welcome to a scrap life a podcast solely focus on the hustlers Grinders operators and business owners who live and breathe the scrap metal industry every day we are the original recyclers no suits required just guts and hard work here is your host Brett Eckhart ah here we go another episode of a scrap life I got uh my buddy Tom Parker here down in uh Fort Worth Texas All American tire recyclers I know you guys are probably thinking hey man I thought this was a scrap metal recycling podcast but you know what man I think most everybody in the scrap industry deals with tires at one point or another and I don’t care if you’re an auto salvage or a scrap side um you’re you’re fighting a tire battle um so I started looking into how I could get into the tire recycling business over here in Idaho I made a post on LinkedIn and I said hey I’m thinking about building the entire processing facility anybody have any you know you know thoughts ideas and Tom reached out to me so we hit it off he said man come check it out come

see what I got and started shooting and I think we kind of became fast friends in the fact that we both saw eye to eye on a lot of stuff so Tom thanks for taking the time out man and uh welcome to the podcast good deal I’m excited I think there’s a lot going on in the recycling business and I know you primarily deal with steel and a lot of a lot of stuff’s changing so uh with the technology of these recycling machines and the ability to remove all this tire wire I think the industry is at some point if not sooner than later are going to be one you know if you’re in the scrap business and and you guys are already receiving tires in and you have the opportunity to remove the steel out I think as uh business owners we’re always looking for another opportunity so I think you know what got me into the tire business so ultimately I was uh we had a landfill kind of outside the city of Boise um Mountain Home that was receiving tires for a long time and the tiffies were pretty reasonable out

there and we were you know sending tires out there and everybody in the general area was sending tires out there um and it was a privately owned landfill and they kept raising the price raising the price and then I think the landfill sold and I got so all to a new group of individuals and then one day we went to take a little tires out there and they were like yeah that’ll be it was like 400 a ton to tip time and I was like and I had a full end dump of them you know and I was like 400 a ton they’re like yeah that’s the next four forty five hundred dollars four four grand and I was like and and like my dispatch guy called me and goes hey they want like five thousand dollars to to offload that end of the tires and I was like you gotta be kidding me man and he’s like no and so I was like I mean I was already committed at that point I don’t have a place for I’m like all right so I’m like dump it it is what it is so

then I’m like okay I’m gonna figure out a new plan how to deal with these tires and so I start stockpiling them I start stockpiling and then you know a year goes by and you know because we we buy a lot of scrap like trucks and whatever else and they end up with like you know semi tires and some tractor tires and some Pastor car tires you just kind of inherently end up with them and uh and then I just had no place to go with them and I was like trying to figure out different options where to take them how to do this how to do that and uh I was contemplating like what were my options and I finally I was like started making a business plan with this guy that there’s a couple guys I knew um super smart guys and we were kind of going to put a business together and we just kind of decided to hold off and finally one day I met Craig Hunter and and I was like dude I and who came from the compost business and I was like hey man I got an

idea I’ve been kind of you know smoking on for a while like I just smoked these ideas before the fire really starts and then I’m like oh okay let’s go and uh and so that’s how the time that’s how I got an entire business I got tired of trying to figure out how to do it I’m just going to do it myself so that’s how I got into it why don’t you give me a little background about how you got into the entire business huh not by choice by any means but uh you know at that time uh my wife’s a nurse and I was doing some medical sales what year man this was 2015. okay and uh it was just a rough rough time for sales trying to find these medical sales jobs and uh I had a buddy that had a mechanic shop and I was sitting at home and looking for jobs and he asked if I could go help him in his mechanic shop and I went out there and uh tried to help him kind of make his business a little more profitable and seeing what we could do

together to come up with some solutions to increase his Revenue but one of the one of the issues he added just his place was just covered in tires and it’s kind of crazy how this this started because it was one of those things you hear people talk about you’re like well if there’s a need and that’s kind of how it started I didn’t go there thinking about tires or anything along those lines but I did know when I went in there that he had tires everywhere it looked like and um you’re not gonna have a successful business if you have customers coming in looking at your mess right so yeah something as simple as that of like let’s get this place cleaned up it’s kind of how it started I just didn’t know that when I started making phone calls I uh you know there wasn’t really anybody around that would come pick up these tires so I’m kind of like you in fact you know if I can’t find someone to help me come up with a solution I’ll I’ll make one myself so I found a place I could take him to

