Gaylords for produce wholesale around Boston

Where the trade sits

The New England Produce Center on Market Street in Chelsea is a wholesale produce market described as one of the largest in the world. The Boston Market Terminal beside it closed after its 2019 sale and its tenants relocated, which spread produce handling across more, smaller docks in Chelsea and Everett. The chart lights the Route 1 and I-93 channel here, because that is how the loads go out.

The boxes

Squash, melons and cantaloupes come in octabins, which resist bulging under dense produce. Other produce comes in rectangular triple-wall boxes with a full flap bottom. Both are used once and emptied in the morning. A maker lists its 46 x 38 x 36 octagon at a 2,200 lb capacity and 29 lb weight and recommends it for produce.

Wet and waxed

RecyclingWorks says waxed cardboard is not a waste ban material and that cardboard contaminated with food or liquid should not be recycled. For a produce dock that is the whole question: a box that carried wet product, or is waxed, is outside both reuse and OCC. We say so before you load a truck.

What to send

A sell request with the count, the footprint, the wall count and a line about whether the loads were wet. If you need bins back in the fall for your own packers, send a buy request with the need-by date.

A day on the produce dock

Produce moves early and fast. Boxes come off trucks before dawn, empties build up through the morning and the dock is clear by afternoon. A pickup that expects a stack at three in the afternoon will find it gone. Say when the stack is highest, and which door it is at, and the reply can plan around the same hours the dock works.

Octabins are common for squash, melons and similar crops, and standard rectangular gaylords for packaged goods. The two go to different buyers, so keep them apart and count them separately.

What a produce house can send

Produce houses move large volumes of dry outer packaging alongside the wet and waxed. The dry boxes are the ones to describe in a sell request. Wax-coated cartons and boxes that carried wet product are better described separately, so they are not confused with the rest.