Used IBC
totes.
Quantity, what goes in them, and your delivery postal code — that is enough for a real number.
A used IBC tote is the same container as a new one, minus the first trip. We sell them in three used tiers — technical ($95–$145), Grade A industrial ($155–$225) and certified food grade ($225–$340) — in 275, 330 and 550 gallon formats. Grade A and above are air-hold pressure tested. Every unit carries a prior-contents record read off its own data plate.
Why used is the default, not the discount
An IBC is built to survive a 1.2 metre drop test fully loaded. That structural margin does not evaporate after one trip of corn syrup. What actually degrades is narrow and visible: UV chalking on the bottle, deformation of the lower cage tubes from careless forklift work, and wear on the valve seat.
So the honest frame is not “new is better, used is cheaper.” It is that a used tote in a known grade is the right tool for the overwhelming majority of bulk-liquid jobs, and that paying new-unit money buys you cosmetics and a warranty rather than capability. Our used vs. new comparison runs the numbers properly.
It is also where the ecology lives. Reconditioning one 275 gallon tote avoids roughly 71 lb of CO₂e against manufacturing a new one, and keeps 38 lb of HDPE and 48 lb of galvanised steel in service as an object rather than as feedstock. Across our yard that added up to 418,000 containers and about 29,600 tons of CO₂e by the end of Q3 2026 — see the carbon math for how we calculate it.
What varies between units, and what does not
Does not vary: footprint (48 × 40 in on the pallet), forklift access from all four sides, the 6-inch top fill opening, and the general discharge geometry at the lower front corner.
Does vary: overall height (46 in for a 275, 53 in for a 330), pallet material (steel, composite or all-plastic), valve brand and outlet thread, bottle clarity, cage coating condition, and the UN rating on the plate. The fittings guide covers the thread question, which is the one that most often surprises people.
Buying by the load
Forty-eight empties double-stacked fill a 53-foot van and that is the cheapest possible per-unit freight. Below about ten units LTL is the only sensible option and the freight line starts to rival the tote price. The freight guide has the crossover arithmetic, and the load planner on it will tell you how many trucks your order needs.
Standard 275 gallon used unit. The 330 shares this footprint and adds seven inches of height.
Price bands, 10+ units
- Technical
- $95 – $145
- Grade A
- $155 – $225
- Food grade
- $225 – $340
- Cage only
- $35 – $60
Ex-yard, St. Louis. Bands track resin, scrap steel and diesel.
Used 275 gallon, typical
Representative of the format we sell most. Individual units vary and the quote names the variance.
| Specification | Detail |
|---|---|
| Nominal capacity | 275 US gal / 1,000 L |
| Brim capacity | ≈288 US gal / 1,090 L |
| Footprint | 48 × 40 in (1,200 × 1,000 mm) |
| Overall height | 46.0 in ±0.5 in |
| Tare weight | 118 – 132 lb depending on pallet |
| Gross, water | ≈2,420 lb |
| Bottle material | Blow-moulded HDPE, 1.9 – 2.4 mm wall |
| Cage | Tubular galvanised steel, welded lattice |
| Pallet | Steel, composite or all-plastic |
| Fill opening | 6 in (150 mm) buttress cap |
| Discharge | 2 in butterfly or ball valve, buttress boss |
| Stacking, filled | 2 high static, level floor only |
| Stacking, empty | 4 high, cages interlocked |
| Service temperature | −10 °F to 140 °F (−23 °C to 60 °C) |
| UN rating (if plated) | 31HA1/Y typical |
What makes it Grade A
- Passes a timed 3 psi air-hold test
- Bottle translucent, no stress crazing at the corners
- Cage square; no bent lower horizontals
- Valve seats and holds without a wrench
- Pallet sound, no delamination or broken welds
- Data plate legible and transcribed
What makes it technical
- Leak-free on visual and hand check, not air-tested
- Staining, dye ghosting or opacity accepted
- Minor cage scuffing and coating loss accepted
- Non-potable, non-edible service only
- Roughly half the cost of Grade A
Which grade do you actually need?