I got a box truck and uh I loaded up you know as many as I could put in this box truck and it was only probably a quarter of the way full and I figured as long as I’m gonna drive spend the gas money to drive all the way to the the dump that every tire shop I passed I would stop and see if I could pick up tires uh so as The Story Goes I stopped at the first place and you know I asked him if I could pick up tires and they want to know how much I told them a dollar and the guy got so excited he called three people over there and they started loading his minion as they could we got about three quarters of the way full I started driving a little more down the road I’m thinking man this guy was too excited like I didn’t know where the market would be or anything but yeah I pulled over again I’d say hey do you have any extra tires I can take off your hands for you he goes how much that’s a dollar fifty he was

still pretty excited we loaded him up and we’re full and that’s kind of how we started um uh I delivered them and then that night I went home to my wife and I said hey um I have a business idea I’m going to sit down I had already as soon as I got home I was running numbers you know she was a nurse working seven to seven so I’m home around five I’m feeding the kids and got them taken care of and just start running numbers and and multiplying you know adding box trucks and what if we did this and and uh that that’s kind of how it started uh initially and when my wife got home I said well what do you think about this tire thing and you know being uh with nursing backgrounds and medical sales yeah kind of got her input and she goes well it’s probably we’ll bring in more Revenue you know more than sitting at home like my wife looks at me like your eyes cross like really he’s pretty oh we see pretty open to it no no she was open to it and it’s good

uh and you know it’s a big difference from when you um when you take a little bitty box truck and throw in you know 75 tires to you know our first box truck we ended up buying was 26 foot and that’s kind of where we started I mean we jumped right in she’s like let’s let’s do it uh pulled money out of the 401K to put it down payment came up with a business name and and off we went man when you start loading 400 tires from 75 tires yeah like week one I was ready to throw in the towel but you know you’re committed you teach your kids hey you’re going to start softball season or basketball and you we don’t stop halfway through that’s not how it works man once you commit to the team you’re gonna come in and I mine was my family so I was committed to seeing this through but my driving force was just them and kind of like you know I’ll just do this until I find something else right kind of thing uh-huh and that’s usually how you start in like one of these

industries like scrap or tires or whatever it’s like well this is like a good you know stop Gap like oh this kind of help and I’ll get this going and it’ll be you know and then I’ll go on and do something then like once it gets in your blood man you’re like and you get like the taste of I don’t know it’s especially on your end like that’s a straight up entrepreneurial like Spirit to like just start from scratch and be like it like I’m going and and I’m gonna go hard yeah and when you win right well yeah once you have the truck and you have that initial investment we had to make the payment I couldn’t quit and then now I’m not bringing any money in and and I have a truck payment kind of thing so that that never really was an option nor has it ever been but you know when you work for the man your whole life and and you have the benefits and that kind of comfort uh there’s something to be said about that but once you get a taste of kind of controlling your own

destiny and the effort that you put in you see the rewards coming out of it yeah uh you know you get a taste it’s like take you know get a little taste of that blood and you’re hooked right you know there’s a lot of rough times but the good ones feel so good that that’s for me personally that’s what drives me I I don’t look back I mean the bad times are the learning lessons the good times are what we got to remember to keep pushing us forward and that’s kind of what works for me but and part of it man too is I want us I want my kids to see like all the options right like you know I think in school they’re going to teach you you know what the basics and kind of you know then we have a good still have a pretty good Public public school system over here in Idaho I feel pretty confident about it and maybe some other states that don’t you know don’t love it I mean my kids go to public school my wife’s a public school teacher so maybe that’s why like

I have a little more faith in it because I’m like a little closer to it than some but you know what the school’s not teaching these kids in my opinion the parents need to be picking up the slack and and teaching them how to do things right teaching them how to fend for themselves teaching them how you know what the opportunities are that are out there if you just pick something that you can you know kind of get behind and put some time and effort energy into it and create your own destiny so my one of my biggest driving forces is my kids seeing me like do stuff right and like take some risk and work my ass off and put the hours in and I think it sounds like from your standpoint like that’s there’s there’s a lot of similarities there with you and your family and your kids right yeah and my wife is from North Dakota and she grew up on an Indian Reservation she’s Native American and I grew up in San Antonio Texas with a single parent mom so we were we were uh not a lot of money

