The grade
standard.
If you are not sure which grade your job needs, leave the grade field blank and describe the product in the message — we will specify it for you.
Four sellable tiers and one terminal one: food grade, Grade A industrial, technical grade, rebottled, and scrap. Every unit is graded by hand against a 27-point inspection after the work is done, never before. Grades describe condition and provenance — not fitness for a purpose you have not told us about.
The two axes that decide everything
A grade is the intersection of provenance (what the bottle has held, and whether we can prove it) and condition (whether it still works and how it looks). Those two are independent, and conflating them is the root of most bad purchases in this trade.
A pristine-looking tote with no data plate is not food grade and never will be — that is a provenance failure, and no amount of washing touches it. A stained, scuffed, ugly tote that held nothing but corn syrup and passes an air test is food grade. People find this counterintuitive right up to the point where it saves them money.
The tiers, in one table
| Grade | Provenance | Tested | Cosmetic | 275 gal band |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food grade | Edible only, documented | Air hold + wash cert | Staining accepted | $225 – $340 |
| Grade A | Known, non-aggressive | Air hold | Clean, square cage | $155 – $225 |
| Technical | Known or unlabelled | Visual + hand check | Stains, scuffs, fade | $95 – $145 |
| Rebottled | New bottle, no history | Air hold | Recoated cage | $340 – $430 |
| Scrap | Irrelevant | Failed | Any | $0 – $35 |
What a grade is not
- Not a warranty of fitness. If you do not tell us the product, we cannot certify it for the product. Disclose unusual chemistry, pressure or temperature.
- Not an NSF listing. No reconditioned container carries one.
- Not a UN rating. That certifies a tested bottle-and-cage assembly within a validity window, and it is a separate question from grade.
- Not cosmetic. Within a tier, appearance varies and is not a defect. Our terms of sale say so plainly.
The 27 points
- Bottle clarity and opacity
- Stress crazing, four lower corners
- Shoulder deformation
- UV chalking
- Wall gouges and impact marks
- Discharge boss face condition
- Valve seat seal
- Valve body and handle
- Gasket presence and condition
- Cap thread and seat
- Cap vent function
- Cage weld integrity, 8 points
- Cage diagonals for square
- Lower horizontal straightness
- Coating loss and corrosion
- Base frame flatness
- Pallet deck integrity
- Fork pocket condition
- Data plate legibility
- Prior contents transcription
- Date code
- UN marking, if present
- Interior odour check
- Interior residue check
- Air-hold test, 3 psi
- Post-wash pH, if washed
- Final photograph set
Tell it what you are doing
Prior contents plus intended use returns the minimum acceptable grade — including the combinations we refuse to sell.
Food-grade reuse is on the table.
An edible prior content plus a documented wash is the only path we will sell into potable or edible service. You get the prior-contents record, the wash ticket and photographs of the data plate with the unit.
Read the Food Grade specGrading questions
Why publish a grading standard at all?
Because 'good condition' is not a specification, and most of this industry trades on adjectives. If we tell you a tote is Grade A, you should be able to read exactly what that claim commits us to — air-hold tested, square cage, sealing valve, legible data plate — and hold us to it. A published standard is also the only way a five-day inspection window means anything.
Can a tote move between grades?
Upward only through work, and downward through discovery. A technical-grade unit that passes an air test after a wash becomes Grade A. A unit we believed was food grade but whose data plate turns out to be illegible drops to technical immediately and permanently. Grades are assigned after the work, never before.
What is the 27-point inspection?
The hand check every unit gets on the grading pad: bottle clarity, stress crazing at all four lower corners, shoulder deformation, UV chalking, weld integrity at eight cage points, cage diagonals for square, base-frame flatness, valve seat and boss condition, cap thread, gasket seat, pallet integrity, and data plate legibility. It takes about four minutes per unit and it is the entire basis of the grade.
Is 'Grade B' a thing?
Other sellers use it; we do not. It usually means 'technical grade but we would like technical-grade money for it'. We publish four tiers plus scrap, each with a testable definition, because a tier you cannot test is marketing.
