The sales photos on our website show clean tanks lined up neatly in front of the wash bay. That's the front-half of the yard. The back-half is messier and I think it's worth showing.
The intake stack
Behind the building we have a roughly 80-tank intake stack — totes that arrived this week and haven't been washed yet. Some are dirty, some are stained, some have valve issues we haven't addressed yet. It looks like a junkyard if you don't know what you're looking at.
But every tank in that stack has been logged. Each one has a yellow ribbon tied to the cage with a prior-fill notation and an intake date. We don't proceed to wash until the tank has been categorized, and the categorization happens at intake, not when we get around to washing.
The fab corner
The fabrication corner is where Jamie spends his days. It looks like a workshop — angle grinders, sparks, a welding setup. The half-finished projects sit on a slab next to the corner. Last week there was a half-finished mash tun, a stack of rain catchers in various states of completion, and one of the BMX water-jump panels.
It doesn't look like the rest of the yard, but it's where the most interesting work happens.
The wash water tank
We have a 6,000-gallon underground tank that catches all our wash chemistry between washes and the neutralization treatment. You can't see it from the surface but it's there. The neutralization happens weekly — a tanker truck shows up, we pump out, and a permitted industrial waste hauler takes the chemistry to a treatment facility in Holland.
Most reconditioners don't have this. The ones who don't either don't run caustic wash chemistry or they're handling the wash water in a way I don't want to ask about.
The bone pile
Behind the fab corner is what we call the bone pile — tanks too damaged to recondition or repurpose. These get cut up by Jamie when he has spare time and the HDPE goes to our partner recycler in Holland. The cages go to a metal scrap dealer.
The bone pile is usually 8–14 tanks. We try to keep it lean because it's the slowest-moving inventory.
What this looks like in winter
Winter at the yard is muddy. The intake stack collects ice. We don't run outdoor wash cycles below 32 °F because the rinse water freezes in the valve. Outbound deliveries slow because of weather. We compensate by running indoor reconditioning at full capacity, but the visual impression is one of slow progress.
Why I'm showing you this
Because if you visit our yard, this is what you'll see, and I'd rather you know what to expect than be surprised. We're a working yard. We do honest work. The work is sometimes messy.
The clean side of the yard is what we sell. The messy side is where the work happens. Both are necessary.