Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - Where do you get your produce containers/boxes?

moon1234 · February 25, 2014

It depends on where you are located and how much you intend to buy. Monte Packaging is one of the biggest out there for cardboard. Jordan's resells their stuff as does glacieriv in Baraboo (they are really just a drop shipper).

We found the Amish produce auction in Dalton, WI is the cheapest place to get all of our cardboard, pulp, pallet, rubber band supplies. If you go in may you get a 10% discount. We buy around 500 berry boxes, 30-40 pallet bins and extra pallets, about 6000 pint pulp containers, etc. etc.

Packaging is evil in my opinion. It is a large cost when it is usually a single use item. We have invested in RPCs, the fold down crates Carol referred to, and the green 1.75 bushel bins and yellow 7/8 bushel bins from Ropak. The plastic RPCs can be bought from TranPak in California or from numerous sources in Canada. We bought Smart Crates from AMA Plastics in Canada. They cost around $14 each, but we turned them over 30 times last year. If we used cardboard single use the cost would have been double.

The Ropak containers we get from Nolt's Midwest Produce Supplies (Amish). Green 1.75 bushel bins are around $16 each and yellow 7/8 bushel are around $12-$13 I think.

If you can get good customers who will return RPCs, and who you can charge for ones that walk away, then RPCs will pay you back very quickly. Selling a case of cherry tomatoes (12 pints) will cost you $.90 for the case itself and the pints are $.04/each. So each case as an embedded $1.50 in packaging cost, not taking into account the shipping you may have paid. At those rates it only takes 10 round trips and the RPC is paid for. All trips after that are money in the bank.

We typically delivered three times a week to our institutions and restaurants last year. That means the RPCs paid for themselves in less than a month. We got to keep 10 weeks worth or 30x1.50=$45 extra dollars PER CASE last year that did not go into packaging for the last 10 weeks of the season. This year we stand to save 42x1.50=$63 per case/season in saved packing costs. It adds up to thousands of saved dollars.

Up front cost is much higher than cardboard, but long term the farm saves a lot of money. The RPCs should last 100-200 round trips or more. Just depends how hard we are on them. We try to save the Green and Yellow bins for field harvesting.

You could also look at the versa crates. I think if I didn't already have an investment in the current bins I would buy them instead.

February 25, 2014	#12
moon1234 Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Wisconsin Posts: 54	It depends on where you are located and how much you intend to buy. Monte Packaging is one of the biggest out there for cardboard. Jordan's resells their stuff as does glacieriv in Baraboo (they are really just a drop shipper). We found the Amish produce auction in Dalton, WI is the cheapest place to get all of our cardboard, pulp, pallet, rubber band supplies. If you go in may you get a 10% discount. We buy around 500 berry boxes, 30-40 pallet bins and extra pallets, about 6000 pint pulp containers, etc. etc. Packaging is evil in my opinion. It is a large cost when it is usually a single use item. We have invested in RPCs, the fold down crates Carol referred to, and the green 1.75 bushel bins and yellow 7/8 bushel bins from Ropak. The plastic RPCs can be bought from TranPak in California or from numerous sources in Canada. We bought Smart Crates from AMA Plastics in Canada. They cost around $14 each, but we turned them over 30 times last year. If we used cardboard single use the cost would have been double. The Ropak containers we get from Nolt's Midwest Produce Supplies (Amish). Green 1.75 bushel bins are around $16 each and yellow 7/8 bushel are around $12-$13 I think. If you can get good customers who will return RPCs, and who you can charge for ones that walk away, then RPCs will pay you back very quickly. Selling a case of cherry tomatoes (12 pints) will cost you $.90 for the case itself and the pints are $.04/each. So each case as an embedded $1.50 in packaging cost, not taking into account the shipping you may have paid. At those rates it only takes 10 round trips and the RPC is paid for. All trips after that are money in the bank. We typically delivered three times a week to our institutions and restaurants last year. That means the RPCs paid for themselves in less than a month. We got to keep 10 weeks worth or 30x1.50=$45 extra dollars PER CASE last year that did not go into packaging for the last 10 weeks of the season. This year we stand to save 42x1.50=$63 per case/season in saved packing costs. It adds up to thousands of saved dollars. Up front cost is much higher than cardboard, but long term the farm saves a lot of money. The RPCs should last 100-200 round trips or more. Just depends how hard we are on them. We try to save the Green and Yellow bins for field harvesting. You could also look at the versa crates. I think if I didn't already have an investment in the current bins I would buy them instead.