The complete inspection, with what each finding means
Every claim in our grade definitions traces to one of these checks. They take about four minutes a unit.
| # | Point | Method | Failure consequence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bottle clarity and opacity | Look through the wall against daylight | Cosmetic unless accompanied by chalking |
| 2 | Stress crazing, four lower corners | Torch at 20° raking across the radius | Grade A excluded; predicts a weep within a year |
| 3 | Shoulder deformation | Sight along the top shoulder | Overfilled and frozen, or heated under load. Permanent |
| 4 | UV chalking | Thumb across the sun-facing side | Embrittled. Fine for a planter, poor for a moved tank |
| 5 | Wall gouges and impact marks | Hand over reachable faces | Over ~20% of wall depth excludes pressure service |
| 6 | Discharge boss sealing face | Valve removed, torch across the face | Scoring is unrepairable — permanent weep |
| 7 | Boss thread condition | Thread the valve by hand | Stripped plastic is terminal for pressure service |
| 8 | Valve seats and holds | Close, pour a gallon, watch two minutes | Gate weep = $8 valve; boss weep = dead bottle |
| 9 | Valve body and handle | Operate fully twice | Stiff travel is usually grit; cheap to replace |
| 10 | Gasket present and sound | Visual at the thread base | Missing is normal; $3 to fix |
| 11 | Cap thread and seat | Thread fully, check it seats flat | Damaged bottle neck thread is not repairable |
| 12 | Cap vent function | Check presence and clearance | Non-vented on a gassing product bulges the bottle |
| 13 | Fill opening rim | Finger round the inside rim | Chips propagate; excludes pressure service |
| 14 | Cage weld integrity, 8 points | Four base corners, four mid-height junctions | Broken base weld excludes stacking and rebottling |
| 15 | Cage diagonals for square | Corner to corner across the top frame | Out of square chafes a new bottle |
| 16 | Lower horizontals straight | Sight along the bottom rails | Most common forklift damage; jig-repairable or scrap |
| 17 | Coating loss and corrosion | Check breaches, especially base underside | Perforation through the tube wall is terminal |
| 18 | Base frame flat | Set on level concrete, try to rock it | Rocking excludes stacking and loading full |
| 19 | Pallet deck integrity | Look for cracking under bottle corners | Will fail under load; base swap $28 |
| 20 | Fork pocket condition | All four; confirm two-way or four-way | Damaged pockets are a handling hazard |
| 21 | Cage-to-bottle fit | Push the bottle sideways | Excess movement means chafe-through in a season |
| 22 | Data plate legibility | Find and read it on the cage frame | Illegible = technical grade, permanently |
| 23 | Prior contents transcription | Logged against the serial at intake | No record = no food-grade path, ever |
| 24 | Date code | From the UN marking | Weak signal; predicts UV exposure only |
| 25 | Interior odour | Open the cap and smell | Solvent or fuel odour excludes food use permanently |
| 26 | Interior residue | Torch through the 6 in opening | A measurable heel makes it a waste shipment |
| 27 | Air-hold test, 3 psi timed | On the rig, after wash and new gasket | Required for Grade A and above |
Provenance and condition are independent
Conflating them is the root of most bad purchases in this trade.
| Unit | Appearance | Data plate | Prior content | Air test | Grade | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | Spotless, clear bottle | Painted over | Unknown | Passes | Technical | $95 – $145 |
| B | Heavy dye staining | Legible | Juice concentrate | Passes | Food grade | $225 – $340 |
| C | Spotless, clear bottle | Legible | Industrial detergent | Passes | Grade A | $155 – $225 |
| D | Scuffed cage, faded | Legible | Corn syrup | Passes | Food grade | $225 – $340 |
| E | Good, slight crazing | Legible | Corn syrup | Passes | Technical, disclosed | $95 – $145 |
| F | Spotless | Legible | Corn syrup | Fails | Rebottle candidate | — |
Unit A causes the most arguments: the prettiest tote in the row and the cheapest, because of a strip of metal somebody painted over four years ago. Unit B is the one buyers undervalue — pink forever, holds juice perfectly, with paperwork. Unit E is the interesting case: perfect provenance, sound today, and it will weep inside a year under load, so it goes to the cheap tier with the crazing disclosed.