um you know I played football I played Sports uh you know on the reservation there’s really not a whole lot going on there at all so I don’t yeah outside of I think uh in my wife’s family she was the only one to graduate college um but just two different uh uh cultures that we both grew up in but um we both had to earn our way nothing nothing was given to us and so when it came down to to this business ownership aspect um I didn’t know how I was gonna do it it looked good on paper it looked you know you can always just write in the numbers and if we get this and we do this uh you know the outcome is going to be with this but we’re going on year seven and I don’t know that anything has ever gone as planned but I will tell you the the experience of getting to where we’re at right now you can’t always foresee everything but the experience has allowed me to kind of plan ahead I guess the the the best analogy is you know when you first have kids

uh you know the the kids start to walk and then then the the parents have to you know lift everything off the ground a little higher and then they knock the first glass off the counter thinking business as you get more experience you know there’s always some good and bad ones but but you learn and that’s that’s part of it so now I can move the glass before my kid knocks it over in terms of business I can kind of foresee what’s coming but uh when we first started out there was just one thing after another some of it which um we’ve probably gone out of business or almost gone out of business at least two or three times Mike well my experience that you’re getting you can’t buy that experience like in a textbook you can’t buy that in college you can’t buy that you know and and and then the experience in the rearview mirror taught you how to deal with the one in the front windshield that’s coming so you have that I heard that saying like you’ve you’ve up to this point you’ve survived 100 of all your bad worst

days right so it’s like you feel like you kind of build like a callousness to those experiences of almost going out of business or whatever that bill slacker looks like to where it’s like you know you’re the shell on your back gets another layer right and you’re like okay like I and what what you’re alluding to is just that experience alone in the past and building it from scratch is is kind of giving you the I say it kind of gives you the uh the willingness or gives me the like confidence that I’m like it like I’m gonna try like I’m gonna go hard and at this and or this because I feel like I could I’ve survived that I could probably survive the next one right yeah there’s been it’s funny when when we’ve had something catastrophic uh it can be anything from a trailer uh falling on the ground or we had a end dump that flipped over on its side and I think the end up when it flipped over I I think I cried a little bit and it’s just it initially when we first had stuff you know you’re

like man we’ve worked so hard for these small wins and when something catastrophic well not catastrophic but something big happens like that my first instinct used to just be upset and just kind of work through it and and you know and then it would take a day or so to recover like to mentally get back to where I need to be and now it’s so funny this is probably about a year ago whatever we had something where uh one of the trailers slid off it was one of our new walk-in floors and it and it hit the ground and broke the landing gear and flipped on its on its side and and I came in and my manager at the time thought I was going to flip out and you know those days have passed I now it’s like okay here’s the issue let’s thank God no one was hurt obviously and and uh let’s get it fixed and come up with a plan so this doesn’t ever happen again and you know our safety book and all our uh we were looking at all the docs uh in our our computer today

and I was looking at some of these manuals and stuff that we’ve come up with over the years it’s just been crazy when you start from nothing everything’s coming like it’s it’s almost fun it’s kind of looking at like an old photo album like to look back at like how you used to have your hair when you’re 13. you know like what the how did I think that that was cool or what you know what I mean it’s like I look I kind of liken it to that where you if you look back at your old safety manuals or your old like business plans or like your pictures of when you started doing something you thought that was like the like that was the way to do it you know and then you look back and you’re like oh man I had a lot still to learn you know but like that’s the like some of the most fun things about building a business um yeah and to what you’re to your point and I watched my grandfather you know I think he died like early 70s um three heart attacks um smoked cigarettes

like a chimney um but the stress I think the stress of you know him starting businesses and and trying to grow in family and I think as as bad as smoking cigarettes is for you I genuinely think that the stress if you allow it to eat you up is far worse than you know smoking cigarettes or whatever and and if you if you got that callousness if you can establish that early and you can establish establish that like hey shit’s gonna happen as long as it doesn’t you know put the business out of business I can work my way through it it’s not ideal it’s not it wasn’t it wasn’t on the pro forma in that way but it if you can find a way to work through that stuff it mentally and not allow it to get you two down physically or screw with you man I think you got a real fighting chance any industry whether it’s scrap tires uh you know Bakery whatever it is like I think you have to be able to figure out how to deal with that yeah and it’s the uh the Journey’s been pretty amazing

