Key takeaways
- Ask for the written grading standard — the document, not a description of it.
- Ask for photographs of the actual lot, specifically including a bottom edge.
- Ask what happens to boxes that fail their grading. The answer reveals whether they can afford to grade honestly.
- Ask whether they will sell one pallet first, and whether they also buy boxes back.
The used packaging market has a trust problem, and it is our own industry’s fault. Grades are described loosely, the best pallet gets photographed, and the customer finds out at their own dock. Five questions filter most of that out before a truck is ever booked.
1 · Can I see your written grading standard?
Not a description of it. The document. It should define each grade, state what the box is suitable for, and — critically — state what gets a box rejected at that level.
Suppliers who have one will send it immediately, because writing it was expensive and they are proud of it. Suppliers who do not will explain that grading is a matter of experience. That is true, and it is also not an answer.
2 · Can I have photographs of the actual lot?
Stock photography in this trade is a warning sign. The material is physically present in somebody’s building; photographing it takes ninety seconds. Ask specifically for a bottom edge, because that is where the failures are, and it is the shot that never appears in marketing imagery.
3 · What do you do with the boxes that fail your grading?
This is the question that reveals the most and gets asked the least.
A supplier who says everything gets baled is running a recycling operation with a sales department attached — which is fine, but it tells you their incentive is throughput, not grading accuracy. A supplier with a repair bench and a cutting table has a financial reason to be honest about condition, because the failures still have a home.
| Answer | What it implies |
|---|---|
| “Everything is baled” | Grading is a cost centre; borderline boxes drift upward |
| “We repair some of it” | There is a reason to grade accurately |
| “We repair, fabricate and bale, in that order” | Failures have value; grading can afford to be strict |
| “We do not really get failures” | Either an extraordinary supply chain, or nobody is checking |
4 · Will you sell me one pallet first?
Anybody confident in their grading will encourage this. It is a small, slightly unprofitable order that converts into years of truckloads if the material matches the description — and it is the cheapest possible way for you to find out if it does not.
A minimum order of a full truckload from a supplier you have never traded with is a request to gamble several thousand dollars on an adjective.
5 · Do you also buy boxes?
This one is about your total cost rather than their honesty. A supplier who buys as well as sells gives your containers a residual value at the end of their life with you, instead of a disposal cost. On a five-wall gaylord that swing is two to three dollars a box, which is a meaningful share of what you paid.
The best outcome of publishing these questions is that our competitors start answering them. We would rather compete against people who grade properly.
The bonus question
Ask what the boxes previously held. Any supplier with a functioning inbound process records the source sector, and it takes ten seconds to look up. It matters for odour, residue and — in food, pharma and agriculture — for whether the material is usable at all.
If nobody can tell you where a box came from, nobody checked it particularly carefully on the way in.
Questions