technology is crazy i finally got my buddy danny jones the ceo of eg metals to carve out some time for a podcast while he’s in dubai of all places we’ve done a lot of business over the years and i always enjoy talking to this guy about life our history and why we both love the scrap industry enjoy it’s official i finally got danny jones locked down for about an hour to uh sit down sit down and do a podcast another zoom podcast because uh you’re over in uh dubai so and i’m over here in idaho so idaho and dubai is officially connected via zoom this is uh danny jones with eg metals um i i consider you a friend not just a guy so scrap to so for me man i love interviewing my friends just because there’s like a certain uh there’s just a certain uh chemistry that you get when you get to hang out and with your friends like sitting around at the bar having a beer so thanks for taking the time bud hey i appreciate having me i mean we’ve been wanting to do this for a while so

i mean and you know i was going to come out to idaho and uh you know here we are in dubai and doing a podcast from dubai to idaho i know so i know i love it it’s shorter distance it’s from portland yeah idaho i know i i do you know i i sell a lot of scrap to a lot of different people and i think it’s a super like relationship driven business and uh but i i i i think back and i was trying to remember the first uh the first the first year we started doing business i want to say it was like 2 000 and six is that right seven particular seven it would be yeah i think yeah that’s when we we kind of met and we kind of hit it off right away how did we meet i can’t even remember uh so we asked when did when did how did we meet i think it was uh mike who introduced us i believe kirshman mike kirshman yeah okay so i think he he was the one who introduced us and uh you know we kind of hang out

i mean we had our group of northwest guys that are hanging out and we hit it off you know so we had a lot in common i mean i think at that time you were just you know it’s taken over and you know from your dad and you’re coming on like full swing you know energetic excited right now all right eventually you kind of settle in you know in life you figure out what your niche is when you’re when you’re done you’re ready to conquer everything that’s a good part right you never said lady you’re a full swing always which is good i know i don’t have i don’t have like a i don’t have much of a slow i don’t have you know like uh on a something like a like a lawnmower i have the turtle speed and rabbit speed like i’m always at rabbit like let’s go let’s go you’re like me you know i just can’t when it comes to our business i mean it’s always uh it’s an exciting business you know i mean i mean our business is always uh evolving i’d say i mean it’s changing all

the time and there’s something happening always especially when it comes to the export side of the business you know i’m sure it’s the same with uh i mean commodity market in general you know it’s just a it’s an exciting field you know it’s just not every day is something different right i mean either china market opening or china closing or india market or like the market’s changing and it’s it’s always exciting so yeah i mean and one thing i mean we can go into we’ll go into like your history a little bit but like one thing i always appreciate about you is you’re driven like i am like you you have that that you have that rabbit speed on at full full speed all the time but what most what most uh like quote-unquote brokers have never have never done is they’ve never had their own scrap yard right they’ve just bought and sold and kind of taken their margin and just kind of dealt with you know taking that the middle piece out and kind of moved along but one thing i always appreciate about you is uh you you actually did

open up your own scrap yard at you know at recycling facility at one time there in hillsborough oregon right that’s right so the way we i mean i got into the business it’s just purely uh by accident i would say right like uh i mean i was i started the business in 2001 i’ll give you a little bit of background so we might as well give us kind of give us the history of how you how you ended up in uh this crazy industry exactly so 2001 i go to uh i’m originally from india like and i go to india with my dad and so got there one of my dad’s friends said hey i want to buy used laptop and computers from us so i’m like okay that’s not bad so at that time i was doing another business newspaper business you know and i wanted to get out of it because that that internet was booming and nobody wanted to buy newspaper and that that business was kind of declining this is you know when i was in my early 20s right so uh so i decided that’s not a bad idea

there’s a lot of i mean this is when that back the time of like 386 486 all those computers so got into it finally was able to find some computers and was able to ship you know that uh ship the computers but not to india i mean it was even though we started with indian market they backed out we ended up shipping the products to romania they found somebody to buy so this was back in 2000 and from there escrap was just evolving and we didn’t know what to do with scrap so i had one of my guys from hong kong came by for two years i mean i used to give my scrap for free to know what the value was to know what to do with it yeah so just you would come around like i’ll take the scrap because i don’t know what to do with the scrap laptop or like the rest of the if it’s not reusable i don’t know what to do so i’m like okay please take it away take it away little did i know i mean that was our value right two years later like