Where the price lever is
Cosmetic condition within a grade carries a real price spread and no functional difference. A heavily stained food-grade unit sits at $225 while a clear one sits at $340. If nobody looks at the tank, ask for the ugly ones. It is the single most reliable saving available on this site and almost nobody asks.
How a unit changes grade
Upward only through work, and downward through discovery. Grades are assigned after the work, never before.
| From | To | What causes it |
|---|---|---|
| Technical | Grade A | Passes an air test after a wash; base swap; cage jigged |
| Grade A | Food grade | Documented edible prior content plus a logged caustic cycle |
| Food grade | Technical | Discovery that the plate is illegible or the history wrong — immediate and permanent |
| Grade A | Technical | Fails an air test; crazing found; boss face scored |
| Any | Rebottle candidate | Bottle compromised, cage sound |
| Any | Cage only | Bottle dead, cage square |
| Any | Fabrication | Bottle holds at atmospheric pressure but not under load |
| Any | Scrap | Second grader answers no to all four salvage questions |
| Rebottled | Grade A | After one fill of a non-edible product — the ceiling comes down permanently |
Why there is no Grade B
Other sellers use it. It usually means "technical grade but we would like Grade A money for it." We publish four tiers plus scrap, each with a testable definition, because a tier you cannot test is marketing.
Who assigns the grade
One of four trained graders, by hand, on the pad, after about four months of paired training. Graders report to operations and carry no commercial target, deliberately. The commercial side can ask what is available and cannot ask for a grade to be reconsidered.
That separation costs us orders — if a customer needs twelve food-grade units and we have eight, the answer is eight plus a lead time. It is also why fleet customers stay for years and why our five-day inspection window almost never gets used.
Detailed questions
Can I grade a tote myself using your standard?
Yes, and we publish it for exactly that reason. Print the 27 points, bring a torch, a tape measure and a gallon of water, and you can check what arrived against what you ordered in about five minutes a unit. You have five business days under our terms; use them.
What if I disagree with a grade on a delivered unit?
Send photographs and the serial detail within five business days. Properly rejected units are replaced or credited at our option including return freight. In practice this almost never happens, which we attribute to the grader separation rather than to luck.
Do you ever upgrade a unit after a customer asks?
We will run an air test on a technical-grade unit for $12 and relabel it if it passes — and most do, because the usual reason a unit is technical is an illegible plate rather than any doubt about the bottle. What we will not do is reclassify provenance, because provenance is a document rather than an opinion.
Why does an illegible data plate matter so much?
Because provenance is not an inference. A tote with no plate could have held anything, and 'it smells like syrup' is a hunch with a confident voice rather than a food-safety control. It is the single largest reason units land in our cheapest tier.
Is there a grade for units that held something unusual?
The grade follows the rules regardless of how unusual the content was — eligible edible contents route to food grade, everything else to Grade A or below. What we add is disclosure: if a unit held something that might ghost or discolour, it says so in writing on the quote. An unusual history is not a disqualification, it is a disclosure.
How do you handle a unit where the plate and the paperwork disagree?
The plate wins, and the unit drops to the lower grade. A shipper's manifest can be wrong or can describe the last of several fills; the plate is attached to the object. Where both are ambiguous, the unit is technical grade.
Do grades mean the same thing at other suppliers?
No, and that is the problem this standard exists to solve. 'Grade A', 'food grade' and 'reconditioned' are not defined terms in this industry. Ask any supplier what their grade claim commits them to and whether they will give you a written inspection window — the answer tells you everything.
Which grade do most customers actually need?
Grade A, and about a third of enquiries are specified wrong — roughly two in three of those overspecified. We tell customers when a cheaper grade will do, which loses us margin on a meaningful share of enquiries and is the single most common reason people come back.
Describe the product, not the grade
One sentence about what goes in the tote and we will specify the tier — usually a cheaper one than people expect.