Pickup for a pad full of empty totes

01How a pad request works

An EHS or site-services lead posts one ticket for the pad. The ticket lists lots: for example, rebottled 330s with a current date, reconditioned 275s that held a food ingredient, and a stack that is dirty or damaged. The desk matches the clean lots to buyers and routes the rest to washers and recyclers. A pad can leave in several moves rather than one.

Pads often come with a deadline: an audit, a turnaround or a lease. Put the date on the ticket. The desk will tell you what it can and cannot do by that date, and it will not promise a pickup it has not arranged.

02What must be drained first

1. Pump the tote out. A heel left in the bottom turns a used tote into a dirty one.
2. Close the valve and cap it. A missing cap is a leak and a contamination path.
3. Check the last contents against the SDS. Acute hazardous contents need a triple rinse or an equivalent cleaning before the tote counts as empty under 40 CFR 261.7.
4. Check the federal empty-container test: for a container over 119 gallons that held hazardous waste, no more than 0.3 percent of capacity by weight, or one inch of residue on the bottom.
5. Say which state the pad is in, because Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware each run their own program.

03What the desk will not take

Anything that is waste, not an empty. A tote with free liquid left, a tote with unknown contents and no SDS, and 55 gallon drums are outside what the desk trades. A drum request is declined, though a plant moving a liquid from drums to totes is a request the desk wants; see the drums-to-totes page.

04Pads around the metro

Refinery and chemical pads on the Delaware at Trainer, Marcus Hook, Paulsboro, Delaware City, Bristol and Deepwater send out the largest lots. Pharma and food campuses in Montgomery and Chester counties and in Pureland and Pennsauken send out smaller, cleaner ones. Those sites are named as context for the area, not as the desk’s customers.

05Planning the day

Clearing a pad is a logistics job before it is a sales job. Count the totes by size and by grade, and sort them by last contents, because one pad often holds several histories that will go to different places. A washer takes the sound ones, a recycler takes cracked bottles and scrap cages, and a chemical user takes totes that match its product. A single truck rarely serves all three.

Stacking on the pad affects the visit. Full totes stack two high at most and empty caged totes four high, so a pad of stacked empties can look smaller than it is. A driver who arrives expecting a flat count can leave with half a load and a second trip. Say how many tiers there are and whether the stack is strapped.

Dock and gate details save hours. A drop trailer left at the dock lets a crew load at its own pace, and a forklift on site halves the time. Give the gate hours, the permit a driver needs and the person who signs the release.

06What to settle before the truck comes

• Who signs the release, and whether the totes are the seller’s to sell.
• Which lots are sorted by size, grade and last contents, and which are not.
• Whether any tote still holds product; those are emptied first and handled as an inquiry.
• Whether the crew can take cages and bottles apart on site, since separated parts raise the value of the lot.

07Post the ticket

+More in Sell

• RecyclingWhere totes that can't be reused go: cages to rebottling, bottles to HDPE recycling, broken units to scrap, for plants across the Delaware Valley.
• RCRA emptyWhat 40 CFR 261.7 says about empty totes over 119 gallons, when a triple rinse is required, and what that means before a tote is sold.
• Three-state rulesWhich agency handles empty containers and rinse water in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, kept apart state by state.
• AreasWhere Philly IBC Totes trades: Philadelphia, its Pennsylvania counties, South Jersey and northern Delaware, county by county and district by district.
• What to tell usThe details that let the desk price and place your totes: count by size, grade, last contents, the SDS, rinse state and retest date.
• Drums to totesHow many 55 gallon drums a 275 or 330 gallon tote replaces, the floor space it frees, and how to buy totes and sell the empties in one loop.
• Back to Sell