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Buying · August 18, 2026 · 10 min
After seventeen years the argument has not changed, but the evidence has accumulated. Everything we know about why the default is wrong, in one place.
Written by Odell Marchetti
Industry · June 16, 2026
Every box that enters this building is graded and logged. A year of that data produced four findings, two of which changed how we buy.
Yard notes · May 19, 2026
A week of unusually poor inbound material produced the most interesting fabrication run we have had. What came off the table, and what it replaced.
Materials · April 21, 2026
A 5:1 FIBC is built to be filled once. A 6:1 is built to be filled repeatedly. Reselling the first as the second is the most consequential shortcut in reused packaging.
Logistics · March 24, 2026
The difference between a forty-minute collection and a three-hour one is almost never the volume. It is six small things that get decided before the truck arrives.
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7 posts
August 18, 2026
Buying
After seventeen years the argument has not changed, but the evidence has accumulated. Everything we know about why the default is wrong, in one place.
Odell Marchetti · 10 min read
June 16, 2026
Industry
Every box that enters this building is graded and logged. A year of that data produced four findings, two of which changed how we buy.
Kwame Oyelaran-Beck · 9 min read
May 19, 2026
Yard notes
A week of unusually poor inbound material produced the most interesting fabrication run we have had. What came off the table, and what it replaced.
Teodoro Blaskiewicz · 8 min read
April 21, 2026
Materials
A 5:1 FIBC is built to be filled once. A 6:1 is built to be filled repeatedly. Reselling the first as the second is the most consequential shortcut in reused packaging.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 8 min read
March 24, 2026
Logistics
The difference between a forty-minute collection and a three-hour one is almost never the volume. It is six small things that get decided before the truck arrives.
Nadia Okonkwo-Reyes · 7 min read
February 17, 2026
Buying
Nobody complains about a box that was better than it needed to be. That is exactly why over-specification survives for years while under-specification gets fixed in a week.
Sandor Vitkevich · 7 min read
January 20, 2026
Sustainability
Revision four lowered our own water figure by twenty per cent because a customer’s consultant had better data than we did. Publishing revisions rather than quietly restating them.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 8 min read
12 posts
December 16, 2025
Yard notes
We can trace one specific container through eleven years, three companies and at least nine trips. It is not remarkable. That is exactly the point.
Odell Marchetti · 8 min read
November 18, 2025
Buying
Seven days for selling, fourteen for buying. Not a pressure tactic — a consequence of selling physical objects that are genuinely finite and priced against a moving index.
Sandor Vitkevich · 6 min read
October 21, 2025
Materials
Boxes put away badly in November grade a full rung lower in March. It is the most predictable and most avoidable value loss in this trade.
Kwame Oyelaran-Beck · 7 min read
September 16, 2025
Buying
Commissioning teams default to new packaging because everything else in the building is new. Here is how to introduce reused containers into a start-up operation without adding risk.
Sandor Vitkevich · 8 min read
August 19, 2025
Materials
The lowest repairable grade is the most interesting one in the yard. Four different things happen to it depending on one decision made at a bench, in about eleven seconds.
Teodoro Blaskiewicz · 8 min read
July 15, 2025
Sustainability
Most corporate carbon inventories treat industrial packaging as a rounding error. For a plant moving four hundred bulk containers a month, it is emphatically not one.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 9 min read
June 17, 2025
Specification
It is not a property of the box. It is a property of the box, the humidity, the storage duration, the pallet and the alignment — and three of those five change between February and August.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 9 min read
May 20, 2025
Selling
Six inputs, in the order they matter. Published because a seller who understands the arithmetic gets a better price — often by changing one thing before the quote is issued.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 9 min read
April 15, 2025
Industry
Agricultural demand does not ramp. It arrives. What a compressed, moisture-critical, weight-dense season looks like from the supply side, and how to plan around it.
Sandor Vitkevich · 8 min read
March 18, 2025
Materials
Antistatic film is not a premium option for people who like pink. Here is when charge genuinely matters in a bulk container, and when the standard clear liner is fine.
Teodoro Blaskiewicz · 7 min read
February 18, 2025
Yard notes
Eleven hundred boxes a month go across our bench. It has never been a profit centre in its own right, and removing it would cost us considerably more than it earns.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 8 min read
January 21, 2025
Buying
Unit price tells you what you spent. Cost per trip tells you what it cost. They routinely point at different boxes, and the second one is right.