then i’m like okay there’s gotta be somebody out there like me yeah not have knowledge so i started you know purchasing scrap from other uh reusable guys and we started that east craft business you know developed the market for was it like 2004 probably 2003 it was when we realized that there was a market for scrap e-waste and uh things like that so you know at that time i mean e-waste was just getting involved like nobody knew what to do i mean this is back the day crt time right like you would i mean a crt was worth like thousand dollars you know yeah yeah so then from there i kind of uh in 2006 like you said six is when i first got into non-ferrous scrap you know uh started buying a non-ferrous i mean my first uh you had a warehouse is that when you did you did you rent it or you bought a warehouse and you were kind of consolidating it or so the warehouse yeah we had a huge warehouse so what i was doing at that point we were we were doing a lot

of export of metals uh like don ferris slowly starting into non-ferrous from the waste that we generate like you know computer wires and things like that so then uh my guys in china was buying it they said hey we want to buy non-ferrous i’m like okay no problem so yeah i approached you my first purchase was from cal back from doug reads yeah so i didn’t know anything about confirmed let’s just go there and my guy in china he said i’ll buy just get me whatever you can get and just buy it at whatever price they’re asking and just ship it to me so i used to i just bought one all the good old days buy it send it we’ll figure it out exactly so i went and bought a bunch of stuff uh shipped it out he said okay just keep it going like so i would mark it up like five cents 10 cents you know just no problem you know i mean by the time container arrived the market was going like it wasn’t like a rocket ship like we are on right now you know by the

time it was there i mean that copper price is up like 15 20 30 cents so he was i mean the guy was purchasing he was happy any any price we say he would take it yeah so it was a good ride until 2008 hit right so yeah we all know that story yeah from there i mean kind of i enjoyed the brokerage side of the business a lot more i was not too excited and thrilled about the yard side because he was like it kind of held me back i feel like you know i’m a more of a people person so i wanted to enjoy talking to people and just being out there i i dip my toes in it and just say you know if i didn’t try it i can’t sit here and say hey you know yeah what year what year i was trying to think what year did you put that yard in was it 10 200 we put the yard in yeah i had it for almost uh six years you know we let it run it for six years and i said listen i’m spending too much

time on regulations and you know putting water treatment system and you know maintaining the yard this is not i don’t enjoy it yeah well i mean because that’s not really you’re not necessarily in operations i mean you’re you’re more of you know your sales your your uh relationships you know like that’s your bread and butter and it was taking you away from your your bread and butter of what what made you successful absolutely so you know me i mean i like to just call it people and just talk and you know just build that relationship i enjoyed more than that i mean that that’s that’s still my uh i’m a relationship guys like just like you are you know you and i like i mean ever since we started business i mean it’s just smooth you know like yeah and especially in the brokerage side of the business it’s most very critical when it comes to doing business you know just have that relationship and maintaining their relationship well i think something sometimes things that get lost like it’s great to have a good relationship i mean i think relationships are built on trust

um and i think that’s what is kind of missing sometimes is people are like oh i want to do business with you i want to do business with you i’m like okay like i understand you know like you know especially especially on the brokerage side you know i get hit up a lot you know about well we want to send it here and send it there and do this and do that and there’s a level of trust that’s involved when you load a container and you send the docs and and it’s a two-way deal it’s not just you know i trust you to pay me because most people are yeah i will pay you but but then you’re like okay but you can pay me in three days or 30 days or whatever it is and then what’s the claim situation look like on the back side but there’s a level of trust that even the broker has to have with the guy loading the container right i mean it’s a there’s a lot there’s a lot that goes into you know selling a load of scrap that starts in idaho and ends

