getting them back.

Anyone can fill a container. The difficulty is reverse logistics: finding your empties at forty customer sites, getting them collected, cleaned, inspected and back on your fill line before you have to buy replacements. That is the whole service.

Flatbed trailer loaded with two rows of IBC totes secured with straps, hooked to a blue tractor unit

The short answer

The Tote Management Program runs your container fleet as a closed loop: scheduled collection from your sites and your customers' sites, washing to your specified standard, structural inspection, requalification where UN marking applies, and return to your fill line on an agreed cycle. You keep ownership throughout.

From the yard

IBC totes strapped two high inside a box trailer with timber dunnage between the layers — Empties double-stacked and strapped over the cage rail — never over the bottle.

IBC totes staged on a port terminal apron beside stacked shipping containers and gantry cranes — Gulf Coast staging. The densest source of recoverable totes in North America.

50+

units to make sense

Below that, ad-hoc is simpler.

W1–W5

wash standards available

Including your own protocol.

2.5 / 5 yr

UN retest intervals

Tracked so nothing ages out.

You

own the assets

Throughout, always.

The loop

Four stages, running continuously

Once the cycle is established, the fleet moves on a schedule rather than in response to a shortage.

STEP 01
Collect
From your facility and from your customers' sites. We coordinate directly with the receiving sites so your sales team isn't chasing empty containers, and we build collections onto routes we already run.
STEP 02
Wash
To the standard you specify — one of our published five, or your own written protocol under W5. Parameters recorded per unit, documentation in your required format.
STEP 03
Inspect & restore
Cage integrity, bottle condition, valve and lid. Straightening and hardware renewal as needed, rebottling where the bottle is finished, requalification testing where the unit is UN-marked.
STEP 04
Redeploy
Back to your fill line on the agreed cycle, with a report: count in, count out, condition tiers, standard applied, and any units removed from service with the reason.

The problem

What container loss actually costs

Most operations underestimate this because the cost appears as new-container purchasing rather than as a loss.

A tote programme without organised returns loses containers steadily. They sit behind customer buildings, get repurposed, get scrapped, or simply disappear into the general chaos of an industrial yard.

Each one is a container you have to replace at new or rebottled cost, plus the embodied carbon of manufacturing it, plus — increasingly — an awkward line in a sustainability report about containers going to landfill at end of customer use.

A managed loop turns that from a purchasing problem into a logistics schedule. The containers keep coming back because somebody's job is making them come back.

Ad-hoc against managed
	Ad-hoc	Managed program
Container recovery rate	Highly variable	Predictable and reported
Clean units available	When you remember to arrange it	On a cycle
Wash standard	Whatever was convenient	Specified and documented
UN retest tracking	Usually nobody's job	Tracked against every unit
Replacement purchasing	Reactive and lumpy	Planned and lower
Sustainability reporting	Difficult	Manifest and cycle data supplied

Who runs a program with us

Three profiles account for most of it. Chemical packers and blenders on the Gulf Coast with fleets in continuous circulation. Food and beverage producers who need documented cleaning between SKUs and cannot afford a cross-contamination event. Utilities and municipalities cycling treatment chemical containers on a service schedule.

What they have in common is that the containers are working assets rather than packaging, and losing track of them is expensive.

Requalification, tracked

UN-marked IBCs need leakproofness testing every 2.5 years and full requalification every 5 under 49 CFR 180.352. In an unmanaged fleet, units quietly age out of compliance and nobody notices until a shipment is refused or an audit finds it. In a managed fleet, the interval is tracked against each unit and the testing happens during a scheduled cycle rather than as an emergency. See the compliance guide for what the rules actually require.

What we report

Units collected, by origin site and date
Units returned to service, by condition tier
Wash standard applied and parameters recorded
Units rebottled, with cage disposition
Units removed from service, with reason and material recovery manifest
Requalification status and next due dates

That reporting is usually enough to satisfy corporate waste diversion and circularity reporting without additional work on your side. The methodology behind the diversion figures is published on the ledger methodology page.

Getting started

We normally begin with a single collection and wash cycle on a subset of the fleet. It establishes the actual condition profile, the real recovery rate from your sites, and what the cycle time needs to be — all of which are usually different from what everyone assumed.