Sandor Vitkevich · 9 min read
12 posts
December 10, 2024
Industry
The index moved the floor under everything we buy and sell. A plain-language account of what happened, why, and what it meant for anyone with a compactor.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 9 min read
November 19, 2024
Yard notes
It started after a dispute we could not win or lose because neither side had evidence. Four photographs per load, on the way in and on the way out, have since ended almost every argument before it began.
Kwame Oyelaran-Beck · 7 min read
October 15, 2024
Sustainability
Eleven per cent of what arrives here gets baled. We publish that number because the proportion, not the policy, is the real measure of a reuse company.
Odell Marchetti · 8 min read
September 17, 2024
Industry
By the time a fulfilment operation feels peak, the packaging decisions that would have helped were needed eight weeks earlier. A calendar for people who receive bulk and ship parcels.
Nadia Okonkwo-Reyes · 8 min read
August 20, 2024
Specification
That round stamp on the bottom flap is a manufacturer’s declaration, not a warranty — and on a used box it is evidence rather than authority. How to read it and when to ignore it.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 7 min read
July 16, 2024
Logistics
Two customers, identical order, identical grade, three hundred miles apart — and a delivered price that differs by forty per cent. The reason is a truck that was going there anyway.
Nadia Okonkwo-Reyes · 8 min read
June 18, 2024
Industry
It is the question we decline most often, and the one where a straight answer is worth more than a sale. Where used stock genuinely works in food, and where it absolutely does not.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 10 min read
May 21, 2024
Materials
Two dollars of polyethylene routinely lets you buy a grade lower and adds two trips to the box. Nothing else in this catalogue returns anywhere close to that.
Kwame Oyelaran-Beck · 8 min read
April 16, 2024
Specification
A pallet that measures half an inch under specification will quietly destroy every bulk box you put on it. It is the most common avoidable failure we grade, and nobody measures pallets.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 8 min read
March 19, 2024
Yard notes
They believed their boxes made four trips. We suggested marking fifty of them. The real number was 1.8, and it changed which grade they should have been buying.
Sandor Vitkevich · 7 min read
February 20, 2024
Specification
Yes, a round bin holds twenty-one per cent less than a square box on the same footprint. For flowing material, that is almost never the number that decides anything.
Teodoro Blaskiewicz · 9 min read
January 23, 2024
Buying
Used box supply tracks industrial activity with a six-week lag, and everybody notices the gap at the same time. What actually happens to stock between Thanksgiving and February.
Sandor Vitkevich · 8 min read
9 posts
December 12, 2023
Selling
Three findings turn up at nearly every site, regardless of industry, size or how well run the operation is. The third one is worth money to almost everybody who reads it.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 9 min read
November 14, 2023
Sustainability
Recycling a corrugated box is genuinely good. Not needing to recycle it yet is roughly ten times better. Here is the arithmetic, including the parts that are inconvenient for us.
Odell Marchetti · 10 min read
October 24, 2023
Specification
Most of North American bulk packaging is sized to a pallet that was standardised by a grocery trade association in the 1960s. Knowing that explains several otherwise baffling box sizes.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 8 min read
September 19, 2023
Buying
Including us. If a supplier answers all five properly, buy from them with confidence. If they cannot answer the third one, they have told you something important.
Sandor Vitkevich · 7 min read
August 22, 2023
Materials
Corrugated at 90% relative humidity retains about half the compression strength it has at 50%. Nothing looks different. Nothing feels wet. The stack simply starts creeping.
Kwame Oyelaran-Beck · 9 min read
July 11, 2023
Logistics
An assembled gaylord is mostly air, and you pay to move air at exactly the same rate as you pay to move corrugated. The arithmetic behind the single biggest lever in used packaging.
Nadia Okonkwo-Reyes · 8 min read
June 14, 2023
Selling
A 3PL in the Northland was paying $340 a month to destroy about $900 a month of material. That is not an unusual ratio. Here is how to work out your own.
Ruthanne Pilcher · 9 min read
May 23, 2023
Specification
Nine out of ten containers that fail our grading fail in the same three inches. It is the part nobody photographs, nobody inspects on arrival, and almost nobody protects.
Marisol Veracruz-Haddad · 8 min read
April 18, 2023
Yard notes
For four years we described used boxes the way everyone else does — with adjectives. Then a customer in Wichita sent back eleven pallets and we had no way to argue. Here is what replaced it.
Odell Marchetti · 7 min read
Editorial policy
Five extended pieces on cost, grades, recycling, loading and running a packaging audit.
Resources
OpenMeasuring, stacking, pallets, moisture and octabin comparisons — the reference library.
Reference
OpenEverything customers ask before a first order, grouped by topic.
FAQ
OpenEvery post here started as a customer question. The next one probably starts as yours.
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