Gaylords in South Boston, Massachusetts
The South Boston waterfront is a working port, and a port produces empties by the pallet. Gaylords that carried freight through Conley Terminal or product through the Marine Park are reuse candidates first and OCC second.
A port neighborhood with its own box supply
Massport's Conley Terminal is the region's only full-service container terminal with deep-water access for large ships, and it processed nearly 140,000 TEUs in fiscal 2022. In the same report Massport says 60 percent of the container ships calling that year were large vessels in the 8,000 to 10,000 TEU class, and that the terminal serves the needs of more than 2,500 businesses across New England. Behind every one of those businesses is a receiving dock, and behind every dock a stack of empties.
The Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park master plan keeps two-thirds of the Designated Port Area tideland in maritime industrial use. Its uses include seafood processing, waterborne cargo warehouses and motor freight facilities. Each of those is a different box problem: seafood is wet, cargo is dry, and freight forwarders handle both.
Reading the boxes by trade
Seafood processors run into the waxed-board question first. Waxed cardboard is not a Massachusetts waste ban material, but we cannot reuse it as a gaylord either, so a waxed or fish-wet box is not our request. Dry outer gaylords that carried packaging, cartons or ingredients are a different story and are worth selling.
Cargo warehouses and motor freight yards see knocked down gaylords arrive on pallets and leave empty. The useful number is how many stand in the yard at once: a stack of forty on a pallet, banded and dry, is easier to place than forty loose boxes scattered around a dock door.
Moving the load
South Boston empties leave by the I-93 ramps, through the Ted Williams Tunnel and I-90 to the airport side and west, or along Summer Street and Northern Avenue to the Seaport. Dock hours matter more here than on Route 128: the neighborhood is dense and a trailer blocks a lane the moment it stops. Tell us the door type and whether a liftgate is needed.
Send a sell request for sound boxes and a recycle request for wet or torn board. Put the pallet count and the footprint in the message, and mention the Marine Park or the street so the request reads as a real dock.
Close by on the chart: Chelsea, Everett, and Canton.
Questions
- Does Conley Terminal send gaylords our way?
- We do not work for or with the terminal. It is named here because its freight is the reason a stretch of South Boston is a bulk-box neighborhood.
- Are fish-wet boxes reusable?
- No. Wet board is recycle only, and waxed board is outside the Massachusetts ban and not reusable as a gaylord.
Sources
Each read on November 11, 2026.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Ring | Harbor |
| County | Suffolk County |
| ZIPs | 02127, 02210 |
| Roads | I-93, I-90 and the Ted Williams Tunnel, and Northern Avenue and the Marine Park roads |
| Trades | seafood processing, waterborne cargo warehousing, motor freight, and container shipping |