Six people, one gate, no call centre.
Ask one of them directly
Name the person in the message field and it goes straight to their queue. Grading disputes go to Desmond, chemistry to Priya, freight to Ingrid.
The people who sign off
Marisol Trejo
Founder & Managing Partner
Spent eleven years in Central Valley beverage logistics before starting the yard with one leased flatbed. Still personally signs off on any grade dispute over twenty units.
Before this: Beverage logistics, Modesto
Desmond Okafor
Yard Manager
Runs intake, grading and dispatch. Wrote the grading rubric we still use, including the borescope check that catches stress-crazing before it becomes a leak in someone else’s warehouse.
Before this: Container terminal operations, Oakland
Priya Raghunathan
Wash Chemistry & Compliance
Chemical engineer who rebuilt our caustic circuit into a closed loop and took water reuse from 61% to 94%. Owns FDA food-contact procedure and RCRA generator paperwork.
Before this: Wastewater treatment, East Bay MUD contractor
Tomás Beltrán
Fabrication Lead
Welder and plumber by trade. Turns retired totes into wicking planters, compost systems, wash stations and whatever a customer sketches on the back of a bill of lading.
Before this: Structural steel, Hunters Point Shipyard
Ingrid Halvorsen
Freight & Logistics
Books every flatbed, negotiates every LTL lane and knows which Bay Area bridges will refuse a 46-inch stack on a windy afternoon. Also our unofficial expert on Port of Oakland drayage.
Before this: Freight brokerage, Sacramento
Wesley Kam
Quote Desk Lead
The person behind most of the replies you will get from us. Reads every inbound request personally and will tell you when the cheaper grade is the wrong call for your liquid.
Before this: Industrial packaging sales, San Jose
From the yard
Sixteen of twenty-three live within three miles
We hire out of Bayview, Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley first, and we train on site rather than asking for experience nobody local has a route to getting. Graders start on the intake lane, wash techs start on the industrial bays, and everyone rotates through dispatch at least once so they understand what a bad grade costs the person receiving it.
Starting wage on the deck is $28.50 an hour with full medical from day one. It is not charity — it is the only way we have found to keep the people who can tell the difference between a cosmetic scuff and a stress crack from leaving for the ports.
Frequently asked
Who runs IBC Totes San Francisco day to day?
A small management team that is on the yard rather than above it: a founder and managing partner, a yard manager, a wash chemistry and compliance lead, a fabrication lead, a freight and logistics lead and a quote desk lead. Between them they cover every decision that affects a container between the gate and the truck. There is no layer between them and the customer, which is why quote responses tend to come back with a grading opinion attached rather than just a price.
Can I speak to someone technical about a chemical compatibility question?
Yes. Compatibility questions go to wash chemistry and compliance rather than to a sales desk, and the answer comes back referencing your safety data sheet rather than a generic HDPE chart. Gasket material is usually the real question — the bottle resists far more than the seal does — and that is a specification we set per order rather than per catalogue line. Send the SDS with the enquiry and the turnaround is normally same day.
Does the company hire locally?
Deliberately. Sixteen of twenty-three people live within three miles of the gate. Bayview–Hunters Point has carried more than its share of the city's industrial burden, and a yard that draws its wages from the neighbourhood is a small correction to that. It also happens to produce a workforce that stays: the grading deck runs on judgement that takes a couple of years to build, and turnover is the enemy of consistent grades.
Who do I contact about selling a lot of empties?
The quote desk first, and it will route to the yard manager if the lot needs a site visit. For anything over about forty containers we would rather look at photographs before quoting, and for a recurring stream we will usually come and see it. Sight-unseen pricing exists and is honest, but it is necessarily conservative, and a ten-minute look almost always moves the number in the seller's favour.
How quickly does the team respond to enquiries?
Same business day for anything arriving before mid-afternoon, and usually within a couple of hours. What slows a quote down is missing information rather than volume: no prior-contents record, no delivery access detail, no quantity. Five lines of detail in the first email will typically get you a firm number instead of a range, and that is worth more than any follow-up call.