you know we we started with just you know the box truck and that’s why now that’s where I’m gonna go box truck to give me the evolution like because I saw the pictures in your office and it’s so cool so we only started I’ll just kind of walk you through some these are kind of fun stories too so we started with a box truck and uh the place we were taking there was only two people shredding tires at the time in our area one was the Nationwide Goliath guy that that is in every state and then the local guy and uh um while we were there unloading and by the way my wife uh would work weekends and we would load tires Monday through Friday until we grew the business where we could hire two people to do it so why we were unloading our tires we saw a semi truck go by and I asked the guy I said what’s you know what’s that semi truck doing oh those are for really big customers they filled a semi truck and then we have a driver go out and pick it up and bring

it back so you know I couldn’t I couldn’t unload the truck fast enough I’m like honey I got to go home and do the math because I’m so tired of loading this there’s gonna so I went home and man I was so excited that thing holds a thousand tires and we we’re running around with two people anyway it’s like I did the math and uh and it it’s it was so much better to do the semi thing so next thing you know my wife and I are studying the book and both actually I’m embarrassed to say this but she got her CDL before me she got her CDL license we uh uh got money for a semi truck and we started buying trailers and we just started rolling rolling in so now we have over 120 trailers um and we were just still taking our our scrap to this guy well the Big Bear that does that was basically the biggest game in town came in and bought uh the only place that we really had to to take our our uh the small business was bought out so overnight um this is the

first time we I thought we were going to go out of business overnight uh they doubled our price basically to try to squeeze us out of the game yeah that that’s where you have one of those you know and what what do I do well giving up is not an option I didn’t really know how to proceed after this but um I at that time I think we were doing around 2 000 tires a day and I found yeah I found a place to take some whole tires and we were gonna be breaking even for a little bit and I found a uh you can appreciate this a aluminum can Shredder it looks like a normal tire shredder probably the same shred as you guys used yeah yeah and but it was made for aluminum cans and it sits probably about four feet off the ground uh and and it came out of Chicago it’s probably 40 years old or something a little 20 horsepower motors and I asked the guy if he thought it would do a tire he goes oh yeah it’ll you know shred tires so my option was go out

of business or start with an aluminum can Shredder so that’s what we did we got aluminum can Shredder and put it right I learned how to weld and not probably very well but anyways we made it work and it would do one tire at a time and we would do 2 000 tires a day we would shred our tires and that’s we took them to the landfill and that saved us uh uh save the business how many tires could you shred in it like 10 hour day passenger tires they would it would it would do about two thousand and and we had to stand on top of the Shredder and uh and one tire one by one let them fall in and go through and it would fall into that that end dump that I told you that flipped over earlier into that end dump that we ended up leasing um but that that little can starter was shred two thousand tires a day one by one one at a time yeah and then uh in order to feed the tires into it I found some old uh post office belts that were made

for the post office system uh and were able to rig those up and make it work it’s just one of those things perseverance and and that was our first Shredder that kept us alive so you know in hindsight I guess that was a blessing because today I probably would still be taking to that guy taking my my tires right or my whole tires yeah and because of the Big Bear trying to squeeze out competition they created another Bear right now now I’m out here uh you know I’m the only game in town outside of this other guy so it kind of It kind of blew up because they had a monopoly on the market so they started increasing the prices and it just created opportunity for me to make you know a decent profit and and continue to grow so I had I had somebody ask me a while back they said you know and this was at the the scrap Expo in uh Louisville and I was doing a like a a talk on stage and this guy stood up and they like took questions from the audience and he said you know

basically the question was you know how do you know how will you know small businesses you know how how are they going to stay competitive and you know the industry is consolidating you know in the scrap industry you know the bigger getting bigger you know they’re buying out 10 20 yards at a time how does the little guy stay competitive and I heard George Adams say it on his speech you know at the Israel conference in Mars but he’s like there will always be room for the little guy because he’s he’s more Nimble he can move quicker he doesn’t take as much to he doesn’t require as much food to eat and he’ll be able to weather the storm if he runs a decent you know runs a decent business but he’s like if you ever think that there’s just going to be so much consolidation that they’re just going to put all these little guys out of business he’s like there there will be a few that you know that obviously just attrition right but in my opinion I’m like this I believe it wholeheartedly the small business operator that can stay Nimble