up in you know malaysia or india or china i mean it’s it’s not as uh it’s it’s not as you know there’s a lot there’s a lot to it i guess it’s without you know absolutely i mean you just i mean it’s just not just you say you send something and you just spit it and just collect that money i mean there’s a lot more involved i mean you got logistics we got trust i mean some just keep in mind let me as the scrap price increasing the value of the materials going up i mean so it’s like you’re dealing with a hundred thousand dollar deal somebody sitting in malaysia is like saying okay send this and we’ll pick it up when it you know with the ten percent down so as a broker i mean you you build that relationship on both sides right so i mean they’re also sending you funds they’re trusting that you’re going to load the proper materials that they purchase so so when it comes to brokerage sites the trust is the biggest thing and having that trust with between the supplier and the buyer and keeping that

going smoothly it’s very important yeah it’s just people think it’s easy oh anybody can be a broker but i think a lot yeah i’ve been super fortunate you know i mean you know our our accountants you know we we have a you know a pipe business and some other stuff that we do and uh we’ve been we’ve been really fortunate never to get hung on on any large amount of receivables i mean that you know you even through 08 um and i attribute a lot of that to i’m very choosy who i do business with right i’m very i mean there there has to be some you know you know the financial side of course but i’m very picky about who i sell scrap to because you know the 08s happen you know the 15 2015’s happened where the market is crap and people are just trying to survive and that sometimes when people are trying to survive they do stuff that isn’t exactly uh you know on the up and up all the time and so i mean our accountants and i have that conversation a lot is you know like brett you

you because we have with our bank right they’re like you guys have been very successful and not you know having to write off any any bad debts or anything i’m like no because i’m very picky about who i do business with exactly i mean i mean picky is i mean you have to be picky because you’re dealing with the the scrap is not cheap anymore you know like back in the days when the copper was like you know 2006 and 2005 it was 90 cent copper right yeah so i mean now you’re dealing with a 3.50 copper i mean a motor back in the day was only probably it’s only worth 10 cents now that same motor the same amount of copper is worth 40 cents or you know whatever that number is you know yeah so of course you got to be i mean it’s a lot more a lot more uh investment yeah and also it’s an open market back in i mean 2000’s i mean the margins were high uh i mean nobody knew it was just internet was starting i mean nobody knew the price now it’s just an

open market it’s just black and white i mean everybody knows motor is still priced i mean he can pull up a price of steel anywhere in the world and it’ll be published in 10 different websites there’s no hidden secrets anymore right so exactly yeah there’s no there’s apparently there’s no there’s no secrets to the pricing anymore but i mean i think i get 10 prices a day from random you know people have never even sold scratch like hey here’s the price here’s the pricing i’m like okay you know i i i get it yeah that’s it it comes down to like who do you want to do business with who do you trust and you know what sort of relationship you have with the person that you deal with i mean that’s the bottom line it comes down to these days uh i mean me and 10 other people will have it you know who probably at the same same number just like who are you comfortable with doing business with you know yeah so so give me so uh so we you had the facility in hillsboro for six years after you had

the facility in hillsboro then uh what was the next the next step for you so we had some uh so we moved our shredding operation we had an e-scrap trading operation so we moved that from oreg hillsborough to dallas texas then in 2000 uh so we we set up we had uh we had a good setup in dallas and in 2018 i had an opportunity to sell out from that business and so i’m glad that i i got out of the again yeah physical operation and uh just started doing brokerage full time and you know for me brokerage has always been good you know i get to travel i come in dubai um that’s not just uh stuck in one place like oregon’s you know i get to travel quite a bit you know even though you know with a lot of restrictions in traveling i traveled to europe last year four times you know and dubai and other places india so it helps me build that relationship with the people you know meeting with people shaking their hands it’s just i’m a when it comes to that i kind of old school

and you know just like to go meet people shake hands sit with them chitchat i think that that’s how i built our builder business you know and it and it’s long-lasting i mean once you build that relationship i mean it lasts for a long time you know as long as you take care of it right as long as you manage it and like you said you you know you do the i view it as like a it’s like a marriage like if you if you don’t take care of it then it just kind of separates and it does its thing and you gotta go off in your separate directions right but um and which sometimes is good sometimes that’s necessary to to move on and you know things change people change it’s time to go do something different you know like exiting the actual physical operations and focusing on the brokerage but the relationships that are important they’re the ones you maintain they’re the ones that you take the time out and you say all right and like you i know you’re busy tonight it’s friday night for you it’s friday morning for

