Caged

01What the cage does

The bottle holds the liquid. The cage holds the bottle: it gives the tote its footprint, its lifting points and its stacking strength, and it carries the UN plate. The pallet base has fork pockets on all four sides, drawn here as a repeating band, so a forklift can lift it from any side.

Because the cage outlasts the bottle, a good cage can be rebottled with a new bottle. That is how a rebottled tote exists. A bent cage can still be rebottled, a broken one is scrap.

02Footprint and heights

03Reading a cage

• Welds: no cracks, no broken joints.
• Bars: straight, no kinks.
• Pallet base: fork pockets intact, no broken planks.
• Plate: present, legible, riveted on.
• Rust: surface is fine, through-rust is not.

The UN plate guide explains each mark on it. A cage without a legible plate cannot be shown to be current.

04Where it trades

Caged totes are what plants send out and what blenders, growers and gardeners ask for. They are the totes on the 275 and 330 gallon pages and in every grade on the ladder.

05Anatomy of the common tote

The caged tote is the workhorse of the used market. Its parts are the bottle, a rotationally molded high-density polyethylene tank; the cage, a galvanized steel tube frame that keeps the bottle rigid and gives forklift tines a solid face; the pallet base, which may be wood, plastic or steel; the fill cap on top; and the bottom outlet valve, either a butterfly or a ball type.

Its design code, 31HA1 on most caged poly totes, reads as a composite IBC for liquids, with a plastic inner and a steel outer. The marking also carries the UN symbol, a packing group letter, the manufacture month and year, the stacking load and the gross mass. Rigid plastic and composite totes also carry the last test and inspection month and year.

Each part can be replaced. Rebottling swaps the bottle, valves can be changed, and a cage with a bent bar can sometimes be straightened. That repairability is why the caged tote has a ladder of grades and not a single price.

+More in Sizes and types

• Reading the UN plateEvery mark on an IBC's UN plate explained: 31HA1, packing group letter, manufacture date, stacking test load and maximum gross mass.
• RebottledA new HDPE bottle in a used, certified cage; the grade for repeat chemical fills.
• 275 gallonThe 48 by 40 by 46 inch tote: footprint, weight and how it loads.
• 330 gallonSame footprint, seven inches taller: specs and where it trades.
• All-plasticA molded polyethylene tote with no steel cage.
• MetalCarbon or stainless steel totes, often UL 142 listed.
• Bag-in-boxA single-use liner in a cardboard cradle, up to about 950 litres.
• Back to Sizes and types