How to
Grade your empties before you send the request
Sort your empties into resell and recycle piles before you send the request. Five checks, five minutes a stack.
Grading your own empties makes the request faster and the answer more accurate. You do not need to be exact. You need two piles: the boxes you would be happy to see on a clean floor, and the boxes you would not.
Five checks
- Damp. Press the walls and the base. Soft spots, staining and wavy board mean the box got wet. Wet boxes go to the recycle pile.
- Bottom. The flaps should be whole at the fold and the base flat. A split bottom cannot hold a load.
- Walls. No bowed or crushed panels. Count the wall layers at an open edge: 2 to 5.
- Inside. No residue, no dust, no resin or food film.
- History. Indoors is good. A yard through winter is OCC.
Which pile
| What you see | Likely grade | Pile |
|---|---|---|
| Clean, dry, whole, used once | Grade A | Resell |
| Scuffs, creases, old labels, no weakness | Grade B | Resell |
| Heavier creasing, taped repairs | Grade C | Resell for one-way or collection use, or recycle |
| Wet, torn, crushed, no bottom | Recycle only | OCC |
What the grades mean
Grade A boxes are used once, clean and dry with flaps and bottom intact; they are close to new. Grade B boxes show wear but no structural weakness. Grade C is a one-way, short-term box. Recycle-only is wet, torn, crushed or missing a bottom, and worth its fiber as OCC. Each has a page in the grade hub.
Then go to the sell desk or, for the second pile, recycling.
A five-minute routine for a pile
Pull three boxes from the top, three from the middle and three from the bottom. The ones at the bottom are usually the worst, because they were stacked first and sat longest. Grade each one against the five checks above and write down the result. If all nine land in the same grade, the pile is that grade. If they split, say so on the request and give the split.
Take one photo of the pile, one of the worst box and one of the label panel. Those three pictures answer most questions before they are asked.
Common mistakes in grading
The most common mistake is grading by the top panel, which is the best-looking one. Turn the box over. The second is calling a box dry because it feels dry; check the base for staining. The third is leaving out the pile's age: boxes that sat in a corner for a year are not what they looked like when they were new.
Questions, answered
What if I cannot tell the wall count?
Look at an open edge and count the fluted layers between the liners. If it is hard to tell, say so.
Sources and last reviewed
Facts on this page were last reviewed 2026-11-11.
- PaperIndex Academy: humidity and corrugated strength: How corrugated board loses compression strength as relative humidity climbs from 50% to 90%.
- Container Exchanger: the gaylord box guide: A reseller's plain-language guide to gaylord sizes, walls, capacity ranges and bottoms.