Twenty-five questions, answered straight.

A Grade C 275-gallon unit fit only for static water storage starts around $95. A Grade B general-purpose tote runs $130–$180. A cosmetically clean Grade A industrial unit is $190–$240, and a documented food-grade A is $240–$285. Rebottled units — new bottle, reclaimed cage — sit at $240–$395. New is $385–$620. Prices move with the scrap steel index and with how many totes the local chemical trade has released that month.

Work backwards from the contents and the journey. If the product is regulated for transport, you need a valid UN marking and therefore a Grade A or rebottled unit. If it is food or cosmetic, you need documented food-only prior contents. If it never leaves your site and holds water, Grade B or C is genuinely fine and anything more is wasted money. Most people over-specify; we will tell you when you are.

Yes, and for orders over twenty units we encourage it. Come to the Astoria yard during opening hours, open the lids, put a torch inside, check the plates. We would far rather you looked than sent them back.

Forty 275- or 330-gallon totes fit on a standard 53-foot trailer, single-stacked. We deliver across the five boroughs within the week, and Long Island, Westchester and northern New Jersey in two to four days. Small orders can be collected from the yard.

48 inches long by 40 inches wide by 46 inches high (1219 × 1016 × 1168 mm), on a standard 48×40 pallet footprint. Empty weight is about 130 lb with a steel pallet base, and the usual maximum gross mass marking is 2,650 lb.

Only the height. Both sit on the same 48 × 40 inch footprint, so they occupy identical floor space and truck positions. The 330 is roughly seven inches taller and about 18 lb heavier empty. If your door height, racking and forklift mast allow it, the extra 55 gallons per position is free capacity.

For water, a full 275-gallon tote weighs about 2,425 lb including the container. Multiply the specific gravity of your product by 2,295 lb and add the 130 lb tare. A tote of 93% sulphuric acid at 1.83 SG comes to roughly 4,330 lb — well over the usual 2,650 lb gross-mass marking, which is exactly why dense products go in smaller totes.

31 means a rigid IBC intended for liquids. H means the inner receptacle is plastics. A means the outer casing is steel. The trailing 1 means the inner receptacle is rigid. Together: the standard caged composite tote — an HDPE bottle inside a welded galvanised steel cage. Paste your full marking into our decoder and it will read every field back to you.

Read the stacking test load off the UN plate and divide by the gross mass of one filled tote, then subtract one for the unit on the floor. A plate reading 2,500 kg stacking load with 1,200 kg filled units gives you two high. A stacking load of 0 means nothing may go on top of it in transport, full stop.

Three things together: the bottle is virgin HDPE suitable for food contact, the container's entire prior history was food-only and can be documented, and it has been cleaned on a line that never handles industrial chemistry. A tote is not food grade because it looks clean. It is food grade because someone can prove what was in it.

No, and be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. HDPE is permeable to many organics; a solvent that has migrated into the wall will leach back out into your product for years. Once a bottle has held industrial chemistry it stays in industrial service or gets granulated. The cage, however, is perfectly reusable — which is what rebottling is for.

Empty and capture the heel properly first — never to a storm drain. Then triple rinse with hot water, using a rotating spray head if you can borrow one, because a hose through the lid leaves the top third untouched. Use detergent for oils and caustic for resins. Rinse until the runoff is clear, then dry it, because standing water grows biofilm faster than anything you were storing. Full method on our cleaning guide page.

Only in a documented food-grade unit, and even then treat it as storage rather than long-term supply. A Grade B industrial tote is not suitable for potable water no matter how thoroughly you scrub it — you cannot rinse out permeation. If you want rainwater for a garden, a Grade C is perfect and costs a fifth as much.

The outlet is almost always a 2-inch butterfly or ball valve on an S60x6 or S70x6 buttress thread. Adapters to garden hose, camlock, NPT and BSP are all cheap and all in stock. The lid is typically a 6-inch screw cap, sometimes vented. If you're unsure, photograph the valve and send it — we identify them all day.

Yes to both. A reclaimed cage and pallet base sells separately, and it is the usual fix when someone has cracked a bottle but the steel is fine. It is also the cheaper half of a rebottle if you would rather do the swap yourself.