Empty boxes piling up? We pay cash.
Send us a few photos and a count. We quote within hours, pick up within days, write the check on the dock.
Get a buyout quote →Reclaimed in Milwaukee · since 2014Used boxes.
Used boxes.
Sold like new.
Recycled like ours.
The Oak Creek yard that buys, sells, reconditions and routes Gaylord boxes, IBC totes and pallets — the unglamorous backbone of every supply chain — without ever sending good corrugate to a landfill.
Specimen / 001
Live inventory ↗
48 × 40 × 36
Grade B · Triple-wall
Need boxes? Got boxes? Start here.
Same form for buying, selling, recycling, and quotes. We promise an answer inside one business day — no robocall, no sales pressure.
Four things we do obsessively well.
The packaging industry is full of brokers who never touch a box. We aren't that. Everything we sell has been pulled, inspected and palletized by a human on our floor.
01 · Buy from us
Inspected, regraded, palletized Gaylord boxes — ready to ship today.
2-, 3-, 4- and 5-wall corrugate, with or without lids and pallets. Grades A through C, priced for what they actually are.
Browse inventory →02 · Sell yours
03 · IBC totes
275g & 330g totes, washed, tested, certified.
Food-grade and non-food, caged or bare, with valves you can actually trust. Reconditioned in-house.
IBC inventory →04 · Closed loops
Recurring corrugate flow for plants, co-packers & 3PLs.
One contact, one schedule, one invoice. Packaging goes out, comes back, gets graded, ships again — cutting your virgin-fiber spend and your Scope 3 measurably.
Reverse logistics →05 · Honest factEvery Gaylord we reuse is one fewer tree felled, 26 fewer gallons of water boiled, and 11 fewer pounds of CO₂ in the sky.
Every Gaylord we reuse is one fewer tree felled, 26 fewer gallons of water boiled, and 11 fewer pounds of CO₂ in the sky.
That's not marketing — it's the math.
Signature Tool · 001
The Box Impact Calculator.
Slide and see what happens when you reuse instead of recycle, or recycle instead of trash. Numbers are conservative — sourced from EPA and corrugate-industry life-cycle averages.
Live · No tracking
105,000
250 boxes
Trees not felled
4.3
mature equivalents
Water saved
6,500
gallons
CO₂ avoided
2,850
lbs equivalent
Landfill diverted
9,500
lbs of cardboard
In plain English
That's roughly the carbon footprint of 1 round-trip flights from Milwaukee to Chicago, deleted just by buying used.
How the yard actually works.
No mystery, no broker games. Four steps from inbound trailer to outbound truck, written down so you know exactly what you're paying for — and why.
STEP / 01
Intake & scan
Every load gets photographed, weighed, and tagged on arrival. Origin facility, prior contents, condition class — all logged before a single box hits the floor.
STEP / 02
Grade & sort
A human looks at every box. Walls counted. Stains noted. Footprints measured. Grade A through D assigned by people who've done this for a decade.
STEP / 03
Recondition & rebuild
Replace flaps, swap pallets, add lids, re-tape, re-strap. Whatever the box needs to ship safely a second, third, or fifth time.
STEP / 04
Ship or recycle
Anything not fit to reuse goes to our recycling partner. Zero corrugate hits a landfill. You get a certificate if you want one.
410k+
Boxes reclaimed
0 lbs
Corrugate to landfill
1 day
Quote turnaround
12 states
Routine shipping
From the floor.
The unsexy work that holds the whole operation up. A few scenes from a normal week in Oak Creek.
Field notes from the floor.
We write down what we learn — sizing weirdness, grading edge cases, transport math — so the next person doesn't have to figure it out alone.
Gaylord vs IBC: when each one is the wrong tool.
They look interchangeable on a spec sheet. They're not.
How we grade a used box — and why "Grade B" means seven different things.
The grading rubric we actually use, photographed in the yard.
The carbon math, line by line.
Where the 11.4 lbs of CO₂ per box number comes from, sourced.
What we ship every week.
A snapshot of the floor inventory we move through Oak Creek on a normal week. Numbers shift, but the proportions hold.
| Format | Footprint | Wall · ECT | Lid | Typical grade | Weekly outbound |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gaylord | 48 × 40 × 36 | Triple · 1,100 | Telescoping | B | ~720 |
| Gaylord | 48 × 40 × 44 | Triple · 1,300 | Flap fold | B / C | ~280 |
| Gaylord | 48 × 40 × 30 | Double · 700 | None | A / B | ~210 |
| Gaylord | 45 × 38 × 34 | Triple · 1,100 | Telescoping | B | ~150 |
| Gaylord | 40 × 48 × 36 | Double · 700 | None | B | ~120 |
| IBC tote | 40 × 48 × 46 | HDPE · steel cage | 2" cap | Level 2 wash | ~110 |
| IBC tote | 40 × 48 × 53 | HDPE · steel cage | 2" cap | Level 3 food-grade | ~40 |
| Pallet | 48 × 40 GMA | Wood, B-grade | — | — | ~1,100 |
| Pallet | 48 × 40 plastic | Sound nestable | — | — | ~240 |
Inventory is sold per-pallet for local orders and per-trailer for distance. Email for the live floor list — it's usually attached as a single-page PDF inside the next business day.