me you’re like i know there’s probably some other things you’d rather be doing than a podcast you know at uh at eight at night at 8 30 at night yeah but i mean it’s it but but we take the time out yeah and have the conversation shoot the and and that’s what keeps those keeps those relationships still going you know and i don’t even know i was sitting there thinking you and i haven’t i mean we haven’t we we did a couple of containers here recently but there for a while it was like a stretch where we didn’t do any business for for months and months and we still talked we still we still it you know we always talk you you came down to portland you visit the the thing is like sometimes like you said i mean the that that was trump trucking issues and things like that logistic sides i mean it wasn’t working out and yeah we kind of slowly i mean i’ve been pushing you to figure that part out i know it’s on my it’s on my hit list you know so at least we’re making some progress

you know so but uh i mean that that it’s just uh like you said i mean you called me up many times and say look man i mean we don’t do any business but you know but you know we have this relationship one of these days i mean that’s it’s just for me it’s just whether we do business or not just for me having a somebody who i can just throw some ideas get some feedback i mean that’s that’s more important i mean yeah and business comes it always comes along you know either today or tomorrow i mean by by just building that relationship i mean you’re always gonna business will always follow you i mean no matter what that’s one thing i’ve always appreciated about the scrap industry and i’m sure other other industries have the same but i mean the scrap industry as as big as it is it’s still pretty small in the fact that most people kind of have a general idea of who’s who in the zoo and um kind of even on the brokerage side or especially like in the in the us i mean we kind of

know who the players are as far as who’s in which region and who is uh you know is good to do business with who’s a little bit more on this on the suspect side but i mean it’s a super it’s a super relationship driven business and the fact that um it is old school because you’re talking about physically trading commodities it’s not just a uh paperwork game like this isn’t uh you know you’re not trading futures over here every day you’re actually taking physical product and moving it from one city one state one country to another and there’s it just adds a whole different element to it that’s right i mean like again it goes back to like the the more the price is increasing and we’re doing a lot of hedging these days you know i mean it was never like that before like i mean four or five years ago we didn’t do that much hedging now almost i mean a lot of a lot of the customers are requiring us to hedge even for like lead zinc uh copper so explain to me that so that your customer that you’re selling

the material to they want you to hedge it correct so we work on a lot of the our transaction these days are on a formula basis so we would have to hedge say for example aluminum copper radiators so we would buy it it would sell on a formula base so on a percentage basis so i would i would give you a fixed price so let’s say you you give me a dollar right just roughly say a dollar for a pound of uh ac rats um you’re then getting a hold of that and you’re hedging it through an outside hedging company that has nothing to do with the end consumer correct so we would call our broker in new york and we would hedge the copper content of that load then we would take the possession from the suppliers and we will take it in all the way so we would hedge it for almost two months two and a half months then our buyer will call and say okay i want to fix the price today so we would just fix it based on that so so it’s the the trading side of the

scrap business is getting a little bit more complicated you know it’s a yeah it has to be it’s not like like before i mean before it was okay i’ll buy for something for a dollar okay dollar three or dollar five done hopefully no claim and we’re it is done so those states are gone so what’s driving the what’s driving the the need to hedge is it the big swings or is it the high prices like what is what’s pushing the the net then the need for for your end consumers to to require you to hedge so it’s it’s both so when you look at the transit time from say for u.s to india it’s almost like 60 to you know some especially west coast like almost like 60 days 65 days transit time to it so by the so that’s one one issue i mean and we are having this massive swings and the copper price keeps moving up so so plus uh like a country like india they also have like currency uh fluctuations so they don’t want to take two risks you know i mean their currency fluctuation and the copper

i mean the commodity swing so they they’re they require us to hedge so in a way it’s it’s safer for as a broker myself say it’s also good thing yeah in if 2008 happens you know knock on wood like i mean at least you have the hedge going and you’re covered in that sense you know and you have some protection that way so uh but it’s also it’s more costly i mean yeah well you have to figure in the the hedging cost into the purchase price because correct i mean somebody’s got to eat that you know eat that that part of the deal which to keep everybody safe and i guess at the end of the day if you’re dealing with a broker that is hedging then you’re probably more comfortable because you know that they’re covering their ass and everybody in theory should have their should be covered so everybody can along the line will either receive money or product at the price that they’ve been quoted right exactly so i mean it’s a little bit more protection by hedging the commodities i believe uh it’s just i mean you have to do

