Grading is the whole business
Early on we sold totes by the pallet and ate the complaints. Now every container gets eighteen checks and a letter, and the complaints are gone. A grade is a promise, and a promise you cannot inspect is just marketing.
Our story — since 2009
One flatbed, one stubborn idea
We started because a waste hauler was about to bury ninety perfectly good containers and somebody said no. That is still the entire business model.
- Sheet
- 73
- Revision
- 2026-10
- Scale
- 1:1
- Drawn at
- Peoria IL
2009Founded
418kTotes handled
1Yard, Peoria IL
0Phone numbers
It started as a favour nobody wanted to do
A fertiliser dealer outside Chillicothe had ninety empty totes behind his shed and a quote from a waste hauler to bury them. Our founder had a flatbed and an opinion about that.
Those ninety containers got washed in a gravel lot with a borrowed pressure washer and sold to a greenhouse in two weeks. The margin was embarrassing. The thing that stuck was not the money — it was that a waste hauler had been about to landfill ninety perfectly functional 275-gallon containers because nobody in central Illinois was set up to say no.
Seventeen years later the gravel lot is a yard on West Chanute Road with a wash bay that recycles its own water, a fabrication shop, a grading line and a crew that can tell you what was in a tote by the way it smells. The opinion has not changed at all.
“We are not a recycling company. We are a reuse company that recycles when reuse has genuinely run out of road.”
— The sentence that ended a 2014 branding meeting
Four lessons that shaped the yard
Water is the hidden cost of reuse
Washing a tote the obvious way uses sixty gallons of fresh water. Do that four thousand times a year and your environmental story collapses. The closed-loop bay was expensive and it is the single thing we are proudest of.
Paperwork is a sustainability product
Customers do not only need the container; they need to be able to prove where their old ones went. The diversion statement started as a favour for one plant manager and is now in every load we touch.
Nobody calls a yard anymore
We removed our phone number in 2019 and response times improved. Everything in writing means everything is traceable — and a grader can answer twelve emails in the time one call takes.
Seventeen years, counted honestly
418,000Containers handled
97%Diversion rate, 2025
56M lbHDPE kept in service
0Totes landfilled whole
We publish these every year, including the years the diversion rate dipped. In 2017 it fell to 91% because we accepted a contaminated load we should have refused — the write-up is still in the report archive. Keeping the bad years in is the only reason the good ones mean anything.
Everything a buyer usually has to ask for
Most of these facts live in a credit application or a vendor questionnaire. We would rather just publish them.
- Founded
- 2009, Chillicothe, Illinois
- Yard since
- 2011, 1702 W Chanute Rd, Peoria, IL 61615
- Site
- Just under 4 acres, 2.1 acres paved, 11,000 sq ft covered
- People
- Nine — two graders, two wash bay, two rebottling, one fabricator, two drivers
- Containers handled, 2025
- 41,200
- Standing inventory
- 1,800–3,400 depending on season
- Service radius
- 300 miles, five states, six standing lanes
- Equipment
- Flatbed, box truck with liftgate, three wash bays, granulator, fab bay, scale
- Record retention
- Seven years, queryable by serial and wash lot
- Telephone
- None, deliberately, since 2019
- Published reports
- Eleven consecutive years, including the bad one
- Customer audits hosted
- Four, all on site, all welcome
| Year | Containers handled | Diversion | Headcount | What changed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 18,900 | 92% | 4 | First published report |
| 2017 | 23,800 | 91% | 5 | The bad year; intake rules rewritten |
| 2019 | 28,300 | 94% | 6 | Phone line removed |
| 2021 | 31,900 | 95% | 7 | Granulator installed |
| 2023 | 36,100 | 95% | 8 | Standing lanes formalised |
| 2025 | 41,200 | 97% | 9 | Best year on both numbers |
Four things that are unusual about this company
We are a reuse company that recycles, not a recycler
The distinction is roughly 117 pounds of CO₂e per container. 79% of our throughput leaves reused or rebuilt; 12% is granulated. Most of the industry's numbers run the other way, and the word on the sign tells you which incentive the business follows.
There is no sales department
The person who answers your email is the grader who will handle your containers. Nobody here is paid on volume, which is the only reason the intake refusal list has any teeth.
We publish the methodology, not just the headline
Diversion is counted on containers that physically left the yard, by mass. Stock counts as nothing. The factors behind every CO₂e figure are printed next to the figure, so you can check the arithmetic or argue with it.
We will talk you out of a sale
Five applications where new containers are the right answer are listed on our own product page. The Loop Lab refuses to recommend disposal for a container we think you should keep. Both cost us money and both are deliberate.
Are you a broker?
No. Every container we sell passed through our own yard, was graded by our own staff on a published standard, and has a record against its serial. There is no drop-shipping and no third-party inventory.
Why is there no phone number?
We removed it in 2019. Written communication means every commitment is timestamped and every grade is disputable against a record, and a grader can answer a dozen requests in the time one call takes. Response times improved and disputes nearly vanished.
Can I visit?
Yes, by appointment, weekday mornings, closed-toe shoes. Several customers have changed their own specifications after an hour on the pad, and four have audited our records while they were here.
Do you ship nationally?
We deliver on our own equipment within 300 miles and ship by common carrier beyond it. Double-stacked empties travel long distances surprisingly cheaply.
Who owns the company?
It is privately held and has never taken outside investment. That is why the 2017 report is still on the shelf — nobody had to approve publishing it.
Where we are going
The next number we care about is 100
Ninety-seven percent diversion is good. It is also three percent of something going somewhere we do not like. The gap is gasket rubber, label adhesive, wash sludge and a small number of containers whose history we cannot document well enough to resell.
We have a plan for each of those, published and dated, in the circular standard. None of it is a pledge for 2050 — they are all before 2029, because a target you will not personally be around for is not a target.
Read the standard →