Why we're telling you this.
Because the question we hear most often from a new customer evaluating us as a vendor is some version of "who am I actually going to be working with?" The answer is below. These are the humans who'll be touching your inventory, writing your quote, signing your BOL, and replying to your email.
Floor & office.
Yard Manager
Pete (12 years)Started in 2014 with one trailer. Has personally inspected somewhere north of 80,000 Gaylord boxes. Runs the floor like a Tuesday in the yard is the most important day on Earth, because it is.
Inspection Lead
Sarah V. (6 years)Wrote the calibration drill. Trains every new inspector. The reason our grading rubric is as honest as it is — she doesn't let it drift.
Operations Lead
Marisol O. (5 years)Owns the closed-loop program portfolio. Talks to customers more than anyone else. Most-likely to suggest unwinding a program that's not working.
Dispatch
Tom Beaumont (4 years)Runs the route grid, schedules the trucks, knows every dock window in the upper Midwest. Also writes some of the longer field notes on the blog.
IBC Recond Lead
Greg Howell (8 years)The reason the IBC wash station works. Built the Level 3 food-grade protocol. Won't ship a tote he wouldn't put product in himself.
Floor Inspector
Jared K. (7 years)Senior inspector. Calibration baseline. Most-cited author on the blog.
Floor Inspector
Ines D. (3 years)Inspects with the focus of someone who genuinely cares whether a Grade B becomes a usable second-trip box.
Floor Inspector
Dana R. (4 years)Manages the sustainability reporting. Writes the annual rollup. Has opinions about EPA WARM boundary conditions.
Repair Bench
Three humans whose names we won't share without their permissionThe repair bench is the bench. Three full-time floor employees who replace flaps, swap pallets, re-tape seams, and re-issue lids.
Bale Yard
Two humansSort, bale, weigh, manifest, load. The bale yard runs the zero-landfill commitment in practice.
Office
Two humansManage the email inbox, the invoicing, the BOL paperwork, the customer onboarding. The reason your reply lands within one business day.
Tenure.
Average tenure across the team is 4.2 years. That is unusually high for industrial floor work in this region. We don't take credit for it as some kind of culture achievement — we just pay above the regional median for inspection-grade hourly work, offer profit-sharing after a year, and don't fire people for the kinds of small operational mistakes everyone makes occasionally.
Hiring.
We're not actively hiring most of the time. When we do, we list on a single regional manufacturing job board and never on a general-purpose site. The people we want for this work are people who already do this kind of work.
If you're interested in working here and have inspection-grade or industrial-floor experience, email hello@ibctanksmilwaukee.comwith "careers" in the subject. We'll keep a file.
Ownership.
We are family-owned. Two families. Both with deep ties to southeast Wisconsin manufacturing. Neither family takes a management salary; retained earnings get reinvested in equipment, training, and the recycling-stream contracts. There's no equity overhang and no exit timeline. The company is run for the long arc.
Related reading.