and work through some of these pain points you know that are going to happen in the consolidation you will move your ability to move quick and your ability to like make a decision and be like boom that’s the direction we’re going right now you will always be competitive and then if you can find a way to scale it while you’re doing it which is exactly what you did is you found a way to scale while still staying Nimble enough to compete with those with the big bear in the room saying okay like you’re going to be bigger than me you might be able to you know take you lower your tip fees cheaper than me for a while but as soon as I get the ability to to get to a certain size and compete on that end now I’ve taken away your biggest strategic Advantage which is price because I’m going to take care of every single customer like they’re my best friend and you can’t do that nor do you will you or you don’t have that maybe the motivation or the capability so now I’ve got customer service that I’m winning

at and I’ve and I’ve willed myself to get big enough to be competitive on the price or the tip fee or whatever and then it’s game on like you just motivated or created you know a a real competitor yep and you know I think there’s always been customers as we’ve been growing there’s always been and and I’ll I’ll throw a name out there there’s a Southern Tire Mart that’s in our our area I’m sure they’re all over the South and there’s high volume customers there and I and I know that there’s some people that are very ambitious and like I want that guy because he’s high volume and as a business owner you got to know when your time is when you can handle them so you don’t uh you know you don’t want to over promise and under deliver number one number two I find one thing that we’ve never ever done when I started off I would go to people and there were guys out there that said oh Bob picks it up for a dollar Oh Billy picks it up for 95 cents and I’ve never been there we started off

at a dollar 25 once I figured out the market we we jumped up to 1.75 but but the moral of the story is there’s lots of stuff that you can’t foresee and I think people get lazy and and it’s easy to go out and uh you know pick it up for a dollar you’ll get everybody I had a sales guy I hired this is not too long ago and he went out he said I picked up five accounts I said well how much did you pick them up I mean well that’s congratulations yeah what how much are we charging he goes a dollar I said well you didn’t sell anything I couldn’t sit behind the desk and made some phone calls you know that’s not selling I think as small business people maybe we get tired or or that we lose some drive but you know I people think that you’ve got to get in this bidding war I don’t care if the bear or my competitor down the street now Picks Them Up For a Dollar it’s just not my business model I’m going to continue to find those customers it takes

a little more work that want the service want you know someone that’s going to show up and and count the tires and it’s the Count’s going to be the right count we’re not going to add on some make-believe tires that we’re going to charge you for that we’re not actually picking up we operate with integrity and a service level that that is you can call me and I’ll be there tomorrow yeah but you’re not going to call me I’ll be there tomorrow for a dollar it’s just that’s how you win I mean that’s how you that’s how small business competes with the conglomerates like and I tell people like you can’t be the the cheapest or in our price and let’s say on the scrap side the highest price and have customer service like I’m like you see all the roll-offs and the trucks and the and everything else like it all costs money not to mention all the individual visuals we have driving it and operating on the back end like that all costs money and I wanna I have I’m gonna pay our people well I’m gonna have nice equipment

that costs even more but but one thing you can’t beat me at is customer service you beat me on price I mean you’re gonna have a higher price than me or you’re gonna have a lower price than me on on your on your end but at the end of the day if you can beat me on service then and on price then you got something figured out that I don’t you know because but but the key is and I think going back to it realistically is if you can get the volume to then ratchet up you know on the commodity side you can get a certain amount of volume and now you can compete on both because you’ve already established with internally what your expectations are for your people with their customers right I believe I’ve established that and I said I’m not in the scrap business I’m on the trucking business I’m not in the pipe business I’m in the customer service business and then whatever comes along with it if I win on that business I’m a customer service side the rest of them I’ll figure it out it might take me

a little more time but I’ll figure out the business side of of one of a pipe or of scrap but yeah once I know the customer service I know what that’s going to take and I think that’s like even in your situation I mean that you’re you’re basically laying the same Foundation Nation saying I’ll get there size wise but you know I’m gonna beat you all day and twice on Sunday on the customer service side yeah the other the other thing too you know when when you have a wife who has been in nursing for a while uh she was tired she was tired of uh when can I quit my job when can I quit my job and the other thing as a small business especially in our Market it was just and this may be the same thing for you and your family as well but you know I I was telling her like do you want to uh you know struggle for a long to quit your job today and struggle or continue to see if you could work another year and we can just take the money that the business

