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Packaging glossary

Industry terms a buyer, a hauler or a recycler will use on a call, A to Z.

A

Anti-Static: Built so static charge cannot build up to a spark where the contents or the air around them could ignite, as with drum liners for flammable liquids. On bulk bags the term has two defined types under IEC 61340-4-4: Type C bags are conductive and must be grounded while they fill and discharge, and Type D bags dissipate static without a ground connection.

B

Bale: A compressed, bound block of recyclable material — most often old corrugated cardboard (OCC) or plastic film — produced by a baler so it can be stored and shipped densely for recycling.
Baler: A machine that compresses loose cardboard, film, or other recyclables into bound bales. Vertical balers suit lower volumes; horizontal balers handle continuous, high-volume streams.
Bill of Lading (BOL): The legal shipping document that lists the freight, quantities, parties, and terms for a load. It serves as the carrier's receipt and the contract of carriage.
Block Pallet: A pallet that uses solid blocks (rather than continuous stringers) to support the deck, allowing true four-way forklift and pallet-jack entry from all sides.
Box Style: How a corrugated box's flaps are cut. On an RSC (regular slotted container) the outer flaps meet at the center; on an HSC (half slotted container) one end is open, for a separate lid; on an FOL (full overlap) box the outer flaps span the full width for a stronger, puncture-resistant top and bottom. Die-cut boxes are cut to a custom shape.
Box Truck: A single-unit truck with an enclosed cargo box, most often 26 feet long. It reaches docks and addresses a 53-foot trailer cannot, and suits partial loads.
Bulk Bag (FIBC): A Flexible Intermediate Bulk Container — a large woven polypropylene bag with lift loops, used to ship dry flowable products like resins, grains, sand, or chemicals. Rated single-trip or multi-trip.
Bulk Bag Coating: A laminate on a bulk bag's woven fabric that keeps moisture and fine powder from passing through. Uncoated fabric breathes; a coated bag, or one with a polyethylene (PE) liner, protects products that absorb moisture or sift through the weave.
Bung: The threaded opening (and its plug) on a closed-head/tight-head drum. Standard steel and plastic drums typically have a 2-inch and a 3/4-inch bung on the top head.

C

Chamfer: The beveled edge cut into the bottom deckboards of a pallet so pallet-jack wheels can roll up onto the deck smoothly.
Closed-Head Drum: A drum with a permanently fixed top head and bung openings, used for liquids. Also called a tight-head drum. Contrast with open-head.
Core (Pallet Core): A used pallet bought by a recycler as raw stock to repair, remanufacture, or grind. "Cores" trade as a commodity between recyclers.
Core Size: The diameter of a spool's center, as the seller measured it. Confirm whether it is the drum the cable winds on or the arbor hole the reel mounts by: the drum must meet the cable's minimum bend radius, and the arbor hole must fit your payoff stand.
Corrugated: Board made of one or more fluted (wavy) layers glued between flat liners. Single-, double- and triple-wall are the standard constructions, and wall count sets the strength. The material gaylord boxes and shipping cartons are made from.

D

Deckboard: One of the flat boards forming the top or bottom surface of a pallet. The top deck carries the load; the bottom deck spreads it and adds rigidity.
Dimensional Weight: A pricing method where a shipment is billed on its volume (cube) rather than actual weight when it is light but bulky. Common for parcel and some LTL freight.
Discharge Spout: The opening a bulk bag empties through. A spout bottom meters the flow and ties closed; a full-open bottom releases the whole bag at once; a flat bottom has no outlet and is emptied by cutting or tipping. The top is open or spouted for filling.
Drop Trailer: A trailer left at a shipper's or receiver's dock to be loaded or unloaded on their own schedule, then collected by a tractor later, so the driver does not wait at the dock.
Drum: A cylindrical shipping container, typically 55-gallon, made of steel, plastic (HDPE), or fiber. Sold open-head (removable lid) or closed-head (fixed top with bungs).
Drum Closure: How a drum closes. Open-head drums have a removable lid held by a lever-lock or bolt ring and suit solids and pastes; closed-head (tight-head) drums have a fixed top with bung openings and suit liquids.
Drum Lining: A coating baked onto the inside of a steel drum so the contents do not react with the steel. Epoxy and phenolic are the common linings; an unlined drum suits products that are compatible with bare steel.
Dry Van: A standard enclosed semi-trailer (commonly 53 feet) used for palletized and boxed freight. The default trailer for most packaging shipments.
Drying Method: How moisture was taken out of the lumber. Kiln-dried (KD) wood is dried in a kiln to 19% moisture or less and stays straighter; air-dried wood is dried in the open; green wood has not been dried and shrinks as it does. Kiln-dried is not heat-treated: only an IPPC mark satisfies ISPM-15.
Dunnage: Inexpensive material — airbags, foam, blocking, scrap pallets, or boards — used to brace and protect freight inside a trailer or container so it doesn't shift.