Two questions — what it held and what you will put in it — settle the grade and stop you overpaying.
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 specInspect before you pay
Twenty-seven points, in order, and most of them take five seconds each. Bring a torch and look at the lower bottle corners first — that is where stress crazing shows up before it leaks.
The checklistUsed tote questions
How many times can an IBC tote be reused?
A poly bottle that is never exposed to UV or aggressive solvents will outlive the business that bought it — we routinely resell units with 2005 and 2008 date codes that still hold an air test. In practice the limiting factors are UV embrittlement from being left outside uncovered, and valve seat damage from over-torqued fittings. Six to eight service lives is normal, and the cage frequently outlasts three bottles.
What does 'used' actually mean on your yard?
It means the bottle has held product before and we can tell you what. Every unit is de-labelled, its data plate is read and transcribed at intake, and the prior contents are recorded against the serial number. A used tote with no provenance is a technical-grade tote at best, no matter how clean it looks.
Will a used tote leak?
Anything sold as Grade A or better has passed an air-hold test: pressurised to 3 psi and watched for a timed hold. Technical grade is visually inspected and hand-checked at the valve and the discharge boss, but not air-tested, which is part of why it costs half as much. If you are storing anything you cannot afford to lose, buy the test.
Are the valves and lids included?
Yes — every tote ships with a discharge valve and a cap unless you have specifically asked for cage-only. Valve brand and style vary because the units come from everywhere; if you need a matched fleet of identical 2" camlock outlets, say so and we will build the order that way for a small sorting charge.
Can I buy used totes if I need them to be identical?
Within reason. Same manufacturer, same bottle format and same valve type across a 24-unit order is usually achievable from a single incoming load. Identical date codes and identical cosmetic condition are not — that is what new or rebottled stock is for.
Full used 275 and 330 gallon specification
Representative figures for the two formats we sell most. Individual units vary within the tolerances shown, and the quote names any variance that matters.
| Specification | 275 gallon | 330 gallon |
|---|---|---|
| Nominal capacity | 275 US gal / 1,000 L | 330 US gal / 1,250 L |
| Actual at fill line | 264.2 US gal | 330.2 US gal |
| Brim capacity (do not use) | ≈288 US gal | ≈348 US gal |
| Footprint | 48 × 40 in | 48 × 40 in |
| Overall height | 46.0 in ±0.5 | 53.0 in ±0.5 |
| Tare weight | 118 – 132 lb | 136 – 152 lb |
| Gross, water | ≈2,330 lb | ≈2,900 lb |
| Gallons per inch of fill | ≈5.9 | ≈6.2 |
| Bottle material | Blow-moulded HDPE | Blow-moulded HDPE |
| Wall thickness | 1.9 – 2.4 mm | 2.0 – 2.5 mm |
| Cage | Welded galvanised tubular steel | Welded galvanised tubular steel |
| Cage weight | ≈48 lb | ≈54 lb |
| Pallet options | Steel, composite, all-plastic, timber | Steel, composite, all-plastic |
| Fill opening | 6 in buttress or DIN 61 cap | 6 in buttress or DIN 61 cap |
| Discharge | 2 in buttress or S60x6 | 2 in buttress or S60x6 |
| Discharge centreline height | 7 – 9.5 in | 7 – 9.5 in |
| Stacking, filled | 2 high, level concrete | 2 high = 106 in total |
| Stacking, empty | 4 high, interlocked | 4 high, interlocked |
| Service temperature | −10 to 140 °F | −10 to 140 °F |
| Floor load, filled | ≈175 lb/sq ft | ≈218 lb/sq ft |
| Floor positions, 53 ft van | 26 | 26 |
| Empties per 53 ft van | 48 double-stacked | 48 double-stacked |
| Filled per 53 ft van, water | 18 | 14 |
| UN rating if plated | 31HA1/Y typical | 31HA1/Y typical |
| Share of our intake | ≈71% | ≈16% |
Fill height to volume, both formats
Through the straight-walled middle band only. The bottle tapers at base and shoulder, so the first and last few inches hold less than the per-inch figure suggests.
