Tote Buy-Back.
If you’ve got empty IBCs cluttering up the loading dock, we’ll pay you to take them off your hands. Pickup is free in 38 states. The totes go straight into our reconditioning bays — never the landfill.
Tell us what you need
Same form on every page. Same human inbox. We answer every inquiry — promise.
Answer first: we pay between $12 and $48 per intact 275/330-gallon caged composite IBC, depending on volume, location and condition. We arrange free freight pickup for full pallets (typically 8+ totes). Smaller volumes can ride along on a fleet route at no cost.
How the program works
You email us
Send a count, your address, photos if you have them, and a note on what the totes last contained.
We quote
Per-tote pay, freight method, and pickup window. In writing. Usually within one business day.
You confirm
Reply yes, and we issue a BOL, schedule the truck, and email tracking.
Pickup
Driver arrives in your window with paperwork. You forklift the totes onto the trailer. Done in 20 min.
You get paid
ACH within 7 days of pickup. Or take it as credit toward your next purchase, your choice.
What we’ll buy back
- 275 and 330-gallon caged composite IBCs in any cosmetic condition
- Stainless steel IBCs in 350 and 550-gallon sizes
- Compact 120-gallon totes
- Caged totes with broken valves (we’ll discount for parts)
- Whole pallets of mixed-size totes
What we won’t buy back
- Totes still containing residual contents
- Totes that have held hazardous waste, regulated chemicals, or unknown contents
- Cages that have been cut or welded into a different shape
- Bottles with cracks, holes or visible contamination
If you’re unsure whether your totes qualify, send us a couple of photos. We’ll tell you in plain English whether they’re a fit.
Why we do this
Every tote we buy back is one that doesn’t go in a landfill. Every tote we recondition is roughly 32 kg of CO₂ that doesn’t enter the atmosphere from a new manufacturing run. Buy-back is the upstream side of our entire eco mission — without it, the “reborn tank co.” thing just doesn’t work. So we pay for it.
The buy-back pricing schedule, in detail
Per-tote pricing depends on three things: tote condition at pickup, your distance from our Denver yard, and the volume of the pickup. The base prices below assume the tote is intact, drained, and not contaminated with hazardous residues. We will pay less for damaged totes and we will pay more for very clean totes from a documented source.
| Tote condition | Within 200 mi | 200-600 mi | 600-1200 mi |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grade A (clean, documented) | $48 | $36 | $24 |
| Grade B (typical industrial) | $36 | $28 | $18 |
| Grade C (rough cosmetic, sound) | $22 | $16 | $12 |
| Stainless 350-gal (any grade) | $220 | $180 | $140 |
| Stainless 550-gal (any grade) | $340 | $280 | $220 |
Volume bonuses: 8-19 totes per pickup gets a 5% volume bonus. 20-39 totes gets 10%. 40+ totes gets 15%. For pickups over 60 totes we will arrange dedicated freight on our own fleet rather than a broker, which usually allows us to bump pricing another 5% because we save on the freight margin.
What documentation we need from you
To pay you the highest grade rate on a buy-back tote, we need a few things in writing from your side. Most of these you have on file already and just need to forward to us.
- Prior contents for each batch — chemical name, concentration if applicable, supplier name. A spreadsheet line per tote is fine.
- Drainage confirmation — a one-line statement that the totes are empty (under 4 lbs of residual per tote).
- Hazmat declaration — confirmation that the totes did not previously hold any RCRA hazardous waste, regulated waste, or unknown contents.
- Pickup contact — name and email of the person at your facility who will sign the BOL when our truck arrives.
- Pickup window — the days and times your loading dock is available.
If you cannot provide one or more of these (specifically, if the prior contents are unknown), we will downgrade the pickup to "unknown industrial" pricing, which is roughly 60% of the documented rates above. We will still take the totes — we just cannot pay top rate for stock we cannot trace.
How payment works
Default payment is ACH bank transfer within 7 business days of the truck delivering to our yard. We can also issue a check (10 business days) or apply the value as credit toward your next purchase from us with a 15% bonus added. The credit option is the most popular among our repeat customers because the math works out better for them.
What happens to your totes after pickup
Each tote that arrives at our intake bay gets logged against your buy-back batch number. We photograph it, weigh it, and run it through our 9-stage reconditioning process if it passes the visual inspection. If it fails inspection, it goes to end-of-life recycling and we still pay you the agreed price (we take the loss on the failures because that is the cost of running an honest buy-back program).
Quarterly, we send participating buy-back partners a small report showing how many of their totes were reborn versus recycled, with the corresponding eco impact in CO₂ avoided and HDPE diverted. Some sustainability teams use this report as part of their annual disclosures.