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.
- Sheet
- 11
- Revision
- 2026-10
- Scale
- 1:1
- Drawn at
- Peoria IL
A used 275-gallon container is 134 pounds of HDPE wrapped in 60 pounds of galvanised steel. Everything about its price is downstream of what those two commodities cost today and what people expect them to cost next quarter.
Four mechanisms, two directions
New container cost sets the ceiling
Nobody pays more for a reconditioned unit than a new one, so when resin rises and new containers get expensive, used prices have more headroom. This pushes used prices up.
Rebottling cost sets the middle
A rebottle needs a new bottle. Expensive resin makes rebottling expensive, which pushes marginal containers down the ladder towards repurposing and regrind. This tightens supply of good used units and pushes prices up.
Regrind value sets the floor
When regrind is strong, a scrap container is worth more as pellet than as a cheap tote, so Grade C gets scarcer and dearer. When regrind is weak, Grade C piles up and gets cheap.
Virgin-versus-recycled substitution
Cheap virgin resin undercuts regrind demand from moulders, which weakens the floor from the other side. This is the mechanism people forget, and it is why a resin crash does not simply make everything cheaper.
| Resin move | New container | Rebottle | Grade A/B used | Grade C | Regrind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sharp rise | Up | Up | Up | Up | Up |
| Sharp fall | Down | Down | Down | Flat to down | Down hard |
| Slow drift up | Up | Up | Up with a lag | Flat | Up |
| Volatile, no trend | Erratic | Erratic | Sticky | Sticky | Erratic |
Why used prices are stickier than resin
Resin can move fifteen percent in a month. Used container prices almost never do, and the reason is labour. Grading, washing and rebuilding a container costs the same number of minutes regardless of what polyethylene is trading at, and in our cost structure that labour is a larger share than the material. So our prices behave more like a service business than a commodity one.
- Labour and water are the dominant costs for reuse-as-is. Resin barely enters it.
- Resin dominates rebottling, which is why that line moves most.
- Freight is its own input and it is rarely correlated with resin, which blurs the signal further.
- Seasonality in the Midwest swamps resin entirely between February and May.
“Our price list is a labour rate with a resin tax attached. Most of the year the labour rate is what you are really buying.”
— Yard office, during a resin spike
What to do about it as a buyer
- Buy in the Midwest off-season — November to January. Seasonality is a bigger effect than resin for anybody buying under a few hundred containers.
- If resin has been falling for a quarter, ask about rebottled units specifically. That is where the saving lands first and hardest.
- If resin has been rising, buy reuse-as-is rather than rebottled. You are paying for labour instead of polyethylene.
- Do not try to time Grade C. It is driven by regrind demand, which is driven by virgin substitution, and it moves for reasons that have nothing to do with containers.
- Lock a season rather than a month. A November commitment with staged delivery removes both the resin risk and the seasonal risk at once.
Want the current bands?
The stock board publishes indicative bands by grade, updated quarterly. The quote you get through the form is the figure that actually holds.