The short version
- Composite is the right default; plastic for wash-down; steel for heavy and outdoor.
- Wood should be swapped out on sight — it is the most common reason a container is scrapped early.
- A $34 pallet swap saves a $165 container. Do it at the first sign of deck cracking.
- Never stack mixed pallet types; the load paths are different.
The component nobody specifies
In fourteen years of grading I have never had a customer ask what pallet type they were getting. I have scrapped a great many containers whose bottle and cage were perfectly serviceable and whose base had given up.
The base is 20 to 45 lb of the container's 125 lb tare. It takes every forklift impact, every spill, all of the moisture that runs down the outside, and the entire weight of whatever is inside. It is doing more work than any other part and it costs the least to replace.
Four types, four failure modes
| Base type | Weight | Used price | Fails by | Warning sign | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Composite (HDPE deck, steel runners) | ≈ 30 lb | $28 – $45 | Corner cracking, runner corrosion | Visible crack at a tine strike point | General industrial — the default |
| One-piece plastic | ≈ 26 lb | $40 – $65 | Deck fatigue, gradual sag | Container no longer sits square | Food, pharma, wash-down |
| Full steel | ≈ 45 lb | $35 – $60 | Base-ring corrosion at welds | Rust blooming along the bottom ring | Outdoor, heavy service, 550 gal |
| Wood | ≈ 38 lb | $12 – $20 | Rot, splitting, fastener pull-through | Soft spots, dark staining | Nothing we would recommend |
The differences in failure mode matter more than the price differences. Composite cracks visibly and gives you weeks of warning. Plastic sags silently and you find out when the bottle no longer sits square in the cage. Steel corrodes from the inside of the ring where you cannot see it, which is why we cut and replace base rings rather than wire-brushing them.
Wood, and why we swap it on sight
Wooden bases are increasingly rare and I am glad. They absorb product and water, which means they get heavier, then they rot, then the fasteners pull through and the whole assembly loses its geometry.
They also fail export phytosanitary requirements without ISPM 15 heat treatment, which limits where the container can go. And in a food context an absorbent base under a container is a hygiene problem regardless of what the bottle is made of.
When a container arrives on wood we quote a swap before anything else. It is $34 in parts and about fifteen minutes at the bench, and it typically adds five or more years to a container that was otherwise on a two-year path to scrap.
The arithmetic on swapping early
| Scenario | Cost | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Swap composite base at first crack | $34 + 15 min | Container continues, 4–6 more cycles |
| Wait until the base fails in service | $34 + spill + downtime | Container usually still saveable |
| Wait until the bottle cracks at a corner | $135 rebottle, or scrap | Bottle lost, cage saveable |
| Container scrapped | Replacement at $135–$360 | Everything lost, all mass to recycling |
The path from "small crack in the deck" to "scrapped container" is real and it runs through the bottle. A base that is no longer flat lets the bottle sit unevenly; uneven support concentrates stress at a corner; the corner crazes and then cracks. I have watched that sequence dozens of times and the intervention point is always at the beginning, for thirty-four dollars.
What we do at every wash
Practical notes
- Never stack mixed pallet types. The load path through a composite base and a steel base is completely different, and the lower container takes point loading it was not designed for.
- "Four-way entry" does not mean identical pockets. Pocket widths vary by manufacturer, and narrow-carriage trucks or wide-tine pallet jacks find the edges of that. Standardise if you run mixed equipment.
- Keep containers off a roof drip line. Constant dripping does more base-ring corrosion damage across a season than steady rain does.
- If you run twenty or more containers, keep two spare bases on site. A base failure then becomes a fifteen-minute repair rather than a container out of service until somebody orders a part.
Written by Desmond Okafor, yard manager at IBC Totes San Francisco. Published February 5, 2026. Spotted something wrong? Tell us — we would rather fix it than defend it.