it these days i mean the more the copper goes up it has to be done i mean if you don’t want to say that’s fine but who do you use like do you use a few different companies to hedge your to hedge your copper units no i’ve been working with a a company called fc stones up in new york um they’ve been my broker for many years now so they they they i just call them up and you pretty much say hey i need to the only thing about when it comes to hedging is like you have say for example you’re buying a load of talk and it only contains 47 of uh cover copper in it and and now you’ve got to go out and hedge x amount of copper like roughly twenty thousand in a roughly 20 000 pounds in a forty forty four pound forty four thousand pound can right or currently five so you gotta i mean he’s so it’s a lot more it’s it’s making things a lot more complex you know it’s just like you had a track there’s no like a like a pound per pound hedging

yeah like what’s the what’s the what’s the the smallest amount the smallest block that you can hedge currently so i we use colemax and lme says 25 000 pounds okay 20 25 metric ton per contract so depends on and depends on which i mean i’ve been using quite a bit of uh comex these days just because it’s a smaller lot yeah outside so then you can go buy one container or whatever or uh and you’re not you’re not sitting there okay well now i gotta buy two i gotta buy two containers of talk so i can hedge you know all the 25 metric ton at a time and try and make that deal work right exactly yeah but that’s just um so that’s that’s the hedging part i mean that’s just making things a little bit more complicated for us but you know it is part of the job right yes exactly like what do you see i mean because you are well traveled and you see um you know a lot of that a guy like me who’s kind of over in my little corner of the world doesn’t see what do you

see going on as far as the industry how has it changed um from an exp the export side from 2000 and say six when we started doing business how has that dynamic changed as far as uh geography where are the materials going or what’s up and coming i mean what do you what are you noticing out there that’s pretty interesting yeah so when we first started everything was almost all metal was going to china right china was china was it yeah then from that i mean china started you know they’re putting their restrictions and they kind of said no to shrap uh then the other markets kind of evolved i mean india is a very strong market when china china came down india became very strong in the scrap industry and scrap market and they picked up the slack and you got people i mean malaysia got picked up thailand taiwan korea and i mean it kind of even pakistan is a good market even middle east we send shipments here also even europe so it kind of you know when china slowed down kind of all these other markets small markets kind of

uh came back in and opened up so which was a good thing you know because i mean we were kind of relying heavily on china you know and uh and i think that was a good thing that happened i mean we can’t just rely on one well it’s good to have it’s good to have options you know i tell people all the time i mean you’re you’re you’re ac radiators are only worth what somebody’s willing to pay you you can publish all the pricing you want but until somebody pays you a dollar a pound for that material then that’s it’s not worth it’s only worth a dollar right um and the way you get the best price even on like is you have to have multiple people that are interested in that those ac radiators right so i tell people the same thing on the steel mill side like the domestic steel mill i go this domestic steel mills have eaten very well the last few years because the export market has been fairly non-existent um you know whether it’s political policies or just a lack of growth out in the you know

emerging markets or whatever but when the export market opens back up like you’re seeing right now a turkey’s starting to buy you know a lot of scrap and if china comes into the market like people are talking about ahead with a heavy hand then the domestic steel mills are going to have to readjust i think their their their thought process and say okay like what are what are our margins that we’re willing to take because now people are going to have options they’re going to have options of places to go with their scrap that’s not just necessarily two domestic steel mills or whatever the case may be they’re going to have you know they can go to ports they can put them in you know for the for the big bull calls they can go containers they can they can go domestic so i’m i’m excited for you know for that so i mean not to kind of to digress but like go back on what you’re saying i mean with china going out in in eight or nine eight nine before they came back in and like what eleven twelve um that opened

