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Yard Diary · 5 min · May 13, 2025

Why we do not have a phone number, and what happens when people miss us

Tell us what you need. We'll take it from here.

Buying, selling, recycling, or just curious — same form, same fast reply. We answer leads inside one business day.

Format: (XXX) XXX-XXXX — US/Canada only.
US ZIP (12345 / 12345-6789) or Canadian (A1A 1A1).
We reply within one business day. No phone calls — just email.
By Pete (yard manager)·Published May 13, 2025·Yard Diary

There is no phone number on this website. There is no phone number on our quote PDFs. There is not even a phone number on the side of our trucks. This is deliberate.

The basic argument

In 2025 we replied to roughly 3,400 customer inquiries. Of those, fewer than fifteen genuinely needed a phone conversation to resolve. Every other interaction was resolvable in writing — usually with photos, specs, and a few back-and-forth emails — and ended better because there was a written record both sides could refer to.

The harder argument

When we ran a phone line — we did until late 2018 — the calls disproportionately came from people who wanted to negotiate a price they had already been quoted on. Email-quoted prices stuck. Phone-quoted prices got picked apart. The phone conversation favored whoever was better at conversation, not whoever had the better packaging fit. That was not great for us and it was not great for customers who were good at packaging and bad at phone calls.

What about urgency

Urgent does happen. A docks-down situation, a load that needs to ship that afternoon. We have never lost an urgent request to email-only. Our reply window inside business hours is closer to 90 minutes than 24 hours. We monitor the inbox aggressively. If you mark something urgent in the subject line, somebody sees it within an hour.

What about the people who miss us

Once or twice a quarter someone really does want to talk on the phone. We will hop on a Google Meet or Zoom for fifteen minutes. We do not pretend to be a perfectly written-only business. We just do not run a phone line as our default channel.

The unwritten benefit

Email gives us a paper trail every time a customer wants to revisit a past order, dispute a grade, or recall what the lid spec was on a 2024 PO. We can search. The trail is its own quality system.

It is a strange choice. It is not for every kind of company. For us, it has been one of the best operational decisions we have ever made.

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