The kindest thing
you can do
for an IBC tote.
We are a small Columbia, MO outfit that built a business around one stubborn idea: every IBC tote deserves a second use before recycling, and recycling before landfill. Everything we do is downstream of that.
Our Story
Why a packaging engineer and a farm-equipment mechanic started a tote yard in 2017.
Sustainability Charter
The five rules we will not negotiate on — even when it costs us a sale.
Why Work With Us
What it actually feels like to do business with a phone-less, email-first tote yard.
Three people. One yard. A lot of totes.
There are bigger IBC dealers in the United States. There are not many that will quote you on twelve totes by email, take a picture of the actual unit on the actual pallet, and book a freight slot in the same thread. That is the gap we live in.
We are not trying to compete on volume with the national packagers. We are trying to be the easiest, most honest, most environmentally serious option for everyone for whom a forty-tote order is a big deal.
Who actually answers your email.
There is no contact-center. There is no sales department. When you email us, one of these three people writes back. Usually within four business hours, occasionally faster, never slower than the next business morning.
Riley Marchetti
Packaging engineer by training, eight years at a Midwest food co-packer before this. Riley writes most of the quotes, runs the wash bay QA bench, and is the reason the grade language on this site is what it is. Drinks coffee black, allegedly because she ran out of patience for milk.
Theo Branham
Spent fifteen years as a farm-equipment mechanic in Cooper and Boone counties before co-founding the yard. Builds the cut-top and cascade configurations, runs the flatbed, knows every back-road weight limit between Columbia and Sioux City. Owns more torque wrenches than is reasonable.
Priya Sundaresan
Joined in 2021 after a stint at a regional plastics recovery facility in Springfield. Built the chain-of-custody program, runs the relationship with the HDPE granulator in St. Louis and the cage-scrap yard in Moberly. Also writes the impact footnotes on your invoices.
Five values that shape every quote.
Reuse is cheaper than righteousness.
We do not sell sustainability as a premium. A reconditioned tote should be the cheap option, the boring option, and the obvious option. If it is not, we have failed at our job.
The grade word is sacred.
If we call it food-grade, there is a wash record behind it. If we call it rinsed, water has touched the inside. If we call it as-is, you should expect a smell. The language has to be load-bearing.
Writing it down is the work.
Email-first is not an aesthetic choice. It is the cheapest accountability system ever invented. Every commitment we make is searchable.
Twelve totes is a real order.
If a co-packer ordering twelve reconditioned 275s is not worth our attention, we should not be in this business. We pay for that pickup. We quote that pickup. We show up for that pickup.
End-of-life is part of the sale.
When the tote we sold you is finally done, we will take it back and recycle it with documentation. That is not a marketing program. It is just the deal.
We are not the biggest. We are not trying to be.
There is a healthy niche for a yard that ships fewer than 10,000 totes a year and answers every email by name. We are sitting in it on purpose.
The list of things we've learned to refuse.
Every operator has one. Here is ours. If you need any of these, we're not the right yard — and we'll usually point you to someone who is.
- We will not sell food-grade without a wash record. Not even "just rinse it again on your end." If we can't document it, we won't label it.
- We will not quote totes we haven't seen. Every quote we send is on a unit currently on our yard, or scheduled to be on our yard with a known seller.
- We will not ship a tote that previously held a regulated hazardous substance. Those go straight to our recycling stream.
- We will not pretend freight is free. Freight is roughly half the landed cost on small orders. We'll quote it honestly; we will not hide it in the unit price.
- We will not set up a phone line. We've been asked. The answer is still no.
- We will not subcontract pickups to brokers we haven't personally driven with. Every truck on a route to your yard is one we've ridden in.
Where we run, by tier.
We are based in Columbia, Missouri — geographically central enough to be on the way to almost everything else in the lower Midwest. Our route density falls off in concentric rings.
- Tier 1 · Weekly
- Missouri (statewide), eastern Kansas, southern Iowa, western Illinois
- Tier 2 · Biweekly
- Arkansas, eastern Nebraska, central Oklahoma, western Kentucky, southern Indiana
- Tier 3 · On request
- Tennessee, eastern Colorado, the Memphis/Tunica corridor, the Quad Cities, the Springfield IL / Decatur belt
- Outside the box
- We'll quote anywhere if the order is large enough to make freight math work. Ask.
Who actually buys from us.
A rough breakdown of last year's order book, by customer type:
- Food & beverage co-packers
- 34%
- Row-crop & dairy operations
- 21%
- Industrial / chemical handlers
- 14%
- Municipal & emergency services
- 9%
- Homesteaders & rainwater builders
- 11%
- Construction & jobsite
- 7%
- Everyone else (aquaponics, mead, etc.)
- 4%
The people who make this work.
We are three people. We are not three people doing everything alone. Here is the short list of partners we depend on, all of them small-to-mid Midwest operations like us.
St. Louis Polymer Reclaim
Granulates our end-of-life shells. Returns weight tickets within five business days.
Moberly Iron & Metal
Takes our cage cuttings and pallet steel. Family-run since 1972.
Three independent owner-operators
Two flatbeds out of Columbia, one dry van out of Sedalia. Two daughters and one nephew between them.
Boone Industrial Supply
Our hot-water detergent and food-grade sanitizer concentrate.
Mid-Missouri Pallet Co-op
Takes our retired composite pallets, repairs and re-sells.
University of Missouri Ag Extension
Periodic third-party testing on our food-grade wash batches.
The version we tell new hires.
The yard opens
One borrowed flatbed, a leased gravel pad on Vandiver Drive, and a phone tree of about forty farmers and co-packers. 412 totes moved in the first six months.
First repeat customer hits 100 totes
A dairy operation outside Sedalia. We finally believe this is a business.
Zero-landfill commitment
We sign formal recycling agreements with St. Louis Polymer and Moberly Iron. No tote has gone to landfill since.
Pandemic-era surge
Demand for potable water storage and small-batch sanitizer totes doubled overnight. We learned how to triage a queue.
The wash bay opens
40 feet of concrete, hot-water cleaning, gasket and valve stations, food-grade batch records. Priya joins the same year.
Cut-top & custom configurations launch
Rainwater, raised beds, aquaponics. What started as one-off requests becomes a product line.
25,000 totes returned to service
Cumulative since 2017. Roughly 9 million pounds of HDPE kept in circulation.
Per-order impact footnotes
Every invoice now ships with pounds-diverted and CO₂e-avoided line items.
41,000 totes & counting
Still three people. Still no phone. Still email-first.
Small mentions, mostly local.
Columbia Business Times
Profile in the "Small Operators, Big Ideas" issue. Mostly about why we don't have a phone.
Missouri Recycling Association
Honorable mention, Circular Economy Practitioner award.
Modern Farmer (online)
Quoted on the "backyard IBC catchment" piece. Theo did the photo.
University of Missouri Extension
Listed as a regional partner for ag-plastics diversion programs.
KBIA (NPR affiliate)
Brief segment on mid-Missouri reuse infrastructure. We are introduced as "a yard with no phone."
Word of mouth
Still our largest single source of new customers. We'd be lying if we claimed otherwise.
Questions about us, the company.
Are you really only three people?
Why no phone? Doesn't that lose you sales?
Are you hiring?
Do you take walk-ins at the yard?
Are you a franchise or part of a larger network?
Do you do consulting or sustainability audits?
Where are your prices?
Read the longer versions.
Our story, our sustainability charter, and the customer-side of what it's like to work with us — each broken out as a longer page.