up you know the more people that could actually take that product exactly i mean that that’s i mean china kind of stepping back for last few years kind of opened up a lot of market i mean that was a good thing for for the i mean it was kind of painful in the beginning i mean people were like hey what do we do i mean where is this going to go but you know that’s the good thing about our industries like people figure out i mean like a lot of the chinese that was in china they moved their factories to malaysia and they set up in other parts of the world and you know it’s just you know just it’s like a water and it just found its way and it just and it devolved again you know just that that’s that’s the exciting part finding new market yeah creating uh products going into different directions different parts of the world is it’s always exciting what do you see as the up and coming um markets out there that aren’t really necessarily big markets right now or today but are you can see in

the future really being that you know bigger players i i still think india has a lot to offer for in our industry i mean indeed is going to be a big player still uh in china if they open up their scrap uh industry i mean like scrap coming into china without that much restriction that’s still going to be a big uh a big market you know they need the material right uh and uh pakistan is a big market i mean they their labor is cheap and they have a good industry uh they have growth and they also have a good relationship with china they they buying products they they’re melting it down and sending back the finished goods back to like ingots and stuff like that back to china that’s the pakistan is a big market uh india thailand i mean same it’s happening with thailand and malaysia i mean all i i think overall 2021 knock on wood like i mean it’s it’s looking very positive you know good good doesn’t matter from uh somebody that is out there and uh beating the streets and seeing what’s going on in the world that’s

always a that’s a positive sign i’ll knock on wood on my side too just just in case because i mean nobody predicts uh kovid 19 or some of this crazy that’s been going on but you know open 2021 right i mean like no so i mean i think you know it doesn’t matter which uh political parties get in i mean i think uh scrap is gonna be uh strong i mean the reason is i mean dollars weak uh you know we’re reprinting we’re printing like a non-stop so as long as that’s happening like oh you get a trillion you get a trillion you like a trillion too like we’ll just fire up the press and we’ll just keep papering it over keep it going right so i think these days trillions i mean we passed that billion marks now we’re into the big t you know so as long as we’re printing the press is going i think the price is going to go up along with the commodity price is going to move up i think so you don’t you don’t really deal that much on the ferris side right i mean

very we’re we’re not that big into ferris i mean uh but we are slowly uh looking into uh straight shred shredder 211s and stuff like that yeah there’s a lot of demand coming up especially why is it is it just because you wanted to focus on non-ferrous is that why you’ve you chose to kind of stay away from the the ferrous side or like what is what’s the difference i mean from the brokerage side when you think about it i mean why is there some people that really focus on ferris and then some people that you know really focus on non-ferrous i think for me i was just always been in the non-fair side of the business and it kind of kind of stick to what you know the best and just try to develop that market but uh i mean there’s there’s there’s plenty of opportunity for me to diversify into ferris but yeah especially from west coast uh containerized uh fairs going to far east and stuff like that was not that uh it was not possible you know because i have so many guys in our uh neck

of the woods that are loading uh vessels and you can’t compete and also the shipping costs from where we are it’s just you’re starting to see like even on the was on the west coast now i mean people are starting to pay more attention to like the taiwan price right the taiwan ferris price i’m starting to see a little more momentum or at least more discussion about that price and what that looks like containerized and what those numbers are looking like because then now you you don’t need the uh the bulk port to export right i mean especially if you’re producing a shred product um i could see where the tide could really shift in the next this year and going forward if the export market stays strong because the the us dollar um continues to weaken you know over time we’re gonna have our bumps and our ups and downs but generally speaking i don’t see a reason why the dollar is just gonna gain a ton of momentum any time soon so i could really see the export ferris market getting pretty high at the fair side i think as see the

what’s driving the ferris market i believe is uh china and australia is having some uh headbutting going on so they’re not buying that much iron ore coming in and so that is one thing that’s driving up the price of ferrous and they need as much scrapped as they can to keep up with the demands that they have going and they’re trying to move towards like 30 scrap um as far as as far as infeed for their for the steel mills right so at 30 percent of how many um million tons they melt um that’s a big big number you know that’s right so i mean as as long as i mean china is going to allow import of uh scrap uh steel coming in the price is going to be always price is going to be high i mean it’s just going to go up and that’s why we see that hiking almost like a hundred dollars i just in a month right because now you got a big giant player in the i mean you know it came in like china who has a big appetite yeah and that but i mean now

