Eighteen years, told in turning points.
Not a vanity timeline. Each of these changed how the yard physically works — which machine was bought, which step moved, which assumption turned out to be wrong.
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Straight to the grading floor at 9869 Meeks Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63132.
Or email sales@reboxesmarket.com. We have no phone line — dimensions and counts survive much better in writing.
Not sure of the size?
Fold a box in the browser, read off the cube and pallet fit, and send the spec straight through.
- 2008
A rented bay and a borrowed forklift
Two founders start buying gaylords out of a single rented bay off Page Avenue, selling them to neighbouring manufacturers who were paying to throw identical boxes away.
- 2010
The first grading bench
A hand-written grade scale goes up on the wall: A, B, C, scrap. Fifteen years later the categories have barely changed, which we take as a good sign.
- 2012
Our own trailer
Freight on empty boxes was eating every margin. Buying one used dry van changed the economics of the whole business overnight.
- 2014
Reconditioning opens
Flap splicing, panel patching and re-scoring. Boxes we had been baling for four years suddenly had a second career.
- 2016
Baling line installed
Mill-spec OCC baling so the genuinely spent material leaves as a controlled commodity rather than a problem.
- 2018
Honeycomb press
Our first upcycled product line. Recovered board laminated into structural panel, replacing plywood dunnage for three local manufacturers.
- 2020
Everything, at once
E-commerce demand triples while supply chains seize. We hold price on standing orders for every existing customer and do not take a new one for four months.
- 2022
The Loop Index
We start marking containers and publishing trips-per-box data. Nine trips median. The number has been climbing ever since.
- 2024
Meeks Boulevard
The move to 9869 Meeks Blvd: covered inbound, a proper grading floor, and a bench that is no longer a corner of the warehouse.
- 2026
Box Studio goes live
We put our own internal fold-and-cube calculator on the website, because customers kept asking us to run the maths for them anyway.
The next entry is being written on the grading floor right now.
Our current project: pushing median trips per gaylord from nine to eleven by moving repair decisions upstream into the receiving bay. We will publish the number either way.
Supply and demand move in opposite directions for most of the year.
If you buy on a fixed monthly schedule you are riding across this blind. It is a pattern rather than a law — but there is a calendar, and most buyers do not know it exists.
| Period | Inbound supply | Outbound demand | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| January – February | Very high | Low | Best availability and price of the year |
| March – April | High | Moderate | Good availability; grade A plentiful |
| May – June | Moderate | Moderate | Balanced; agriculture starts pulling gaylords |
| July – August | Low | High | Tightening; lead times extend |
| September – October | Low | Very high | Tightest of the year |
| November – December | Rising | Falling | Availability recovers, grade quality dips |
Six things move the number, and volume is only the fourth.
Used box pricing confuses people because the obvious lever — how many you want — is among the weakest of the six. Spread is the gap between best and worst case on our own quote data.
| Factor | Spread | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Destination lane | 2.8× | Within-Midwest versus a long nationwide haul |
| Size-run consistency | 2.1× | A single matched size versus genuinely mixed sizes |
| Grade | 1.9× | Grade C versus grade A on the same size |
| Order volume | 1.3× | One pallet versus a full truckload, same lane and grade |
| Timing flexibility | 1.15× | Take-it-when-it-lands versus a fixed delivery date |
| Season | 1.1× | March versus October on the same lane |
What comes off each machine, and how many fit a trailer.
Mills price on consistency as much as on grade. Auto-tie machines produce the most uniform bale weight, which is why they attract a better number per ton than their throughput alone would justify.
| Baler | Typical bale size | Bale weight | Bales per trailer | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vertical, small | 60 × 30 × 48" | 500 – 800 lb | 40 – 48 | Manual tie, lowest capital |
| Vertical, large | 60 × 30 × 60" | 800 – 1,100 lb | 36 – 44 | Still manual tie |
| Horizontal, manual tie | 60 × 30 × 48" | 900 – 1,300 lb | 34 – 40 | Continuous feed |
| Horizontal, auto-tie | 72 × 30 × 48" | 1,200 – 1,600 lb | 28 – 34 | Consistent weight; mills prefer it |
| Two-ram | 60 × 43 × 48" | 1,400 – 1,900 lb | 24 – 28 | Mixed-material sites |
| Year | Market level | What drove it |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Low | Post-import-restriction glut; some regions near zero |
| 2020 | Rising | E-commerce surge tightened supply of recovered fibre |
| 2021 | High | Containerboard demand peak; multi-year highs |
| 2022 | Falling | Demand correction as retail inventories unwound |
| 2023 | Low to moderate | Soft demand; mill downtime |
| 2024 | Moderate | Gradual recovery, regional spreads widened |
| 2025 | Moderate | Stable; export pull supported coastal markets |
| 2026 | Moderate to firm | Inland markets lagging coastal by a visible margin |
Direction only — published indices vary by region and by mill, and inland markets have been lagging coastal ones by a visible margin. We will tell you where your region sits rather than quoting a national average at you.