41,200 containers, from the seat
Our 2025 report says 41,200 containers handled, 97% diverted, 3,380 metric tons of CO₂e avoided. Here is the same year described by the person who physically moved most of it.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
The yard log
Notes from the pad
Grading data, failure analysis, route write-ups and sustainability arithmetic — written by graders, fabricators and drivers rather than a content agency. Nothing here is gated and nothing ends in a sales pitch.
- Sheet
- 07
- Revision
- 2026-10
- Scale
- 1:1
- Drawn at
- Peoria IL
38Posts
8Categories
2023–2026Archive
0Gated downloads
2026
The 2.1 tons we still landfill
Our diversion rate is 97%. The largest single line in the missing 3% is filter media from our own water recovery loop, and we have been writing the same paragraph about it for four years.
8 min
Wash bay lead
Wash bay lead
The spring that arrived three weeks late
A cold, wet April compressed the planting window and compressed everything downstream of it. Here is what a late season does to container supply, pricing and the condition of the empties that come back.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Cage-only, the product nobody asks for
When a bottle is finished, what is left is a galvanised steel frame on a pallet with four-way forklift entry, for about twenty dollars. It is the most under-used thing in the yard.
8 min
Fabrication shop
Fabrication shop
Turning a grader's judgement into a tool
For thirteen years the decision about what a container should become lived in two people's heads. Writing it down as something a customer could run themselves turned out to be harder, and more revealing, than building it.
9 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
2025
Twelve years of diversion numbers
From 92% in 2015 to 97% in 2024. Five points in a decade sounds slow, and each one of them took a different capital project or a different rule. Here is which was which.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
A specification procurement can use
Municipal and institutional buyers have to specify what they are buying in words a competitor cannot game. Most tote specifications we see are either unbuildably vague or accidentally single-source. Here is a template that is neither.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
The second-hand stainless market
A used stainless IBC costs five times a composite tote and lasts ten times as long, which makes it the cheapest container in the catalogue per fill. So why does almost nobody shop for one?
9 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
Why we refuse 7% of inbound loads
Turning away work is the least popular thing a yard does and the thing that keeps the wash bay honest. Here is every category we refuse and the reasoning behind each.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Pooling versus buying, with real numbers
We run a container pooling program and we tell about a third of enquiries not to join it. Here are three customers' actual five-year numbers, including the one where buying won.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
In defence of the smell test
Every so often a customer asks, politely, whether we are seriously identifying residues by smell in 2025. Yes. Here is why it is the right tool, and exactly where it stops being one.
7 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
What a flatbed load actually costs
We say pickup is free on qualifying loads. People reasonably ask how that works, so here is the real cost sheet for one 48-container flatbed run and where the money comes from.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
212 rainwater builds later
The rain harvester is the fab bay's best-selling product and the one customers modify most after delivery. Here is what 212 of them taught us about what people actually need.
9 min
Fabrication shop
Fabrication shop
The plates we could not read
Six hundred and twelve containers came in last year with UN markings we could not fully read. Every one of them lost access to regulated service permanently. Here is how each plate got destroyed.
8 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
Three customers we should have turned away
Not every sale is a good sale. Three cases from last year where the right answer was no, we said yes anyway, and everybody lost a little.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Resin markets and used tote prices
Used container prices look arbitrary from the outside. They are mostly one input — HDPE resin — refracted through four different mechanisms, and once you can see them the market stops being mysterious.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
2024
A year of grading disputes
We logged every disagreement about a grade for a year — ours against customers, and graders against each other. The customer was right more often than we would have guessed, and the pattern was consistent.
8 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
Anatomy of a shutdown clearout
A plant closes, a lease ends, and 400 containers have to be gone by a Friday with paperwork that will satisfy a landlord, an auditor and probably a lawyer. This is the job we are best at.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Nine days, 600 containers
October is the only month where our customers' deadlines are measured in weather windows rather than quarters. Here is how a harvest-season sweep actually gets scheduled.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
The water bill nobody includes
Every reuse story in this industry quotes avoided CO₂ and skips the washing. We ran our own numbers both ways, and the gap is big enough to change the conclusion for some operations.
9 min
Wash bay lead
Wash bay lead
Glycol totes from forty breweries
Craft brewing turned out to be one of our best-matched customer groups, and glycol turned out to be one of the most misunderstood residues in the yard. Here is both halves.
8 min
Wash bay lead
Wash bay lead
Double-stacking empties, properly
Double-stacking empties halves your freight cost and is the most common way people destroy containers in transit. Both things are true, and the difference is about four inches of alignment.
8 min
I-74 lane driver
I-74 lane driver
Four documents, or it is not food grade
We turn down food-grade enquiries most weeks, almost always because the chain of custody has a hole in it. Here are the four pieces of paper that close it, and what each one has to say.
9 min
Wash bay lead
Wash bay lead
Manifolding totes: four mistakes, four fixes
Connecting several containers into one tank is the most requested plumbing job we do and the one with the most reliable failure modes. All four are geometry, not hardware.
