Inside the yard
The wash line, the granulator and the rainwater array.
Est. 2009 · East Austin
We started by
hauling these away
IBC Totes TX exists because somebody asked to buy back the thing we had just been paid to take to the landfill. Seventeen years later that question is the whole business model.
Order desk
Work with us
Buying, selling, washing or scrapping — the same form reaches the same people, and one of them has been here since the flatbed.
The short version
IBC Totes TX is a container reconditioner and recycler founded in Austin in 2009. We buy used intermediate bulk containers, wash and rebuild them, rebottle the ones whose cages outlived their bottles, haul them across Texas on our own trucks, and granulate the ones that are genuinely finished. Twenty-two people, one yard at 3505 Montopolis Drive, roughly forty thousand containers a year.
01Timeline
Seventeen years, told honestly
Including the year we got it wrong, because that is the year the grading policy comes from.
- 2009
One flatbed and a borrowed pressure washer
It started as a side job hauling scrap out of chemical distributors on the east side. The totes were supposed to be the worthless part of the load. After the third customer asked whether they could buy a couple back — washed — it became obvious the worthless part was the business.
- 2011
The first wash bay
A leased half-acre off Montopolis with a slab, a drain and a hot water heater bought at auction. Two people, about forty containers a week, and the first hard lesson: nobody trusts a used container unless you can tell them what was in it. The prior-contents log started that year and has never stopped.
- 2014
Learning to say no
We took a load we should not have — unlabelled, unknown, cheap. It cost more to dispose of properly than we had paid for it, and it taught us the rule we still grade by: no label, no unknown residue, no exceptions. The gate policy that annoys some sellers dates from that week.
- 2017
Rebottling
We had a row of forty cages that were perfectly sound with bottles nobody would buy. Rather than scrap them we bought bottles. That row paid for the jig, the jig paid for the second bay, and rebottling is now a quarter of what leaves the yard.
- 2020
The granulator
Selling end-of-life containers to a third-party recycler meant we could never say honestly where the material went. So we bought our own granulator. It is the least profitable machine on the site and the one we are proudest of, because it is the reason we can print a destination on a diversion certificate.
- 2022
Catching our own water
Fourteen thousand square feet of roof and an eight-tote harvesting array built from C-grade stock. It supplies about a fifth of the wash line's feed water, and it is the thing customers ask about more than anything else on the tour.
- 2026
Forty thousand containers a year
Twenty-two people, four trucks, four wash bays and a fabrication shop. 41,820 containers recovered last year, 83 percent of them returned to service. Still one yard. Still the same log book, now on a screen.
02How we operate
Four rules that predate the website
RULE 01
Sell the cheapest thing that works
Our sales team is instructed to talk customers down the price list. In this trade the cheap option is also the low-carbon one, which is a rarer alignment than it should be — and it means nobody here has to choose between doing well and doing right.
RULE 02
No label, no unknown residue, no exceptions
Prior contents is the first thing checked and the one thing we will not be flexible about. It has cost us loads at the gate and it will again. A yard that skips it eventually sells a herbicide container to a honey packer.
RULE 03
Publish the denominator
Every environmental figure on this site comes with the factor behind it and the number we could not divert. A diversion percentage without a landfill tonnage is marketing, and we would rather be checked than believed.
RULE 04
Take the scrap too
We do not cherry-pick a seller’s good containers and leave them standing next to the bad ones — which is the half that was actually costing them money. We price the whole stack. It is the difference between a buyer and a recycler.
03The yard today
What that adds up to
22People on the yard, in the office and on the road
4Wash bays plus a fabrication shop
4Trucks running the Texas triangle
83%Of intake returned to service
Why there is no phone number
We do not have one. Twenty-two people, four of whom are driving at any given moment, and a yard loud enough that a phone conversation is a shouted one. What we have instead is a form and two email addresses that a person actually reads, and a written answer that goes back the same day.
A number nobody answers is worse than no number at all, so we do not pretend to have one. If you need to talk to a human, say so in the message and we will call you.
- Founded
- 2009
- Yard
- 3505 Montopolis Dr, Austin
- Orders
- quotes@ibctotestx.com
- Buy-back
- buyback@ibctotestx.com
- Everything else
- hello@ibctotestx.com
- Wash line capacity
- ≈ 260 units/week
- Own fleet coverage
- The Texas triangle
We are in the business of postponing the granulator. Everything else — the trucks, the wash bays, the sales desk — exists to buy a container one more service life.
◆On the yard
»Keep reading
Sustainability pledge
What we measure and what we refuse to claim.
Working here
Wash line, drivers and inside sales.