Seventeen years,
one stubborn yard.
A year-by-year ledger of how Pittsburgh Totes Recycling got to where it is — including the mistakes, the near-misses, and the pickle-brine accident that started it all.
Skip the phone tag. Leave a note — we'll reply by email.
- 012008
A pickle brine favor gets out of hand
We buy six used totes for a friend's fermenting garage. She only needs one. We list the other five on a bulletin board. They sell in a weekend.
- 022009
First flatbed
We lease a 16-foot flatbed and start running to plants in Ambridge and Beaver Falls. Loads average 12 totes. Revenue just about covers the gas.
- 032011
The near-closure
A bad batch of caustic melts a valve manifold. Insurance won't cover it. We almost fold. A customer at ALCOSAN spots us and routes an emergency pickup contract our way.
- 042013
The McKees Rocks move
We buy the current yard — a former fastener warehouse behind the old B&O line. First time we have a roof big enough for proper reconditioning.
- 052015
UN31A testing goes in-house
We install hydrostatic pressure rig #1. Every rebottled tote now gets re-certified on site. Sales of reconditioned totes double in eight months.
- 062017
Granulator
A 3-inch HDPE granulator lands on a Wednesday. We sell our first 2,000 lb batch of pellets to a re-bottler in Ohio on a Friday.
- 072019
The ledger starts
We begin logging every incoming tank with a paper tag: origin, contents, weight, grade, next life. The binder is still on the desk.
- 082022
The ledger goes public
We convert the binder to a searchable digital ledger. Customers can look up a tank by its ID and see its full second-life chain.
- 092024
Quarterly audits
An independent auditor begins measuring our reuse and reclamation rates every three months. We publish the results on the Sustainability page.
- 10Today
184,217 tanks and counting
Still five of us. Still no phone. Still keeping barrels of oil in the ground — one tote at a time.
What we've learned along the way → our mission.
The year we almost closed the gate.
- Tanks in the bad lot
- 34
- Melted valve manifolds
- 34
- Replacement cost estimate
- Substantial five-figure write-off
- Insurance coverage
- None (exclusion)
- Months to recover
- 11
- Staff retained
- 3 of 3
A lot we'd bought from a metal-finishing supplier in Neville Island came in labeled as a mild surfactant and tested as something much meaner. The residue ate through the 2-inch ball valves overnight and took the manifold gaskets with it. Thirty-four tanks were a total loss by Thursday morning.
Our commercial policy had a residue-misrepresentation exclusion we hadn't thought to question. The supplier folded before any claim could be settled. We wrote off the loss, refinanced the flatbed at 14 percent, and kept the lights on by landing an emergency-pickup rotation with ALCOSAN the following week.
That's the reason we now run a mass-spec residue screen on every incoming lot whose label doesn't match the paperwork. It's also the reason we built the tank ledger. Our rule after 2011 became the rule we still run by: if we can't name what was in it, we won't take it.
Equipment we bought, one paycheck at a time.
We bootstrapped. No venture money, no line of credit bigger than a short-term equipment loan. Here's the inventory, in the order it arrived, with the year on it.
Why McKees Rocks, specifically.
We looked at twenty-three parcels between 2012 and 2013. The shortlist came down to three: a former foundry site in Hazelwood, a truck yard in Sharpsburg, and the fastener warehouse at 1243 Thompson Avenue in McKees Rocks. Thompson won on four criteria that mattered more than price.
First, it sits inside Allegheny County's M-2 heavy industrial zoning, which permits outdoor material storage and bulk-liquid re-packaging by right. Second, the pad was already graded and drained to M-2 standards — we didn't have to resurface. Third, it's inside the Port of Pittsburgh's commercial corridor, which matters for rail-adjacent customers. Fourth, it's exactly seventeen minutes from the McKees Rocks Bridge to the 376/79 split.
The neighborhood itself earns a mention. McKees Rocks was a rail-and-steel town that got hollowed out through the '80s and '90s; the Sto-Rox corridor has been slowly rebuilding ever since. We hire locally when we can — four of our five current employees live inside the 15136 zip. We also contribute annually to the Sto-Rox school-lunch fund and the McKees Rocks Community Development Corporation's youth trade-training program.
The building itself is a single-span masonry shell built in 1947 for the Pittsburgh Fastener Company. The bowstring roof trusses are original. We replaced the skylights in 2016, repointed the north elevation in 2020, and added the climate-controlled food-grade cell in 2021. The concrete floor — four inches of post-war industrial slab — has outlasted every machine we've put on it.
Mistakes, tallied honestly.
Anyone can publish a milestone reel. Here's the shorter, more useful list — the decisions we'd take back, and what we do now because of them.
A broker in Washington, PA sold us twelve tanks labeled 'cleaning fluid' that turned out to contain a chlorinated degreaser. We learned that day that a label is a marketing document, not a regulatory one. Now: every incoming load gets residue-tested when the paperwork and the smell disagree.
We said yes to a one-off delivery 420 miles south and lost money on freight. Now: our single-unit radius is 500 miles one-way and we'll point you to a closer yard if we can't do it break-even.
The rep pushed totes customers didn't need. Three returns in four months. We went back to flat-rate salaries and the quote volume held steady. Now: nobody here earns a commission.
We bought 2,200 totes on speculation when demand spiked. Some sat for seven months. Now: we keep inventory to 42 tons steady-state and buy against confirmed outbound quotes.