We pick up customer fleets weekly. The condition of an inbound empty fleet correlates almost perfectly with how attentive the customer was at the unload-and-stack step. Five mistakes account for most of what we have to repair before resale.
1. Valve left open
An open valve during transit means anything in the cage’s lower interior — chemical residue, rinse water, road grit, the occasional rodent — ends up inside the bottle. Close the valve. If you have valve locks, use them.
2. No stretch-wrap on the stack
Empty totes in transit shift, vibrate, and develop cage-on-cage wear marks. A two-pass stretch-wrap from base to top, with the wrap engaging the top pallet’s cage corners, stabilizes the stack and prevents marring. Costs $0.50 per tote in materials. We won’t pick up an unwrapped tall stack.
3. Stacking 330s on 275s
Already covered in our stacking post, but worth repeating because we see it weekly. The geometry doesn’t support it. The bottom 275’s top rail bows under the 330’s footprint and we end up scrapping the bottom cage.
4. Top hatch open or missing
The top hatch is removable; sometimes operators take it off to vent or to add a fitting and never put it back. A topless tote in transit fills with road dust, snow, and contaminants. The hatch itself is $14–$22 to replace, but the bottle requires a full Grade C wash before resale.
5. Pallet not engaged
The bottle should sit fully seated on the pallet, with the cage’s bottom rail engaging the pallet’s top stringer. Sometimes operators “float” a bottle slightly off the pallet during partial stacking. In transit, the floating bottle works loose and the cage corners can cut through the bottom of the bottle. A floating tote arrives leaking, and once the bottle is cut through, it’s scrap.
What we’d like to see at pickup
The ideal customer fleet at pickup looks like this: empties are valve-closed and seal-tagged, top hatches are tightened, totes are full-pallet-engaged, stacks are uniform size, stretch-wrap is applied two-pass minimum, and any damaged units are flagged separately so we don’t mistake them for resaleable inventory. This is also the configuration that gets you the best per-tote pickup price.
Questions on this one? Email info@ibctankscleveland.com. We answer everything inside one business day — usually inside four hours.