Who we ship into.
Nine industries account for ~92% of our outbound. Quick read on how reclaimed packaging fits each one — and where it doesn't.
A · Food & Beverage
Secondary packaging, syrup totes, ingredient bulk.
Segregated food-grade stock, certified IBC cleaning, chain-of-custody PDF on request. We won't cross-contaminate from industrial side.
B · Automotive & parts
Triple-wall workhorses, returnable IBCs.
Two tier-1 supplier closed-loop programs in WI / N IL. ISPM-15 pallets available for international supplier shipments.
C · E-commerce & 3PL
Returns processing, high-cube secondary.
Mixed Grade B / C inventory perfect for inbound-returns staging. We buy back picked-up returns boxes routinely.
D · Pharma & personal care
Raw-material IBCs, finished-goods staging.
Chain-of-custody is non-negotiable here. We built the workflow to match the regulatory expectation, on request.
E · Agribusiness
Heavy-wall Gaylords for grain, feed, seed.
Four- and five-wall stock for dense loads. ISPM-15 pallets in segregated inventory for international shipment.
F · Co-pack & contract mfg
Variable-run mixed inventory.
Our single highest-volume use case. Reverse-logistics programs for outbound packaging across the customer base.
G · Chemical & industrial
Non-food IBCs, poly-lined Gaylords.
We don't handle Class 4–9 hazmat. For those, we'll introduce you to two licensed partners we trust.
H · Returns / reverse-stream
Returns-friendly graded inventory.
The mid-grade pile is built for returns. We won't ship Grade A into returns processing — wrong tool, wrong economics.
I · Plant moves & scrap
Whatever's leaving the building.
Internal moves, scrap staging, waste-to-energy upstream. Lowest-grade reusable stock, lowest price-per-trip.
New vs reclaimed — the comparison.
The honest side-by-side. Reclaimed wins for most industrial use cases. New wins for retail-shelf, regulated primary, and the cases we wrote down on the products page.
| Dimension | New corrugate | Reclaimed Grade B |
|---|---|---|
| Per-box price | $95–145 | $30–55 |
| Trips before retirement | 4–8 (if lidded) | 3–6 (depends on inbound grade) |
| Lead time | 5–15 business days | Same-day to next-day |
| Embodied CO₂ at first trip | ~11.4 lbs | ~1.2 lbs (recondition + return freight) |
| Brand-shelf appearance | Pristine | Used (scuffs, label residue) |
| Food-contact regulatory fit | Yes (FDA-compliant new spec) | Only at Level 3 cleaning, IBCs only |
| Cost per trip (5 trips, lidded) | $25.00 | $8.50 |
Ranges reflect a 24-month rolling average. Specific quotes track the current OCC market and your spec.
Frequently asked.
The questions most often emailed to us. Longer FAQ lives on the resources page.
Do you really not have a phone number?
Correct. Of ~3,400 customer conversations we logged in 2025, fewer than 15 actually needed a phone call. Email gives both sides a paper trail and gets you a real reply faster — usually inside one business day. We'll hop on a Google Meet on request.
What's the smallest order you'll ship?
One pallet (~25 Gaylord boxes) for local Milwaukee-area orders. For distance shipping the per-box freight math is ugly under a half-trailer, but we'll quote anyway — sometimes a partial backhaul makes it work.
How fresh is your inventory?
The floor rotates roughly every 14 days. Grade B 48 × 40 × 36 triples almost always have stock; less-common footprints come and go. Same-day email for current count.
Do you ship outside Wisconsin?
Daily into IL, IN, MN. Weekly into MI, IA, MO. Anything beyond we quote on a partner-carrier basis and check whether a backhaul is available.
What payment terms do you offer?
New customers prepay or pay COD on the first order. Net-30 terms after a clean second on-time transaction. ACH, wire, business check, major cards (3% card surcharge). We invoice itemized — never "and handling."
Can I tour the yard?
Yes — we run a 45-minute tour for any customer or prospect. PPE provided. Email us two or three preferred dates and we'll confirm within a day.
What happens to boxes you can't reuse?
They go to our Wisconsin mill partner (41 road miles) for repulping. Zero corrugate has hit a landfill from our yard since 2021. We'll issue a certificate of recycling for any customer who asks.
The Oak Creek yard
We're a 12-minute drive south of downtown Milwaukee.
Come kick the corrugate. Pickups, drop-offs, and inspections all happen at our yard at 7335 S 10th St, Oak Creek, WI. Open Monday through Friday, 7 to 5 CT.
Coordinates
7335 S 10th St
Oak Creek, WI 53154
Oak Creek, WI 53154
HoursMon – Fri · 7 AM – 5 PM CT
Sat by appointment only
Sat by appointment only
Emailhello@ibctanksmilwaukee.com