Trans Americas Trading Company: North America's Premier Textile Recycler and Vintage Clothing Wholesaler

Company overview

Trans-Americas Trading Company has been sorting second-hand clothing at 50 Carol Street, Clifton, New Jersey 07014 since 1942. That makes it the oldest house in this directory by a wide margin, now in its third generation. The plant sits less than twenty minutes from New York City, which matters more than it sounds: the collections feeding the line come out of one of the world's largest and most fashion-driven clothing populations.

The numbers are published in detail. Eighty-five employees sort 70,000 lb (31,800 kg) a day, which is 35 tons daily and around 16.8 million lb (7.6 million kg) a year, in a 65,000 sq ft plant on a three-acre site. The output is split into more than 300 separate grades of clothing, wipers and fibre. Contact is (973) 778-4611, fax (973) 778-4622 and [email protected], and the plant can be visited by appointment.

The wider group covers Kent Trans-Americas Clothing Corp, Trans-Americas Trading Co., Trans-Americas FSC and Trans-Americas Textile Recycling Co., all in the buying, processing and sale of post-consumer textile waste.

45% wearable, and why that number now settles an argument

Trans-Americas states plainly that 45% of its total sort is classified as usable to wear. Read on its own that is a useful disclosure. Read next to the other figures in this directory it is something better.

• A Belgian sorter reports that only 40% of original clothing is suitable for reuse as clothing.
• A Dutch collector reports 50% going on as second-hand clothing.
• Trans-Americas, on a different continent with a different waste stream, reports 45%.

Three independent houses, three countries, one narrow band. That is no longer one company's marketing; it is a planning number. If you buy unsorted material, budget on roughly two kilos in five being sellable as clothing, and treat any supplier who implies far more as either measuring something else or selling you something already picked over. Add the figure a Birmingham exporter publishes, that cream is around 5% of second-hand clothing, and you have the shape of the whole cascade: a thin premium layer at the top, a little under half wearable in total, and the rest going to wipers, fibre and waste.

Everything is graded in-house

One sentence on the export page deserves attention: no finished goods are purchased from outside vendors. Everything Trans-Americas sells, it graded itself, and it guarantees all of it.

That is a different animal from a trader who consolidates, or from a house that collects but sends the material out to partner sorters. Neither of those models is wrong, and both appear elsewhere in this directory for good reasons. But single-house processing has one concrete advantage that is easy to overlook until something goes wrong: when a bale does not match its grade, there is exactly one party responsible and exactly one standard to argue about. In a chain with a partner sorter, a complaint travels, and standards drift at the joins.

The company also gives away the practical corollary for free on its first-time buyer page: visit any company you plan to work with, and check they have a systematic method of grading. Anyone comparing second-hand clothing suppliers is being told by a house that has done this since 1942 that the site visit is the test.

The container arithmetic, explained by someone who says why

Bales are packed to order at 100 lb (45 kg), 180 lb (82 kg) and up to 1,000 lb (450 kg). Loading is given exactly: 540 bales of 100 lb in a 40-foot high cube, which is 54,000 lb, and 250 bales in a 20-foot, which is 25,000 lb.

Now note the reason attached to it, because nobody else in this directory says it out loud: the load cannot exceed over-the-road limits. That single clause explains the spread you see across exporters. Other houses in this catalogue quote 56,000, 57,000 and 60,000 lb for the same 40-foot box. The container is not the binding constraint; the truck at each end is. A box that is legal on the water can be over the axle limit on the road at destination, and the party who discovers that at the port pays for it.

So the useful question to any exporter is not just how many kilos fit, but what road limit they are packing to and whose limit it is, yours or theirs. A supplier who has already asked which country the container is landing in is doing your homework for you.

Freight and insurance, which almost nobody else mentions

Trans-Americas will arrange port-to-port freight and pass on the rate it receives, and as a large-volume shipper it often gets better rates than a small buyer can. More unusually, it offers marine F.P.A. insurance covering 110% of the container's value against complete loss and non-delivery.

Take the detail seriously and read the term. F.P.A. is Free of Particular Average: it covers the container being lost or never arriving, not water damage to part of the load. That is exactly the cover most first-time importers assume they have and do not, and the distinction only becomes visible when a claim is refused. The 110% is standard practice, adding a margin over invoice value for freight and the cost of being without the goods. Whether or not you buy here, ask every supplier what their quoted insurance actually covers, and get the term in writing rather than the word "insured".

Vintage, wipers and the rest of the cascade

Over 10,000 sq ft of the plant is given to vintage and fashion, pre-sorted by experienced staff for boutiques, retro stores and the film industry. That line is a direct consequence of the catchment: a plant drawing on New York's wardrobes finds material a suburban collection route never will. Below the wearable grades sit the wiping rag and fibre lines, and the same reasoning applies here as elsewhere in this directory, that a house earning money at every step down the cascade has less reason to push the unsellable share into your bale.

On the selling side the company runs charity fundraising and municipal textile recycling programmes, which is where the daily 35 tons comes from. The account of how sorting houses handle incoming material explains what happens between those two ends, and the standard grade vocabulary is what a wholesale buyer needs before picking from a list of three hundred.

Two honest notes. The website carries a copyright line ending in 2020, so treat the figures as the last published position rather than today's, and confirm current volumes directly. And the facility page contains an arithmetic slip, giving the weekly total as 179 kg where it should read about 159,000 kg; the daily and annual figures are internally consistent, so this is a typing error rather than a claim to worry about.

Frequently asked questions

How long has Trans-Americas been trading?

Since 1942, which makes it the oldest company in this directory, now run by the third generation from Clifton, New Jersey.

How much does the plant process?

70,000 lb or 31,800 kg a day, about 35 tons, adding up to some 16.8 million lb or 7.6 million kg a year across a 65,000 sq ft facility.

What share of the material is wearable?

The company states that 45% of its total sort is classified as usable to wear, which sits between the 40% and 50% published by European houses in this directory.

How many bales fit in a container?

540 bales of 100 lb in a 40-foot high cube, giving 54,000 lb, and 250 bales in a 20-foot, giving 25,000 lb, with the limit set by over-the-road weight rules rather than by space.

Does the company arrange freight and insurance?

Yes. It quotes port-to-port freight at the rate it receives and can supply marine F.P.A. insurance covering 110% of the container value against complete loss and non-delivery.