he’s just competing for the same scrap i mean everybody has to raise their price so which is a good thing for suppliers and you can uh it just just means like you have more options i mean you have just the presence yeah just the potential of china coming in as has driven they really haven’t really came in and bought much yeah right so it’s like just the thought just the idea in the back of turkey or whoever is mine right that the malaysia or you know india wherever the materials going like just the idea the concept that they could be coming i think that’s what’s driving the demand um as well that’s right i mean that plus i mean we had a uh i mean there’s still lockdowns happening in a lot of the states that we’re in i mean california is locked down but portland is you know oregon is locked down washington is locked down so there’s not much uh activity i mean you know like before so the scrap also is kind of limited in what what what’s got intake of scrap is also limited i think i mean i don’t

know what you’re seeing out there yeah we’re not seeing as much like you know there’s not as many big demo jobs big demo projects going on right now you’re not seeing uh you know the i was telling somebody we were in our meeting um we did like our like a quarterly managers you know our meeting and just yesterday and we were talking about pricing and i was kind of just trying to give them my crystal ball which isn’t that it’s a lot of times very blurry you know like it’s just a basic ass guess but i was trying to tell them you know you have to i i’ve been through a couple of these good runs in scrap and when in 2078 when it really ran hot into eight um the amount of scrap coming in at the prices what we’re paying today was off the chain i mean we were you know we were hundreds of customers over the scale a day our yards are so full that we had to shut our yard down for a week just to process scrap we wouldn’t even we wouldn’t even buy any anymore because it

was dangerous how high the piles were getting stacked and i said now you look around our yards today and with the pricing very similar to say 2007 and early 008 before it really got hot um there isn’t that volume that volume doesn’t exist like it did in those years that’s right so i think that i think that kind of that run kind of cleaned up a lot of scrap i think i mean we had the uh i remember we did the the car for uh old car cash for clunkers yeah so those kind of things i mean people were pulling stuff from that was sitting for you know like 20 years you know in the backyard i mean they were pulling that thing i mean they were bringing it in i remember those days you know i think that kind of cleaned out the a lot of the the backlog or whatever we had for many years i think and and when the price get depressed i mean people don’t go out and no bring in stuff right i mean because it’s not work for them to go out and collect crap you’re not

even getting they’re gonna cover the cost of the the diesel in their pickup you know like you know it’s not it’s not worth their effort or their time and so it gives you a couple years to pile up um but even then like where there’s not where you have some of these you know metropolitan areas or these whole states like california washington oregon they’re locked down those there’s i don’t think there’s a bunch of big demo projects going on and creating that bonus pns crap um you know they’re you’re not seeing that material and if the manufacturing facilities are slower so they’re getting less manufactured scrap so i think that’s definitely a component of the price surge lately correct yeah i think i think you’re not gonna i think the volume you’re not gonna see like what we saw in 2008 like you said i mean yeah but the price is good i mean i think with the price being where it is i mean you’re going to get a steady flow uh i think you you don’t want to see the price going down i think as a i mean to get that

flow to continue you got to have that price where it is to see that uh volume coming in the door so i heard some exciting news that he got some how many yards you have going on these days so ah man we got our hands full man um i said as long as i can find good people man i’m i’m willing to put a put a yard in you know that’s the i mean we feel i tell people this i was i took we had in our meeting yesterday i was like you know we aren’t i mean we aren’t really in i mean we’re in the scrap business but we’re truly in the the customer service business you know and like i look at you and your business and like how you’ve built it over the years and like you’re you’re you’re you don’t do anything different on the brokerage side than 100 other brokers right as far as the actual like brokerage task but you do it different from a customer service standpoint right so you’re not really you’re in the brokerage business but it’s second hand to you’re in the customer service

business and and that just comes with getting good people and you doing what you do and we’re the same way so yeah we have we have facilities um and more facilities coming because we take customer service absolutely seriously you know yeah it’s just that that’s what it comes down to you know that that’s what it comes down to i mean like customer service and good good uh good health like good good uh good helping hands is also a big one too how many so it’s where you have a you have a couple offices now right um you’re you’re kind of working out not you personally but you have some trading offices out there where are they located so we have a trading office in uh in india we have a trading office in mexico and we also have our office in portland so so that’s that’s where we’re focused okay yeah so that’s like i said dude like one thing i love about talking to you is like you and me you know we go we go back but like we can both look at each other and say i remember when it was