Questions people actually ask

+What size fleet does this make sense for?

Realistically from about fifty units in circulation. Below that, ad-hoc buy-back and washing is simpler and cheaper. Above a few hundred, the savings from not replacing lost containers usually dwarf the program cost.

+Do you collect from our customers' sites?

Yes — that's the hard part of any return program and it's the part we take on. We coordinate directly with your customer sites, schedule collections onto existing routes where geography allows, and report back on what came from where.

+Can you wash to our internal standard?

That's the W5 standard. Send your written protocol, we run it on our line and document the parameters per unit. It means one cleaning standard across your own facility and ours.

+Who owns the totes?

You do, throughout. We are running a service on your assets, not buying and reselling them. Units we determine are beyond economic repair are reported to you before anything happens to them.

+How do you track units?

By cage tag and batch. We report count in, count out, condition tier, wash standard applied, and units removed from service with the reason. Full per-unit serialisation is available where your program justifies it.

Quick reference

Numbers worth having open in another tab

The figures that come up in almost every conversation, whichever page you arrived on.

275 gallon · 1040 L

48×40×46

Tare: 130 lb
Gross, water: 2,425 lb
Stack full: 2 high
Stock: Always in stock

330 gallon · 1250 L

48×40×53

Tare: 160 lb
Gross, water: 2,915 lb
Stack full: 2 high
Stock: Always in stock

264 gallon · 1000 L

48×40×46

Tare: 125 lb
Gross, water: 2,325 lb
Stack full: 2 high
Stock: Usually in stock

350 gallon · 1325 L

48×40×56

Tare: 175 lb
Gross, water: 3,095 lb
Stack full: 2 high
Stock: Order in

Outlet thread

S60x6 — 60 mm coarse buttress. Not 2" NPT.

Grades published

N, R, F, A, B, C, X — applied at the wash bay.

Wash standards

W1 rinse through W4 caustic CIP at 160°F.

UN retest

Leakproofness 2.5 yrs, requalification 5 yrs.

From the yard notes

Longer reading on this

32 articles written by the people who wash, grade, weld and dispatch. No marketing copy in any of them.

All 32 articles

On the yard this week

Rows of used 275 gallon composite IBC totes stacked two high in an outdoor yard under a blue sky — Graded stock on the outdoor rows, stacked two high and waiting on a grade tag.

Outdoor tote yard beside a metal warehouse with the Texas flag flying overhead — The yard on a working Tuesday. Everything ships from one site in southeast Austin.

While you're here

Pulled from the full FAQ, which runs to forty-plus answers across buying, grades, food safety, sizes, selling, compliance, delivery and care.

Read the full FAQ

Where we are: 3505 Montopolis Dr, Austin, TX 78744
Yard hours: Mon–Thu 7:30a–5p · Fri 7:30a–4p · Sat 8a–12p · Sun closed (Central Time)
Email: sales@ibctotestexas.com
Coverage: 68 Texas counties on scheduled routes, from one Austin yard.

+What about totes with product still in them?

Rinsed and drained only. We are not a hazardous waste disposal facility and cannot accept regulated waste. If your totes still hold product, you need a licensed disposal contractor.

+How high can I stack totes?

Empty, three high indoors on a level floor. Full and static, two high on matched pallets and improved level ground. In transit, never stack full totes.

+How do I stop algae growing in a water tote?

Block the light. Paint the bottle, wrap it, shade it or buy a pre-wrapped opaque unit. Algae needs sunlight far more than it needs nutrients.

+Will you take totes that held chemicals?

Most of them, with the prior contents in writing. Some chemistries permanently permeate HDPE; those units go to material recovery rather than back into service, but we'll still take them off your yard.

+Can I put drinking water in a used tote?

For genuine potable storage, use a rebottled unit — the bottle is new, so prior contents are not a question. Documented food-grade stock is acceptable for short-term non-potable-rated use. General Grade A stock is not.

Start with one cycle.

A single collection and wash on a subset of your fleet tells you the real condition profile and the real recovery rate. Everything else follows from that.

Get a quote Or just sell us the empties

The hardest part
of a tote program
is getting them back.

Discuss a fleet program

Four stages, running continuously

Collect

Wash

Inspect & restore

Redeploy

What container loss actually costs