The Crew

Twelve humans. Three dogs. One coffee pot.

The team that actually does the sawing, driving, washing, and email-answering. Last names withheld out of habit — but everyone on this page is on the Graham Street lot most days.

The humans

Dale

Yard Manager

Former specialty-chemical plant supervisor. Runs triage, answers every email, makes the coffee. Dale founded the yard in 2017 with a borrowed flatbed and 48 totes from a Pineville blender. He still runs triage shifts twice a week because that is where the knowledge lives. His eye for cage fatigue is legendary — he can spot a hairline weld crack from six feet away. When he is not in the yard, he is answering email (usually before 7 AM).

Maribel

Rebottle Lead

Built the rebottling line in 2020 during the sanitizer shortage. Can hand-seat an HDPE bottle in under two minutes. Maribel came from a packaging plant in Gastonia and brought her knowledge of blow-mold tolerances with her. She trains every new hire on the rebottle station and has personally rebottled over 3,200 totes since the line opened.

Tre

Head Driver

Our senior drop-trailer driver and dispatch wrangler. Knows every loading dock in NC and SC. Tre has driven over 180,000 miles for the yard since 2019, all without a single incident. He is the architect of our matched-route system — the spreadsheet that pairs every outbound delivery with an inbound pickup. Before the yard, he drove for a regional LTL carrier for 11 years.

Sonya

Recondition / QA

Runs the pressure wash stations and the test bench. The final "yes" on every A-grade tote. Sonya has an almost supernatural sense of smell — she can detect residual solvents that pass everyone else. She was an HVAC tech before joining the yard and brought her plumbing and pressure-testing skills with her. She calibrates the test bench gauges monthly and maintains the wash-water reclamation system.

Marcus

Fab Shop Lead

Built approximately 900 rain barrels since 2023. Also the shop DJ. Marcus is a certified welder (AWS D1.1) who worked in structural steel before discovering that cutting totes into rain barrels was more fun. He designs most of our custom fab projects and has an Instagram-worthy portfolio of aquaponic rigs, cold-plunge tubs, and one memorable escape-room prop for a theater in NoDa.

Jayde

Inbound / Logistics

Coordinates pickups and receiving. Keeps the matched-route spreadsheet running. Jayde is the voice (well, email voice) of the buying program. She photographs and grades inbound loads, schedules pickups, and writes more emails per day than anyone else on the crew. She came from a logistics coordinator role at a food distributor and handles the complexity of routing three trailers across five states.

Ricardo

Recycling / Grinder

Runs the shredder and the grinder line. Certified scales-and-manifests guy. Ricardo operates the hydraulic shear, the HDPE granulator, and the baler. He is certified on industrial scales and maintains our material-tracking manifests. He takes the zero-landfill policy personally — every kilogram of material that leaves the grinder bay has a destination and a paper trail.

Hope

Finance / Customer Care

Cuts the checks, manages the email queue for non-yard questions. Hope handles AP, AR, payroll, and the customer emails that don't involve tote specs (pricing questions, delivery confirmations, fleet billing). She is the one who issues recycling certificates for ESG reports and formats them to match whatever framework the customer needs (GRI, CDP, SASB).

Beau

Driver

Drives the box truck. Known for neat load patterns. Beau handles the smaller deliveries and pickups — under 10 totes, local routes, single-unit deliveries to homeowners. His load patterns are geometrically perfect. He is also the crew member most likely to help a customer load totes onto a pickup truck on a Saturday morning.

Tam

Driver

Covers the Greenville and Columbia runs. Early riser. Tam starts his routes before 5 AM to beat I-85 traffic through Spartanburg. He handles the South Carolina and Georgia runs and knows the back-road shortcuts around every weigh station. He has been driving since he was 19 and treats every trailer like it is carrying glass.

Asa

Triage / General

Apprentice turned full crew. Can find anything in the yard. Asa came through the NoDa maker-space program where we sponsor welding training. He started as a weekend helper, learned triage grading from Dale, and is now one of the fastest graders on the team. He also maintains the yard inventory system — a combination of chalk marks, a whiteboard, and a spreadsheet that somehow works.

Wes

Apprentice

Youngest on the crew, fastest with a pressure washer. Wes is 20 and has more energy than the rest of the crew combined. He runs the pressure-wash stations alongside Sonya and is learning the reconditioning certification process. His goal is to eventually run his own reconditioning operation. We are teaching him everything we know, which is the best kind of apprenticeship.

The dogs

Kona

Senior Yard Dog

55 lb, mostly Lab. Greets every visitor. Naps under the triage bench.

Biscuit

Mid-Level Yard Dog

35 lb, mix. Runs a loop around the reconditioning rows every afternoon at 2.

Ramsey

Junior Yard Dog

Puppy. Eats pallet staples. We're working on it.

Hiring

We hire quiet, curious, hands-on people.

We're not always hiring, but when we are it's usually for drivers, fab-shop helpers, or triage assistants. Email jobs@charlotteibctotes.com if that sounds like you.

Send an email →

A day in the life of the yard

The yard opens at 7:30 AM. Dale is usually here by 6:45, answering emails and making coffee. By 7:30, the whole crew is on the lot. Here is how a typical day unfolds:

7:30 – 8:00 AM: Coffee and the daily huddle. Dale reviews inbound loads, outbound orders, and any special projects. Jayde reads the matched-route schedule. Marcus checks the fab-shop queue. Five minutes, standing up, no slides.
8:00 – 12:00 PM: Core work block. Triage crew grades and sorts inbound totes. Sonya and Wes run the wash stations. Maribel runs the rebottle line. Marcus and Asa work fab projects. Tre and Tam are on the road. Ricardo runs the grinder if there's recycling stock.
12:00 – 12:30 PM: Lunch. The crew eats together at the picnic table near the triage bay. The dogs eat whatever falls. Dale answers more email.
12:30 – 4:30 PM: Afternoon work block. Walk-in customers come through. Beau runs local deliveries. Hope processes invoices and cuts checks. Outbound orders are staged and photographed.
4:30 – 5:00 PM: Closedown. Equipment powered off, wash stations drained, yard secured. Dale does a final email pass. Dogs get their evening walk around the lot.

What we look for in new hires

Hands-on skills: Welding, plumbing, forklift operation, CDL, warehouse experience — any of these help. We can teach the specifics of IBC work; we can't teach you to be comfortable with tools.
Curiosity: The crew members who thrive here are the ones who ask "why does this tote look different?" and "what if we tried it this way?" We run on continuous improvement, not on procedures manuals.
Reliability: Twelve people, no backup shifts, no temp staff. If you're not here, someone else covers, and that someone has their own work. Show up, on time, every day.
Comfort with ambiguity: No two days are the same. An inbound load might be 40 pristine food-grade totes, or it might be 200 beat-up chemical containers with unknown contents. We figure it out together.
Alignment with the mission: If you think the landfill is an acceptable destination for a reusable container, this probably isn't the right yard for you.

Benefits and working conditions

Full-time positions with competitive pay for Charlotte-area industrial work
Health insurance (after 90 days) — we participate in a small-group plan
Simple IRA retirement match (3%)
Paid holidays (7) and accrued PTO (10 days starting, increasing with tenure)
Free coffee (always), free totes for personal projects (within reason), and three friendly yard dogs
Outdoor work in all seasons — we provide shade, water, and fans in summer; heaters in the triage bay in winter
Cross-training on every station. Nobody does just one job forever.