is making and roll it back in to grow you know and the same thing even today we still pay ourselves a salary and you know we’ve gotten here because when we have the opportunity to go buy a fancy car or or go buy you know a bigger house or or or do those things our first priority is to put it back in the business and and make our business better make our employees better and and even to this day we still we still push that you know we don’t go back and look at uh the easy way like you know a dollar a tire oh well let’s just charge five dollars a tire and we can get better benefits for the employees it’s what what can we do better can we can we uh pull the steel out of the the rubber can we buy a new piece of equipment to make more Revenue instead of landfilling on the back end uh I still have plans even today for next year and the year after that on how we’re going to create additional Revenue not by increasing the prices to the customers but what

can we do on the back end with the product we’re receiving can we make a different product can we do crumb rubber can we do tire derived fuel can we you know can we be more cost efficient on this side and then then I can basically keep my pricing where it needs to be and be able to extract more revenue on the back side yep yep so either you told me this the other day and I’ve been to your facility and um because I went and visited here what probably two months ago now it feels like um and you run a tight operations clean it’s it’s done the right way and just like you said and I think you probably got that like you said when you went to your buddies um you probably already had that built into you you went to your buddies play his mechanic shop and you’re like dude let’s clean this place up like let’s get it like the way it should be because I kind of feel like that’s how I am and I get that from my dad my dad is probably even more um anal about

cleanliness than than I am um you know he’s always like it and needs to be right I mean I think he’d wash those semi trucks every day if he could you know but I mean and just everything was swept and tidy and and I’ve tried to carry on that that tradition because that messed us the way he taught me um but I as one thing I I do appreciate about your facility but you’re telling me here today that you were was it was the first company in in the Dallas area to uh produce tdf so so we are the in north Texas to do the tddf stuff um there was uh some companies doing like a three inch chip that’s where the steel is still in there and those are the guys that got bought out we are the first company to do the one inch minus chip in other words we are the next level is taking the wire out and actually selling the wire and then making a a wire free product so yeah we were one of the first ones to do that um and which is crazy because there’s a

billion dollar company in my backyard yeah and uh and uh January 30th we have our new equipment coming in and we will be making Chrome rubber and guys we’re going to be one of the first you know leading the way Mr small business over here leading the way it’s just you know my goal is to make this company the the best that it can be for our customers and my employees as well and and that’s what’s important to me and back to the keeping the shop clean like I take a lot of pride in this this has been the uh hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is build this company and and I take a lot of pride in it and that’s probably your dad too with with his company and why he washed the the trucks and stuff and you know I I want my employees to have as much pride as I do you know it’s always going to be a tough job right my dad said you know it’s uh it they call it work for a reason if it wasn’t working they call it vacation right so yeah

you know it’s always going to be work here but you know take some pride if you got to be here you know do your best and I’m gonna do my best as a as an owner to make sure that I provide the the best for you as much as I can you know as we continue to grow things are going to continue to get better but it takes all of us working together so if you’re going to be a street sweeper be the god best goddamn street sweeper out there right if you’re going to be the guy feeding the tires be the best I mean just be the best I was showing my my son I was I took him to school this morning and my youngest boy and I said hey I saw this video um and I thought of you and and it basically it was like in it and it was said the great players never get tired right like I don’t have to have a conversation with you about energy like I’m gonna work I can work on skills with you like and it was and it was that Geno

was it the guy that’s the the female the basketball coach for uh right who’s won all these national championships and he’s like there’s a reason why you’re here because you’re you’re you’re you’re supposed to be great right so and and I played my son you know I’m the coach and he’s he’s our best player and I played him every freaking bit of the game and I the only time I pulled the Mouse when he fouled out in the first game by the way dude you got to come out he’s like I’m like dude you fouled out like I have no choice right but I’m like but he never he never stopped right I’m like I don’t ever have to have the conversation with of energy right and I feel like as a business owner it’s your job to to be that guy right like I don’t need to if you’re if you want to run a real business you want to be good at it and you want to build it and you want to grow and you want to I shouldn’t have to have a conversation with you about energy to get to

do right you should just be like so bought in and so like ready to you know ready to go that it’s the energy isn’t that it’s like okay how but now we can have a conversation of how can we tweak this or how can we do this like the skill side always is getting better right and it’s the same thing when I was when I was telling him this morning I was like even Michael Jordan Kobe Bryant like those guys still showed up three hours before practice not because they weren’t great because they were working on their skills the energy is always there it’s just I’m trying to get I’m trying to sharpen the knife every day I want to be the sharpest it can possibly be but it’s still a goddamn knife and the sharper I get it the easier it cuts the and it’s the same concept and I think in you you know epitomize that is hey I’m I’m the Energy’s there like and I’m but I’m gonna build it you know and and I expect you to have energy too maybe you ain’t gonna have the same as me but

