foreign welcome to a scrap life a podcast solely focused 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 in this podcast i sit down with one of our very own amy oldham when i talk about people with hustle and grit i think of people like amy self-made because of their willingness to put in the work learn the business and go to work every day with a positive attitude women in scrap business is one of the backbones of our family business starting with my grandma and then my mom i have a ton of respect for women that choose to take on the scrap industry and i hope you enjoy this podcast with amy take a listen good morning amy how are you doing good brett morning so this is a episode of a scrap life you know i’ve kind of the purpose of doing this is just to kind of highlight people that a are hard chargers in our industry um people with unique stories

about how the scrap business has you know affected their life in a positive way and also just a good opportunity that i get to sit down and really just shoot the with people that a i respect and b that kind of have a similar um interest to as i do in the recycling business so thanks for making the time to sit down absolutely with us yeah for sure um a little pre pre-cursor to you that i don’t know a lot of people know or don’t know about you is i you’re the one of the only people i’ve ever recruited from another recycling company to come work for our business yes and i when i met you i liked your hustle i liked you know what you’re about um that business that we recruit you from is no longer in business so i don’t feel too bad anymore but why don’t you just give give me and anybody that doesn’t know anything about you just kind of a little background on how you got into this exciting world of the scrap business sure yeah um so funny story i was actually working at a

gas station about six years ago i was like man like i just i hated it there i wasn’t happy it wasn’t what i wanted to do so i ended up quitting and found an ad on craigslist that was like an office assistant at a previous scrapyard and i’m like well my husband’s like just do it and you know like i’ll throw myself out there i didn’t know anything about computers like i grew up not very wealthy like not educated i mean kind of lived like the hard knocks of life and just you know made it happen so i’m like god i don’t know like i don’t i don’t feel comfortable doing that well i went ahead and jumped in and pretty much like faked it till i made it just figured it out as i went um and just really fell in love with even even the mess and the chaos that was at that specific place like i just fell in love with the the whole process of just everything like the people the product like learning as we go um and wasn’t too much longer after that that i was introduced to

you and um kind of just went from there so i jumped ship and so we when i met you you were in the office and uh at the time we were buying some scrap from that company and um but we could tell that that deal was kind of going sideways um that business was going sideways and uh so like one of the first things i did at the time i was like we had another manager that was over in our burley area and i was like hey you have a good relationship with amy and uh and he goes yeah yeah i talked to her a lot and i’m like hey we need to figure over to uh our team and he goes okay he goes i’ll talk to her and i’m like all right perfect and then so i remember um when when tom and i came down and we met with you and your husband so really i can a thank your husband for pushing you to take the job in the first place right in the gas station and b for coming and hanging out with us that night i took tom

you know the president united metals down and we went to dinner with you and your husband we’re like hey we want to kind of get you over to the uh to the dark side to the dark side yep and it all went from there so like one of the things i appreciate about you and you know people like you is just like your hustle right you the thing about the scrap business and i think any business or any industry is you don’t have to know anything you don’t have to go to college you don’t have to go to a technical school you don’t have to have a you know a portfolio of degrees to get to be good whether it’s this business or any business but you just have to have like the willingness to learn right like whether it’s the product the equipment the process and you have to have hustle right you know and so with you i saw that like your a your willingness to learn but b you had a ton of hustle and i kind of always you know when i’m on the hunt looking for you know good

you know people that would be a good part of our team it’s the hustle factor is right huge um so where do you think you get like that hustle like where do you think that comes from where do you think it stems from for you you know honestly i think from my own life experience like i just i you know the way i grew up um i just seen a lot of excuses being made for me being made for everyone around me um probably a lot of the people in my life that maybe should have been push pushing me further enabled me to to not do well and so like that i think that’s my biggest thing is like i didn’t want to be like that forever like and i also i lived in mexico for a few years um unpleasant you’re bilingual yeah yeah correct yes so um so even that brought like a good yeah something good came out of that yeah i mean a couple of good things i mean your kids a lot of good things yeah but just you can always find something positive to squeeze out yeah so