| Height from base | 275 gal volume | 330 gal volume |
|---|---|---|
| 6 in | 26 gal | 28 gal |
| 12 in | 62 gal | 66 gal |
| 18 in | 97 gal | 103 gal |
| 24 in | 133 gal | 140 gal |
| 30 in | 168 gal | 178 gal |
| 36 in | 203 gal | 215 gal |
| 42 in | 239 gal | 252 gal |
| 44 in — 275 nominal line | 264 gal | 265 gal |
| 48 in | — | 290 gal |
| 51 in — 330 nominal line | — | 330 gal |
Measuring in practice
- Use a clean dipstick through the 6-inch opening, not a tape — a tape wicks and reads high.
- Measure to the liquid surface, not the wet line. The wet line climbs the wall and will overstate by an inch or more.
- Take the reading with the tote on level ground. A half-inch tilt across 40 inches of width is several gallons.
- For repeated measurement, fit an external sight tube at $29 to $88. Far more reliable and it removes the need to open the cap.
- For custody-transfer accuracy you need a flow meter or a scale. A dipstick is a two-to-three percent instrument at best.
What actually degrades, and what does not
Four failure modes account for essentially every used tote we reject. None of them is age, and all four are inspectable in under five minutes.
1. UV embrittlement — the real clock
Ultraviolet light breaks polymer chains at the surface. HDPE responds by chalking: the sun-facing wall goes powdery, then brittle, then crazes under load. Two uncovered Midwest summers will do it; fifteen years indoors will not. Test by rubbing a thumb across the sun-facing side — chalking leaves white powder on your skin.
A fitted UV sleeve at $38 roughly triples outdoor service life, and siting a tote against a north wall is free. This is the single cheapest intervention available on this product and the one most often skipped.
2. Environmental stress cracking — the forecast
A polymer under tensile stress meeting a mildly aggressive chemical opens a network of very fine cracks that propagate over months. In an IBC the stress is hydrostatic, so it starts at the four lower bottle corners within six inches of the base, essentially always.
Light it with a torch held at about 20 degrees to the wall, raking across the surface rather than into it, with your eye close to the same plane. Head-on in daylight it is invisible, which is exactly how a crazed bottle gets graded as sound. Fine frost across a corner radius predicts a weep within about a year in service; discrete long hairlines running up from the base are further along than that.
Critically, a crazed bottle passes a 3 psi air test routinely — the cracks have not gone through the wall yet. The test is a snapshot; the corners are a forecast. That is the whole reason we grade by hand rather than just running everything over the rig.
3. Discharge boss damage — the present leak
The boss is moulded into the bottle wall and is the single most commonly destroyed part of a used tote. Remove the valve and look at the flat sealing face with a torch: scoring or gouging means it will always weep, no gasket fixes it, and more torque makes it permanent. The bottle is finished — it becomes a planter.
Three ways people cause it: a pipe wrench on the boss, cross-threading buttress into S60x6, and over-torquing to stop a leak that was actually a gasket problem.
4. Cage geometry — the handling failure
Bent lower horizontals from forklift strikes, broken base-frame corner welds, racked diagonals, and corrosion through the tube wall from sitting in standing water. The last of those is the biggest single cause of cage death in our records, well ahead of impact — and it is prevented entirely by keeping units off wet ground.
Quantity, freight and the delivered price
The delivered price of an identical tote varies by more than fifty percent on order size alone. No negotiation competes with moving along this curve.
| Quantity | Mode | Goods | Freight | Delivered each |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Standard LTL | $120 | ≈$195 | ≈$315 |
| 4 | Standard LTL | $480 | ≈$430 | ≈$228 |
| 10 | Volume LTL | $1,200 | ≈$725 | ≈$193 |
| 16 | Volume LTL | $1,920 | ≈$816 | ≈$171 |
| 24 | Partial truckload | $2,880 | ≈$936 | ≈$159 |
| 36 | Partial truckload | $4,320 | ≈$1,116 | ≈$151 |
| 48 | Full truckload | $5,760 | ≈$1,248 | ≈$146 |
That is a 54% swing in delivered unit price from order size alone. If you will need twenty-four totes across a year, buying them in one movement saves roughly $1,650 and costs you some yard space.