E

Edge Crush Test (ECT): A measure of a corrugated box's stacking strength — the force its walls can bear on edge. Higher ECT means more stacking strength, which rises with wall count.
Entry Type: The sides of a pallet that forks can enter. Two-way pallets take forks at the two ends only; notched stringer pallets add fork entry on the sides but not pallet-jack entry; block pallets take both from all four sides.
Exposure Rating: How much weather a structural panel can take. Interior panels must stay dry; Exposure 1 panels withstand weather during construction but must be covered in the finished building; Exterior panels can stay exposed permanently.

F

Flatbed: An open trailer with no walls or roof, loaded from the side or from above by forklift or crane. It carries loads too tall or wide for a dry van, and the load must be strapped down and often tarped.
Food-Grade: Materials and containers safe for direct food contact, governed in the U.S. by the FDA. For used containers, food-grade status also requires documented food-safe prior contents and proper reconditioning.
Four-Way Entry: A pallet design that lets forks enter from all four sides. Block pallets are naturally four-way; stringer pallets need notches cut into the stringers.
Full-Flap Bottom: A gaylord box bottom where all four flaps fully overlap to cover the entire base, distributing load and resisting forklift-tine puncture. Stronger than a partial-flap bottom.

G

Gaylord Box: A large corrugated bulk container sized to sit on a 48×40 pallet. Also called a bulk box, pallet box, or bulk bin. Graded by wall count, bottom style, and condition.
GMA Pallet: The 48×40-inch grocery-industry standard pallet (named for the Grocery Manufacturers Association). The most common pallet footprint in the U.S. and the benchmark for recycled-pallet pricing.
Grade A (#1): A recycled pallet with all original, unrepaired stringers, clean and dry. The premium recycled grade, used for customer-facing, retail, and export loads.
Grade B (#2): A structurally sound recycled pallet that has been repaired — plugged stringers or companion boards. Priced below Grade A and used for internal freight.

H

HDPE: High-density polyethylene — the rigid plastic used for IBC tote bottles, plastic drums, and many plastic pallets. Recyclable through resin recyclers as HDPE regrind.
Heat Treatment (HT): Heating wood packaging to at least 56°C for 30 continuous minutes through the whole profile, core included, to kill pests. One of the four ISPM-15 treatments, marked "HT" within the IPPC stamp.

I

IBC Cage: The galvanized steel frame that surrounds an IBC's plastic bottle, protects it and carries the weight when totes are stacked. It sits on a steel, plastic or composite pallet base. Under UN rules a plastic bottle in a cage is itself a composite IBC.
IBC Tote: An Intermediate Bulk Container — typically a 275- or 330-gallon HDPE bottle in a steel cage on a pallet, with a discharge valve. Used to ship and store liquids in bulk.
IBC Valve: The discharge valve at the bottom of an IBC, a ball or butterfly valve. The outlet is most often 2-inch NPT or 2-inch buttress thread; a 3-inch valve drains thick liquids faster. Match the thread to your hoses and fittings.
IPPC Mark: The "wheat stamp" applied to ISPM-15-compliant wood packaging, showing the IPPC symbol, country code, producer code, and treatment code: HT (heat treatment), DH (dielectric heating), MB (methyl bromide) or SF (sulphuryl fluoride).
ISPM-15: The international phytosanitary standard requiring solid-wood packaging used in international trade to be debarked, treated (HT, DH, MB or SF) and marked. Does not apply to processed wood such as plywood, OSB or veneer, wood 6 mm thick or less, or domestic-only shipments.

L

Lift Loops: The straps a forklift or hoist lifts a bulk bag by. Four loops, one at each corner, is standard; one- and two-loop bags hang from a single hook; cross-corner loops are sewn diagonally across the corners.
LTL (Less-Than-Truckload): Freight that doesn't fill a trailer, shipped alongside other shippers' loads and priced by weight, class, and distance. Economical for a few pallets; full truckload is cheaper per unit at volume.

N

NMFC / Freight Class: The National Motor Freight Classification system that assigns LTL freight a class (50–500) based on density, handling, stowability, and liability. Class drives the rate; a wrong description can trigger a costly reclass.
Nominal Size: The trade name for a board's cross-section, such as 2×4. The dried and planed board is smaller: a 2×4 measures 1-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches.

