Gaylord boxes in Delaware County, Pennsylvania

This is the county of the refinery fence line. From Eddystone south through Chester, Trainer and Marcus Hook, the riverfront is one long industrial strip: refining, natural gas liquids storage, marine terminals and chemical distribution. Those plants buy a great deal of bulk packaging for the small-volume additives and catalysts that sit around the big process units.

The people who handle those boxes are mostly distributors and plant stores. They get a pallet of drums and bins in, use some, and have a stack of empties they would rather not pay to haul away. That is where a gaylord buyer or seller finds work here, less in the refinery itself than in the supply buildings around it.

The refinery and the terminals at the south end of the county are covered on the Trainer and Marcus Hook page, with the sourced figures there. We use this page for the county as a whole.

The county also holds the Chester waterfront, a waste-to-energy plant, and the airport side of Essington and Tinicum. The Ridley Creek and Darby Creek watersheds run through the northern townships.

This page covers 19013, 19061, 19022, 19029, 19032, 19078, 19094, 19014, 19015, 19063 and 19082. The industries to expect there, from our market research: petroleum refining, natural gas liquids, marine terminals and chemical distribution.

Turnarounds, the planned maintenance shutdowns at refineries, bring bursts of packaging and then bursts of empties. They run on the plant's calendar, not the farm calendar, so a county request can land in any month.

• Buy. Plant stores and distributors that need multi-trip bulk boxes for solids and additives, usually triple wall on a full-flap bottom.
• Sell. Distributors with stacks of single-trip empties from a delivery they have already unpacked.
• Recycle. Soiled or wet boxes that cannot be resold; we sort what has fiber value and say what we cannot take.

If a box carried something regulated, say so in the request. We do not buy or sell boxes that carried hazardous materials.

• Turnaround. A scheduled shutdown of a refinery unit for inspection and repair, bringing in contractors, parts and consumables for a few weeks and leaving empties behind.
• Natural gas liquids. Ethane, propane and butane separated from natural gas, stored and shipped from terminals such as the ones along the lower river.
• Catalyst. A material that speeds a chemical reaction without being used up, usually bought in drums or bulk bins and replaced on a schedule.

• Where the boxes sit and who delivered them, in case a contractor or a distributor owns the stack.
• What the boxes carried, and whether any of it was regulated.
• The count and the footprint.
• Whether the building has a dock and a forklift.