Ask for volume LTL by name
Between about ten and thirty units, volume LTL or partial truckload is almost always the right mode and frequently not what gets quoted — standard LTL is the default on every quoting screen and needs no routing thought. In our experience about half the quotes in that band come back materially cheaper when somebody is made to look.
Accessorials, named in advance
- Liftgate service
- $95 – $140 per stop
- Residential delivery
- $85 – $120
- Limited access — farm, site, school, church
- $75 – $110
- Inside delivery
- $95 and up
- Appointment or notify before delivery
- $25 – $45
- Reconsignment — address change in transit
- $120 and up
- Redelivery after a missed appointment
- $95 and up
- Detention beyond two hours
- $65 per hour
These are what turn a $240 quote into a $430 invoice. The single most useful thing you can tell us at enquiry is whether you have a dock, a forklift, both or neither.
Detailed questions
How many times has a used tote already been filled?
Usually once to three times, and we can often tell you from the routing log if it has been through our yard before. A one-trip container is extremely common in this trade — a syrup producer fills it, a bottler empties it, and in most of the country it then goes to a compactor eight weeks after leaving the factory. That is the waste this whole business exists to interrupt.
Will a used tote hold pressure, or only atmospheric?
IBCs are atmospheric or very low-pressure vessels, used or new. A UN 31HA1 design is hydraulically tested at around 100 kPa, but that is a qualification test rather than a working rating. Do not pressurise one to move product — use a pump. If you need a coded pressure vessel, that is a different and much more expensive object and we will tell you so rather than let you discover it.
Can I use a used tote for compressed air or vacuum?
No to both. Compressed air in a non-coded poly vessel is dangerous. Vacuum is the more common mistake: draining a tote by gravity with a sealed cap pulls the walls inward and permanently panels the bottle. Fit a vented cap at $14 on anything you will drain, and on anything that off-gasses.
Do you have units that have never held anything but water?
Occasionally, and they are worth asking for by name — water-history units are the cleanest provenance available short of rebottled. We see them from municipal, fire-district and emergency-reserve rotations. They are not a published category because availability is too intermittent, but we flag them when they come through.
How do I check a tote actually holds, before I fill it with product?
Put twenty gallons of water in it, close the valve, and watch the discharge joint and all four lower corners for ten minutes. Then fill to about a third and leave it overnight on a dry floor. That catches gasket leaks, boss weeps and the rare through-wall crack, and it takes almost no effort compared with discovering it with product in the tank.
What is the realistic service life of a used tote I buy today?
Kept out of direct sun and not struck by a forklift, a Grade A unit will give you six to eight more service lives — which in practice means it outlasts the project you bought it for. The two things that shorten it are both avoidable: UV exposure and standing water under the base frame. Sleeve it and get it off wet ground and you will not be thinking about replacement.
Can I return a tote if the project is cancelled?
Correctly supplied units are returnable within fifteen days in resalable condition for a credit of the unit price less a 15% restocking charge and all freight. Cut, fabricated, drilled or otherwise modified units and cage-only lots are not returnable. Alternatively we will quote a buyback, which on an unused Grade A unit is usually better than the restocking arithmetic.
Are there units you grade down purely because of smell?
Yes, and it is a legitimate control rather than fussiness. An interior odour that reads as solvent or fuel excludes a unit from food service permanently and suggests a wash will not fix it, because what you are smelling is residue coming back out of the polymer wall. A faint ghost of a prior food product is different and is disclosed rather than disqualifying.
Do you sell used totes with the product still in them?
Never. A container holding more than a trace heel is a waste shipment rather than a container shipment, needs a manifest and a permitted facility, and is refused at our gate on the way in. If somebody is offering you part-full totes cheaply, the disposal cost of the contents will exceed the saving.
Tell us what goes in them
The product decides the grade and the grade decides the price. One line in the message field saves two emails.