just uh two guys just trying to get together and try to move some at the time it was some e-scrap and just whatever whatever we get our hands on to try and to make make uh move down the road so i i can always appreciate where you come from and how how awesome of a business you’ve built over the years oh thanks appreciate that i mean so it is you i mean like yeah i think why you coming into the you know taking over from your dad i mean i remember that you coming in and your dad was i mean you guys are third generation right yeah that that’s what’s impressive i mean you know what the statistic says like third generation doesn’t usually make it third generation really it’s amazing that you know what you have accomplished you know what it would i remember you know where in 2006 i mean 2006-7 i mean like it was just within 12 years i mean you know i mean the growth that you guys had is pretty tremendous yeah hats off to you and we appreciate your dad is awesome i mean he’s

always you know your dad and mom’s always been there but you know i mean you you took it up to the next level you and i were both you and i were both pretty blessed with good parents you know and i i recognize that not everybody has that you know and you know my parents have been retired for a while now but i still the fact of of being raised by good parents and having good influence growing up and kept my mindset correct and they kept me on the right track i mean really like i owe i owe them as much as i owe anybody you know i mean whether and so like it’s easy for me to go to work and i posted this a few times on linkedin like the fact that i get to write my parents of paycheck and they can go do whatever they want like that to me makes it easy for me to get up in the morning right i i mean i don’t want for a lot i mean this might be the nicest t-shirt i own and uh but i but i like getting

up to go to work and i get us you know stroke them a check you know every couple weeks and be like hey like i appreciate you giving me a shot you know yeah i mean i mean so in a way i mean we’re blessed like you said i mean it is absolutely a blessing to have i mean you know parents guiding you through i mean and that’s just you know you just want to pass that down to next generation i mean i will say this i will say this though like and i want to end on this is our business is a lot of uh word of mouth like who do you do business with who do you like you know who do you trust and whatever else and you know part of one of the reasons why i like to do these podcasts is a just to talk about the industry with people but i like to talk to i like to let people know like who the real genuine scrap players are out there like the people that a give a about the industry but be the legit business people that

i if somebody asked me would you sell scrap to who would you sell this low to scrap export to you know one of the first guys i would point to is you like you’ve done business for a long time you’ve never you never nothing and anything everything’s been on the up and up you know or even more on the up so i always recommend you know the right people say hey this is who i’ve done business with and it’s been great so for me to to put my word on it and to put my stamp i mean you’re you’re as solid as they come dude oh thank you appreciate that and that means a lot to me so it’s it’s over you i mean like i mean exactly i mean our friendship is i mean like you know i can call you up anytime at chit chat and like hey what do you think of this idea or what do you think of that you know or i get you pick your brain that’s always uh it’s always good i mean i considered your personal friend yeah especially in the in the scrap industry

and you know so appreciate having the podcast the next podcast is gonna be in person and we’re actually gonna i won’t be drinking coffee i’m actually drinking like a beer or like a cocktail and it’s sure not going to be on a friday night either no no no yeah it’ll be like friday afternoon all right i appreciate you ready to have these uh they take off my mask and just have to go back to the normal like you know i’ve been working for a conference actually you know yeah i think if we i think we can vaccinate enough people we can have a history conference in 2020 at least in 2021 they’ll be back in vegas so it’ll be good that’s a good spot to have a conference you know are they still going to have that or in 21 they said they are going to have it in because it’s in vegas so i think one of the reasons why they canceled 20 was because it was in california right yeah um so it’s easy cancellation like i can’t do anything in california now so um they they’re hoping i think 2021 back

in vegas it’ll it’ll be a go you’ve got plenty of room so it’s spread out right everybody will be on a blackjack table or something or yeah you can be something well i appreciate you man thanks for taking the time go enjoy your friday evening and uh looking forward to doing this in person all right thanks for having me talk to you later thanks i’m gonna end it now hey i’ll give you a call i’m gonna jump my pickup i’ll give you a call um and uh shoot the all right i hope it was a good good man was i it was great i mean it is what it is i’ll call you here in a few minutes no problem