I still expect you to bring it every day you know bring what you got be the best you can be and absolutely that’s probably what attracted me you know to there’s one thing for you to reach out and I want to I want to touch on that here in a minute but like one reason that I had a ton of respect for you is you told me your story and how it started and what happened and kind of how you got to where you got and just a guy that knows what it takes to do all that you know it’s easy to walk into a facility and you have some equipment you got a nice facility and an office building whatever you’d be like oh it must be nice you know and then for anybody that’s ever had to build that from scratch to sit back and be like I know what it took to get from A to Z and that’s a it’s a ton of work like I know I that’s kind of what drew me in and said yeah I got I I gotta get this guy on here he’s a

he’s a true like Scrappy ass individual who like so I just knew man but I want to get I want to touch on one more thing and I’ll and I’ll I’ll let you go but it’s super important to me and I’ve kind of been preaching it for a while is I put a post on LinkedIn and said hey I want to build a tire recycling facility in the state of Idaho and you know a couple people had you know oh that’s great or you know you know keep going or whatever but you reached out to me and you and you didn’t know me from Adam you know we never talked we never exchanged you know messages and you reached out to me like cold and said hey I’ve seen your stuff on LinkedIn I mean this is kind of a synopsis but and come out here to come out to Idaho and we kind of talked briefly on the phone or come out take your ass out to Texas from Idaho and come see what see what we’re doing I’ll show you anything you want to know and that resonates with me because I’ve

had a pretty open door policy on the scrap side people have hit me up out of all from all walks and say man explain this to me explain that to me so when you did that for me I was like all right done so I got with Craig and we booked our tickets and um and flew out to Texas but what what makes you soak I mean is it a level of confidence or what made makes it makes you such an open book because I know what it is I know what it is my answer is but what what what’s what’s it for you so I would look up your stuff on LinkedIn and see some of your posts and I remember making a comment before any of this before you’re gonna uh before I reached out to you but um and I told my wife uh you know this guy Brett like I don’t you know he he says what he wants and uh and so I can appreciate that about you and um and I’ve kind of admired that and I kind of looked up to you so I don’t want to

sound kind of creepy or weird but I’m like hey this you know this guy runs a business I didn’t know how big it was scrap business and he says what he wants and he’s very confident and uh you know he cares about his family and he sounds like he works his ass off and so when I when I saw your uh the post I was just thinking to myself and I I again I don’t know how the scrap business is and I don’t want to bad mouth anybody in any industry but uh in the tire world it is there’s a lot of shady uh people that don’t want to work for stuff and will take advantage and and just work you over and it was such a rough road uh as I’m sure it’s with any small business and we have been really really blessed and again we’ve worked our asses off but um one thing that resonated with me is that your dad I guess he sold half of his business yeah so when I I saw the story about your dad you know giving up half his business you know resonates with

me because it’s just when you work so hard for something and and you’re in a rough spot and and you ask someone for help and the help that you get is going to cost up half of your company you know that that that’s a tough pill to swallow but you know when it comes down to your family and keeping your business going you know you’ll do anything even if it means giving up half of it uh to get you to the next step right you know so when I when I saw that from you I’m like let me help this guy it’s not gonna cost me anything you know maybe I can help him avoid a mistake or or a bad decision as he’s trying to grow his business and and take it to the next level so um that’s why I reached out to you and and I just wouldn’t want anybody to you know take advantage of someone that’s trying to to better themselves and better their employees and their family and and go somewhere so you know that’s why I kind of went out of my way to reach out to

you I didn’t really know if you had one employee or 50 employees or the size of your business I just saw someone in need and that that’s always been my nature to go out and help people so well that’s why I think that’s that for me like when you said that like that’s in your nature like that’s not and there’s that’s not inherent you didn’t thing that’s always been in you like you’re probably you’re a helper you’re someone that that wants to see other people be successful and that’s probably why I’m so drawn to you and and we’ve created you know a pretty fast friendship is there’s no Revenue being exchanged between us like at the end of the day like you know nothing’s I’m not buying or selling anything you’re not broker and from me and and when you meet like I I think I’ve said this to before like I’m not that smart I’m there’s not that there’s not a lot of a lot about me I’m not a great equipment operator I can’t weld I you know I don’t I’m not a good truck driver and I go list on and

