One flatbed, a quarter acre
Founded off Third Street with 200 totes bought from a Modesto cannery. 1,100 containers moved in the first year, most of them sold as-is with a rinse and a promise.
Company · History
Seventeen years, written down honestly.
Including the years that were flat, the decision that nearly broke us and the one piece of equipment that changed the economics of the whole operation.
Quote request
No phone tag — email onlyStart your own record with us
Every account gets a running diversion statement from the first order. Tell us what you need and we will open one.
2009 – 2026
Year by year
First repeat contract
A Richmond specialty chemical blender signs a standing empties agreement. The idea that a customer might want us to take the container back turns out to be the whole business.
Grading rubric written
After two disputes in one month, we stop describing stock as "good" and "rough" and start photographing and recording every unit against A, B, C and scrap.
Closed-loop wash bay
A caustic circuit with a three-stage separator replaces the pressure washer. Water per container drops by roughly two thirds. Grade A becomes a category we can defend.
Desmond joins, throughput doubles
Intake, grading and dispatch get separated into distinct zones for the first time. Annual volume passes 6,000 containers.
First flatbed of our own
Stops the freight bleed that had made the first four years marginal. Same-week Bay Area delivery becomes a standing promise rather than a favour.
Rebottling line opens
New HDPE bottles dropped into reclaimed cages opens the door to customers who need virgin-clean interiors. Now roughly a third of shipped volume.
Food-grade line separated
Priya arrives and insists that food-contact containers get their own bays, hoses and staff rotation. Costs throughput, wins the beverage accounts.
UN/DOT recertification in house
We stop sending regulated containers out for third-party inspection and bring the leak test, plate review and documentation on site.
Move to Bancroft Avenue
3.4 acres, four wash bays, covered storage and a fabrication shop. The single largest capital decision in the company’s history and the one that made everything after it possible.
Fabrication becomes a product line
Wicking planters for a school district turn into a standing catalogue of upcycled builds: compost tumblers, wash stations, market stalls, tool cages.
Sanitiser year
Demand for food-grade totes spikes as distilleries pivot to hand sanitiser. We ration stock, publish a fair-allocation policy and refuse to raise prices on emergency orders.
Granulator installed
Scrap bottles stop leaving the site as waste and start leaving as HDPE regrind. Landfill diversion crosses 98% and stays there.
62 kW of rooftop solar
Covers roughly 41% of yard load including the granulator. Payback modelled at nine years; running two years ahead of that.
Leasing programme launches
Seasonal customers — harvest, brewing, construction water — start renting containers instead of buying and storing them. Utilisation per container rises sharply.
Diversion reporting for customers
We begin issuing per-account diversion statements so procurement teams can put real numbers in their own sustainability filings.
40,000 containers in a year
First year past forty thousand, on the same footprint. Growth now comes from cycle count, not acreage.
Where we are
41,800 containers a year, 23 employees, four flatbeds, and a 250-mile service radius covering Northern California, western Nevada and southern Oregon.
From the yard