O

OCC: Old Corrugated Cardboard — used cardboard collected and baled for recycling. A traded commodity whose price swings with paper-mill demand.
Open-Head Drum: A drum with a fully removable top secured by a lever-lock ring, allowing access to solids, pastes, or viscous products. Also called an open-top drum.

P

Pallet Construction: How a pallet's top deck is held up. A stringer pallet runs three lengthwise beams between its decks; a block pallet stands on nine blocks. Block pallets take a pallet jack from all four sides, stringer pallets from the two ends only.
Pallet Position: One floor footprint for a pallet inside a trailer. A 53-foot dry van has 26 positions for 48×40 pallets loaded straight, or 30 turned sideways. Double-stacking doubles the pallet count, not the positions.
Pickup Truck: A light-duty pickup, often pulling a flatbed or gooseneck trailer (a hotshot load), used for small or urgent loads that do not justify a full-size truck.
Pressure Treated: Lumber forced full of preservative under pressure so it resists rot and insects outdoors or in ground contact. Pressure treatment is not an ISPM-15 treatment, and treated wood is not for food contact.
Previous Contents: What a used drum, IBC or bulk bag held before. It decides the container's next use: food-grade reuse needs food-safe prior contents, and a container that held a regulated chemical should come with that chemical's safety data sheet.

R

Rebottled IBC: A used IBC tote fitted with a brand-new HDPE inner bottle inside a reused, inspected cage — giving a like-new interior at less than the cost of a fully new tote.
Reconditioned IBC: A used IBC tote whose original bottle has been cleaned, pressure-tested, and inspected, with the cage and pallet repaired as needed. Can be food-grade when prior contents are documented.
Regrind: Plastic that has been ground from used products (pallets, drums, bottles) for remelting into new items. The recycled feedstock recovered from plastic packaging at end of life.
Remanufactured Pallet: A pallet built from the sound parts of broken pallets rather than repaired in place. One built from a mix of new and used parts, such as new stringers under recycled deckboards, is called a combo pallet. On Repackify listings the Combo condition means something else: a load that mixes Grade A and Grade B pallets.
Resin Type: The plastic a container is molded from. HDPE is the standard for drums and IBC bottles; polypropylene is stiffer and takes higher temperatures; LDPE is softer and more flexible. Check the resin against the chemical you will store.
Reusable Transport Packaging (RTP): Packaging designed for many trips — pallets, totes, bulk bins, dunnage — rather than single use. The category Repackify's marketplace centers on.
Reverse Logistics: The flow of goods and packaging back up the supply chain — returns, recovery, reconditioning, recycling — as opposed to outbound distribution.

S

Safety Factor: The ratio between the load a bulk bag held in testing and its rated safe working load. A 5:1 bag is rated for a single trip; a 6:1 bag is built for reuse when it is inspected between trips.
Skid: A pallet with only a top deck and no bottom deckboards, sitting on its stringers or feet. Cheaper and easier to drag, but less stable for racking and stacking.
Step Deck: A flatbed trailer with a lower rear deck, so a taller load stays under legal height limits without an oversize permit.
Stringer: The continuous lengthwise beam, solid or notched, that runs between the top and bottom decks of a stringer pallet and carries the load. A 48×40 GMA pallet has three. A pallet's grade hinges largely on whether its stringers are original or repaired.

T

Tight-Head Drum: Another name for a closed-head drum — a drum with a fixed top and bung openings, used for liquids.
Tongue and Groove: Panel edges milled so the tongue on one sheet locks into the groove of the next. Common on subfloor panels, where it keeps neighboring sheets flush without blocking underneath the seam.
Triple-Wall: Corrugated board with three fluted layers between four liners, the heaviest of the three standard constructions. Gaylords are also sold as 4-wall and 5-wall, but sellers count walls differently (some count fluted layers, some count every ply), so compare boxes on their ECT or burst rating rather than the wall count.

U

UN Marking: The stamped code certifying a container (IBC, drum) for regulated/hazmat service — encoding container type, material, packing group, capacity, test pressure, and year. Hazmat IBCs also require periodic retesting.

V

Virgin Resin: New, never-recycled plastic feedstock. Food-grade and spec-critical containers often require virgin resin, whereas reground material suits non-critical uses.

W

Wall Count: How many corrugated walls a gaylord's sides are built from. More walls add stacking strength and puncture resistance, but sellers count walls differently, so compare boxes on their ECT or burst rating when strength matters.
Wood Species: The tree the wood came from. Hardwoods such as oak are denser, stronger and heavier; softwoods such as Southern Yellow Pine are lighter and cheaper. Recycled and combo pallets often mix species in one load.