8 min
Fabrication shop
Fabrication shop
Nine ways a cage goes out of square
A composite IBC stacks on its cage, so a frame that will not sit square is a container that cannot do its main job. Here is every way we see it happen, and which ones a jig fixes.
8 min
Rebottling tech
Rebottling tech
Eighteen months of serialising everything
In 2024 we finished putting a permanent ID on every container that passes through the yard. It cost more than we budgeted, took longer than we planned, and settled arguments we did not know we were having.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Buy in February, not in April
Most of the money wasted on used containers in the Midwest is wasted in the second week of April by people who could have ordered in January. Here is the calendar, with the reasoning.
7 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
The audit that rewrote our intake form
A chemical blender audited us for two days in January and found nothing wrong with our wash records. They found something wrong with the question we ask before the wash.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
2023
What our granulator eats
Recycling is our fourth choice, so the granulator is a confession as much as a machine. Here is everything we fed it in 2023 and why each container ended up there instead of somewhere better.
9 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Rebottling economics when resin moves
A rebottle is only worth doing while a new bottle costs less than the value of the cage, pallet and hardware you are saving. Resin prices decide that, and 2023 moved the line twice.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Freeze season starts earlier than you think
Every spring we take in containers destroyed by one bad night in October. The calendar is not the trigger — the dew point is, and there is a simple rule that saves most of them.
7 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
Six hopper conversions, six first drafts
Cut-cone hoppers built from Grade C containers are the fab bay's most-requested autumn job. None of the first six worked properly, and the reasons were all different.
9 min
Fabrication shop
Fabrication shop
A week on the I-74 lane
Our longest-running standing route, written up as it actually ran in the third week of August — including the stop that went wrong and what it cost.
8 min
I-74 lane driver
I-74 lane driver
A hot caustic cycle, minute by minute
Cycle 2 takes fifty-one minutes and most of it is waiting. Here is exactly what happens, what the water does afterwards, and why contact time beats pressure every single time.
9 min
Wash bay lead
Wash bay lead
Reading a tote's history from its valve
Before we open the cap, before we look through the bottle, a grader looks at the outlet. More of a container's biography is written there than anywhere else on it.
8 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
Why we stopped selling Grade C to first-time buyers
The cheapest container in the yard generated most of our complaints — not because it was bad, but because nobody had explained what it was for. So we changed the rule instead of the product.
7 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
The spring rush, measured in pallet positions
Every February our inventory starts falling and does not stop until June. Here is what that looks like from inside the yard, and what it means for anybody buying agricultural containers in the Midwest.
8 min
Yard manager
Yard manager
What 1,000 intake photos taught us
We photograph every container that comes through the gate. After the first thousand photos of a new camera rig, we sat down and counted what was actually wrong with them — and it was not what we tell customers to worry about.
9 min
Intake grader
Intake grader
What each one covers
Yard log
What actually happened on the pad this month
Field notes
Things you can only learn by handling the containers
Buying guide
How to buy without regretting it in year two
Sustainability
The arithmetic, including the parts that embarrass us
Logistics
Trucks, straps, lanes and load counts
Fabrication
What comes out of the fab bay
Compliance
Paperwork that survives an inspection
Market
Prices, resin, seasons and why they move
Want something written about?
Several of these started as a customer question somebody got tired of retyping. Put the question in the form and it may well become a post.
If you only read five
| Year | Posts | What dominated the writing |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 10 | Setting out the grading data and the wash bay process |
| 2024 | 12 | Serialisation, documentation audits and logistics detail |
| 2025 | 11 | Market mechanics, procurement and twelve years of diversion numbers |
| 2026 | 5 | The Loop Lab, a late spring and the residual stream we cannot fix |
How this blog works
- Written by the people doing the work. Bylines are roles — intake grader, wash bay lead, fabricator, lane driver, yard manager — because this is a nine-person yard, not a content studio.
- Every number has its basis stated. Internal data is labelled as internal data, including where that is a limitation.
- Nothing is gated and nothing ends in a sales pitch. Several posts end in a reason not to buy something.
- The mistakes stay published. The 2017 diversion failure, the Grade C sales problem and a five-month serialisation overrun all have their own posts.
- Roughly one post every four to six weeks since March 2023. We would rather be slow than thin.
- Corrections are made in place with a note. Nothing is quietly edited after the fact.
Can I republish or quote these?
Quote freely with attribution and a link — several trade publications and two university courses have. Please do not republish wholesale.
Is there an RSS feed or newsletter?
Not currently. The archive is a single page, which for one post every five weeks is honestly more useful than an inbox.
Will you write about my question?
Possibly. Most of these started as an email a grader got tired of retyping, so if your question is one other people have, it is a good candidate.
Do you accept guest posts or link requests?
No to both. Everything here is written in-house, which is the only reason the numbers in it are checkable.