on about stuff I’m not good at but I one thing I will say like is my strong suit is I’m good like people reader right I’m not saying I haven’t been fooled because I have but I’m but more times than not I I’ll put my you know my people radar up against most people and say I can read people fairly quick and I feel like I you know and I’m not saying that that it’s every time I even takes me a few few conversations but I feel like I got a feel for when someone’s in it for the right reasons and yeah and when I get that feeling I get that Vibe and I’m like I need to put myself around that person because you are who you surround yourself by you know I do this podcast I do what I do because I want to attract the right kind of people around me that make me a better person right so like take the scrap out of it it is what it is but I want to only want to be around people that make me a better person because without that like

it is what it is but if you make me a better operator in my business you’re just a greasy slimeball guy who’s doing it the wrong way like that doesn’t make like that’s not how I want to build the business so I don’t even really have that in common right but if you’re like hey man like this is what this is what I think this could work for you try this look at this here’s all the options or whatever but if you’re just a good human then people recognize that and I think they reciprocate it and you know I’ve I’ve always been like the people out there that are just line balls and they’re going to take advantage of of every situation they’re born to be Crooks man like it’s in their DNA and you can’t cheat DNA um but there’s also people out there that man they’re just good humans and I’ve always like made it a point like I’m gonna put myself around those people and then let the chips fall where they made like I don’t need to be rich I don’t need to be Elon Musk I’m good I want

to be successful and I’m here to win and I’m going to go as hard as I can for as long as I can but while I’m doing it I’m a gonna enjoy it and B I’m gonna do it people I want to do it with right and be around because they’re gonna level me up it’s kind of like our conversation earlier before this podcast was do you want to put yourself with people that level you up the next level or do you want to still play junior varsity right like there’s a very different skill set and a very different speed of the game at the varsity level than there is at JV right yeah so I’m trying to get I want to play Varsity or I want to play college or the NF whatever that is like I want to get to the next level I want to see what that game speed looks like and if you start putting yourself in those situations and around those types of people and then I think that’s how you have success so that’s how I look at it and so I when you and I met

and you reached out to me and and I think that’s why we’re having this podcast today because I was like dude like the people in the describe in the scrap industry you know there’s a tire component to it but the reality of is scrap life or what I just want to deal with Scrappy individuals that are go-getters and and there is you know a pretty big scrap component to doing what you do and I mean I don’t know how many hundreds a ton of Steel you’re selling every month but it’s not it’s nothing to shake a stick at you’re in the scrap business as much as as much as anybody right so the steel prices really affect you know or it can affect you right so you know that’s why I wanted to do this podcast and I’m going to end on that note but the biggest thing I want people to know is you know the recycling industry is real and it’s common and whether it’s tires or scrap or you know fiber paper inverters old soil like dude it’s real and there’s people out there that are building real businesses on

the back of just hustle and hard work and and you’re one of those man so my hat’s off to you and you and please do not ever discount how big of a roll and I know you don’t but how and I I know this because watching my parents how big of a role the wife can play in building a business I watched my mom give her blood sweat tears set six seven days a week for 30 years in 40 years in that business and I have no doubt I met your wife I know I know the relationship there and you talk so highly of her like she’s as big a part of that business as you man yeah we’re a team absolutely I told her you wanna you wanna be on this podcast with me she goes hell no so that’s exactly what my mom would say she’s like nope I’m good I had to get her I had to get her you know I did my first podcast with my parents right I got a couple of bottles of wine and I had to like loosen up the loosen it up a little

bit and I was like all right now you’re good and she still is like you get one chance one chance only and it’s a wrap right but anyways Tom I just want to say thanks man I got a tremendous amount of respect for for you for your wife the business you’ve built and uh if anybody has any questions or wants to reach out to Tom please do I’m gonna post his information up on how to get a hold of him and uh if you’re in that Dallas Fort Worth area you’re looking for somebody that’s that runs a quality shop and can handle your tires that’s the guy so thank you take care man appreciate it