How we set our prices (and why we don't haggle)

Customers occasionally ask us why we don't negotiate price. The honest answer is that we'd rather quote our actual cost-plus-margin and stick to it than start high and let aggressive buyers pay less than gentle ones. Here's the breakdown of where the money in a $110 reconditioned 275-gal tote goes.

Acquisition: ~$45. What we paid the prior owner for the empty tote (or the time it took to pick it up if we paid in trade).

Wash bay: ~$22. Hot water, gas, caustic, citric, peracetic acid (food-grade), labor, water reclaim system depreciation.

Cage shop: ~$8. Press time, weld repair, paint touch-up.

Inspection & QC: ~$4. Photo log, batch tag, leak test.

Yard overhead: ~$15. Rent, electric, software, accounting, insurance, the office coffee fund.

Margin: ~$16. Keeps the lights on, pays profit-share, funds the granulator upgrades.

That's $110. New from a manufacturer to a small buyer is about $295. Used drop-shipped through a broker is about $130-150 because the broker adds a 30% markup on top of paying a yard like us. Our price is what it is because we've cut out the broker.

A few implications:

• We rarely discount below volume thresholds we publish. A 36-tote full truckload gets the volume rate; a 10-tote split gets the mid rate. If you ask us for a 20% discount on a 5-tote order, the answer is no — we genuinely can't make the math work.
• We will quote separately on freight. Freight is a real cost we don't want to bake into the unit price; it varies too much by route and load.
• We charge what we said we'd charge. No surprise fees at delivery, no last-minute "fuel surcharges," no "we noticed two cages were dinged so we have to discount." If something is different from the quote, we tell you in writing first.

This way of pricing isn't unique to us — most yards that operate at scale do it. It's just that the brokers have made the industry as a whole feel opaquely negotiated. We try to be the opposite.