Gaylords in Everett, Massachusetts

Warehouses, cold rooms and trucks

The Everett-Chelsea industrial area sits on the north side of Boston's inner harbor. The regional planning agency's 2016 freight memo set its edges at Route 99 on the west and Route 16 on the north and found eight distinct truck types moving through it. For a gaylord, that variety means variety of source: a tractor-trailer from a cold-storage tenant, a box truck from a distributor, and a drayage truck out of the port can all deposit empties in the same square mile.

Refrigerated food storage produces a particular kind of box. Boxes that move between cold rooms and docks meet condensation, and condensation is the enemy of board strength. A gaylord that stayed in the cold room and came out dry is a sound single trip box. One that sat on a wet dock overnight is not.

Why the compactor is the wrong first move

Everett operators usually have a compactor or a roll-off for the day's cardboard, and haulers see what goes in. RecyclingWorks notes that haulers driving compactors or roll-offs can observe banned material, and recyclable cardboard is on the Massachusetts waste ban list. A stack of empty gaylords crushed into OCC is legal, but it throws away a working container that a plant or farm further out on Route 128 or Route 24 could use.

Dumpster space is the other cost. A knocked down gaylord is thin; a standing one is about forty cubic feet. The dumpster space calculator turns a weekly count into cubic yards and a share of each pull, and hands the numbers to the sell request.

Sending the request from Everett

Say what the trucks bring: pallets of cartons, bags, drums or loose parts. That tells us the wall count and bottom style of the empties without a visit. Give the footprint, how many a week, and whether the stack is standing or knocked down. If trucking is the main business and boxes are incidental, say that too; it changes how often a pickup would be needed.

Close by on the chart: Chelsea, Woburn, and South Boston.