If you are inside 40 miles of Oak Creek and have empty Gaylord boxes you want to sell, you are inside our normal pickup radius. Whether we say yes to a specific pickup depends on load size. Here is the threshold and the reasoning behind it.
The fixed cost of a pickup
A 40-mile round-trip dispatch from our yard costs roughly $260 in fully-loaded truck cost — fuel, driver, equipment depreciation, and the proportional share of fleet overhead. That number does not change much based on how full the trailer is when it comes back.
The threshold for "yes"
For a typical load of resale-quality Gaylord boxes, our internal threshold is about 50 boxes. Below that, the per-box net (after recovering the $260 dispatch cost) is too thin for either side. Above 50, the math gets reasonable; above 200, the math gets good for everyone.
What we do with smaller loads
We have two paths.
Path one is consolidation. If you have 25 boxes and we are picking up 75 from another customer four miles down the road on the same day, we can combine. We are happy to do this; we just need lead time to align the pickups.
Path two is drop-off. If you can get 25 boxes to our yard at 7335 S 10th St on a Tuesday between 7 and 5, we will pay a slightly better per-box rate because we did not have to send the truck.
What we will not do
We will not send a truck for a 10-box load just to be nice. It is not actually nice — we are losing money on the trip and that money has to come from somewhere, eventually from customers who are subsidizing the smaller jobs through higher prices on their own loads. The honest answer is no, and pointing toward drop-off or consolidation.
For recycling-only loads
The threshold is higher (about 75 boxes) because the per-box net is lower. Same logic, different number.
What this means for you
If you have a backlog of empty Gaylords and are not sure if we can help, email us with the count and a couple of photos. We will tell you which path makes sense. Sometimes the answer is "yes, we will be there Tuesday." Sometimes it is "yes, but let us consolidate with a job nearby; that takes us 5 extra days." Sometimes it is "your load is too small for a dispatch, here is the drop-off option." All three are useful answers.