What is a gaylord box?

The name and the box

A bulk box is also called a bulk bin, skid box, pallet box, bin box, gaylord or octabin, and is usually double-wall or triple-wall corrugated fiberboard. It stands on a pallet, usually 48 x 40 inches, and typical sidewalls are 24 to 50 inches high. Footprints in the trade are 48 x 40, 48 x 48 or 48 x 45.

Parts of the box

• Walls: two to five layers of corrugated board, which decide what the box can carry; see wall count
• Bottom: full flap, partial flap or a separate tray; see bottoms
• Footprint: matches the pallet; see sizes
• Top: flaps or a lid; see lids and liners

Where it came from

Gaylord Container of St. Louis made the first bulk bins and was acquired by Crown Zellerbach of San Francisco in 1955. The corrugated gaylord was introduced in the 1930s, and by the 1950s it carried everything from plastic resin to watermelons. The name history has more.

How it is standardized

ASTM D5168 covers the fabrication and closure of triple-wall corrugated containers. The Cary Company lists gaylords in single wall 200#/ECT-32, double wall 275#/ECT-48 and triple wall 1100#/ECT-90 across sizes from 36 x 36 x 36 to 48 x 40 x 36.

Types around Boston

Rectangular gaylords are the standard. Octabins have eight sides for resin and produce. A sleeve-and-tray gaylord has a separate base tray and a corrugated sleeve and can be taken apart for return shipping. Plastic corrugated gaylords are a different product and are not sold here.

How to recognize one

A gaylord is easiest to recognize by what it is not. It is not a carton, which one person lifts, and it is not a crate, which is built of wood. It is a bulk container made of corrugated board that stands on a pallet and is moved by a forklift, and it holds what would otherwise need dozens of cartons. If you can walk around it and it comes up past your waist, it is almost certainly a gaylord.

Why people choose it

Buyers choose a gaylord for a few plain reasons. It uses a pallet most docks already handle. It is light compared with the load it carries. It folds flat for storage, ships back to the shipper in a stack, and can be recycled when it is finished. The same box that carried bagged ingredients to a plant last week can carry molded parts out of a plant this week, which is the whole idea of reusing it.

What to read next

If you are choosing a box, start with the wall count guide and the full and partial bottoms guide, which cover the two decisions that matter most. If you are selling or recycling empties, go to grades and the Massachusetts cardboard ban. And if you are simply trying to place the word, the name guide explains how a company's name became the name of the box.

A box with many jobs

The same box serves very different trades. On a produce dock it carries melons and squash. In a plastics plant it carries resin and regrind. In a warehouse it carries cartons, in a parts shop it carries castings, and in a recycler's yard it carries shredded paper. What changes is not the box but the wall count and bottom style chosen for the load. That flexibility is why the gaylord has lasted as a packaging format.

Strengths and limits

A gaylord is strong for its weight, light for its size and recyclable at the end. It is not waterproof, not designed for outdoor storage and not a substitute for a steel container when the load is heavy enough to crush the board. Knowing those limits is what separates a gaylord used well from one used badly, and it is the reason this site asks about the load as often as it asks about the box.

Reading a box you have found

Turn a box over or look at the base panel. Most carry a printed certificate: a circle or square containing the maker's name, a combined weight limit and sometimes a test method. Those marks are the closest thing to a nameplate. If the box has been reprinted by a user, you may see a company logo over the original. Neither affects the structure. What you want from the label is a weight, a wall rating and a sense of who made the board.

Why size is quoted three ways

Sellers quote the outside, the inside or the pallet. The three are close but never identical, so the safest habit is to say which you mean.

Worked example: reading a listing

A listing says "gaylord, 48 x 40 x 36, 3-wall, full flap, Grade B, 1,500 lb." Read it from left to right: the name of the box, its footprint and height, its wall count, its bottom style, its condition and the maker's weight limit when new. Six items, and each one is a question you can ask of your own boxes before you buy or sell.

Keep in mind that the word covers a family of containers rather than a single specification, so always state dimensions.