There is a published price
Recovered paper grades trade on published regional indices, revised monthly. OCC — grade 11 in the standard specifications — is the most liquid of them, which means your bales have a reference price whether or not your hauler mentions it.
Ask any recycler what index they price against and what their discount to index is. A hauler who cannot answer is pricing against your ignorance rather than the market.
Seasonality is real
Generation surges after the retail peak and falls in late summer, while mill demand runs on its own cycle. The practical consequence is that it is worth asking how a fixed annual price compares with an index-linked one.
Contamination is the whole game
Four things move your bales down a grade, and three of them are avoidable on the dock.
- Wax-coated board — a separate, much cheaper grade. Keep it out entirely.
- Plastic film and liners left inside containers, a very common cause of downgrades.
- Moisture above roughly 12% — you are selling water at a penalty.
- Foreign material: banding, pallets, product residue, the occasional forklift tine.
Baled beats loose, almost always
A trailer of loose corrugated carries a fraction of the tonnage of a baled trailer, so freight per ton is brutal. If you generate a steady volume of corrugated, a baler may pay for itself; ask a recycler to run the numbers for your site.
