Plastic crates and bins for grocery and retail

DC to store, store to DC

Produce is packed at the grower into a folding RPC, trucked to the retailer's DC, cross-docked to stores and set out, sometimes in the same crate. Empties fold flat, go back to the DC and on to a wash depot, then out to a grower again. Bread follows a shorter loop: bakery to store on trays stacked on dollies, empties back on the next delivery. Store totes carry pharmacy, cosmetics and small items lidded and sealed.

The scale of pooling is large. In a FreshPlaza interview at Fruit Logistica 2026, published in April 2026, IFCO described a pool of 400 million crates "used 2.5 billion times annually". Freedonia noted in a June 2018 study that Walmart and several regional chains had adopted full or partial RPC-based logistics for produce, citing size standardization and stacking efficiency over boxes.

The case for plastic is old. Supermarket News reported on a 1999 Wal-Mart RPC test in which produce shrink "has gone down measurably" in all six test stores, while container shrink between DC and stores stayed under 2%.

The backroom has its own traffic. Damaged goods, returns to vendor and recalled lots ride back to a reclamation center in lidded totes, and seasonal merchandise can sit between resets in stackable crates. Those totes needn't touch food, so a used lot in good grade can serve there.

Grocery containers and their sizes

How reusable crates are washed and checked

Pooled crates go through industrial wash lines between every trip. The Reusable Packaging Association said in May 2021 that IFCO and Tosca together run "more than 2 billion wash cycles each year", that RPCs "can be used upwards over 100 times each", and that IFCO's wash sites use daily ATP swabbing, weekly bacterial swabbing, and quarterly and annual third-party audits. Tosca describes its own program as "ISO 22000"; that wording is the pooler's.

For trays and totes you own, the wash is yours. Makers pitch plastic to bakeries because it doesn't shed: Rehrig says its bakery trays are made with "100% FDA-compliant materials" and carry less risk of dust or wood contamination, and ORBIS says plastic trays hold the dimensional consistency automated bakeries need. We quote those statements as the makers make them. Check any model's listed temperature range against your tray washer.

Pool or own, new or used

Pooling hands the provider the washing, retrieval and losses, for a fee per trip. Owning makes sense for loops you control end to end: bakery trays between your own bakery and stores, totes between your DC and your pharmacies, crates inside a commissary. If you own, you also own shrink, so plan on marking and counting.

For owned fleets, used lots can fill out a run of trays or totes when they match what you already have. Send a model number or measure the base, height and nesting depth; bread trays that don't nest with your current stack slow every route. Each used lot gets a letter grade, and for a tray that letter speaks to rails, corner posts and the bottom grid. On food contact, the maker's wording and the lot's history come first, so tell us what the trays carried before. See food contact and buying used.

For sealed store delivery, ORBIS molds holes for security ties into its FP182 attached-lid container, and Buckhorn's lids interlock for closure and stacking strength. Rehrig says its retail products are "Made to work with a wide variety of conveyor types".

Selling surplus trays, totes and crates

Retailers that change bread suppliers, close a commissary or switch tote styles end up with surplus. We buy containers you own: give us counts by model, condition and the dock address. Crates carrying a pooler's marks usually belong to that pooler, not to the store holding them, so we quote only on containers that are yours to sell. See sell totes and crates.