i was planning to um be down there for a few months and i ended up being down there for almost six years yeah so yeah there’s a whole there’s a whole nother depth to that story but but it just highlights the fact that like when you live in different ways and you know you you struggle and you know you just you figure it out and it’s just made me not want to make excuses like excuses will always be there and you know opportunity won’t so i just i wanted more it’s just about wanting more exactly wanting more and i think there’s like some sort of like breaking the cycle aspect whether it’s like yes i come from a family my dad smokes cigarettes and then he’s chewed tobacco and and this is just a small example but it’s like for me you know so i i grew up i chewed since i’ve been like 16. you know and it was a hard deal to break but i always knew like my grandpa died from smoking cigarettes i watch you know my dad doesn’t smoke cigarettes or chew anymore he’ll smoke a cigar on occasion

but like i always knew like with my kids like if somebody has to stop it right like somebody has to say okay like enough’s enough like you know and even though i love you know having a chew like that’s one of my favorite things i i don’t do it anymore just because like i’m like i don’t want my just for my kids so like for you you don’t grow up and that you’ve been a little tougher of an environment and people around you they don’t i don’t know they necessarily don’t want you to succeed but they just you know if when somebody actually does succeed or it does a little bit better i think sometimes they may not want to hold you back but they kind of like they want you to kind of still hang out and yeah you know right so good for them you know good for you for finding a way to to push to push through it yeah so let’s talk about like the scrap the scrap business like you know um you started with us basically we just recruited you you were in in the office at your

previous job we kind of recruited you to just come and run our office not knowing like where it would all what it would all develop into so kind of give me giving out give me an idea like what your what your job is today sure um so today my job is i’m the director of southern idaho so um basically do everything from purchasing scrap staffing helping both yards between twin falls and hayburn just run day-to-day function correctly customer relations a little bit of hr a little bit of safety so yeah a little bit of everything um just whatever whatever comes my way is let’s get it done yeah it’s the when you’re the manager or the boss or whatever like your job isn’t like one or two things you’re good to do yeah right yep and sometimes multiple at once yeah that’s the way it is so for you for us the way our regions broke out is you have basically two facilities and probably like a few hundred square miles you know yeah you’re kind of responsible for customer wise and but two um two of our you know bigger facilities

really one we have you know a stationary shear so we do a lot of ferrous processing the other one is uh smaller in footprint but but a pretty good good good yard for us in twin falls so i always like it puts a smile on my face like always to know that somebody can start at x position and just like hustle and grind their way because nobody gave that to you like we didn’t recruit you to do that job we recruited you to run an office yeah because that’s what we knew you were you were doing at the time but you always had the motivation to just want yeah more well yeah i mean you respect your team’s job more and they’re going to respect you more like just when i was you know first started in the office in hebron like i was there like three months and i’m like somebody want to watch the office so i can go outside you know so just about getting out there and like i just got out there and just jumped into the non-ferrous a little bit and jumped in the equipment and helped

the guys out in the yard and i mean it just helped me grow and and learn more too so and like something that like what you just said is and i would like stress this to everybody is if you would have been like scared for your job or you would have been nervous you would never have wanted somebody to come into the office and learn right that job right so the only way for you to get out of the office is to bring somebody in and teach them how to run the office so you’re teaching them how to do your job yep only because you’re confident in yourself enough that you can teach somebody how to do your job so you can do another job yeah and i always i tell people that all the time like the only way you’re ever going to grow whether it’s our business or industry or anybody else is you have to be willing to teach somebody how to do your job yep and not be afraid for your job that you know if you teach somebody how to do it you’re going to be gone next week

you know yeah exactly and that’s how you you get respect i think from your teammates is they’re like oh they’re going to give me an opportunity to grow so we you know like that’s colby came in and he had a chance to now run the office you know which he seems to enjoy yeah yeah um he probably wishes he could get outside sometimes i get him out sometimes yeah so but but that’s a big that’s a big you know if you want to build a business or you want to build and do more you have to be willing to train people to do to do your job yep and you got to be willing to like teach yourself educate yourself like you’re not always going to have somebody there something that i’ve like lived by is you can’t leave that up to somebody else to teach you you can’t leave it up to somebody else to educate you or you know pull you along like sure that helps great but you can’t you can’t put that on someone else like you got to jump out of your comfort zone educate yourself teach yourself you

know i i’ve always loved what you’ve always said about surrounding yourself with people that are smarter than you you know like you are who you ate hang out with so 100 you surround yourself with people that are smarter than you that are good people i mean you’re just gonna go that direction yeah you know and you can use that in every and anything in business and life and with your teenage yeah kids like hey put yourself around good kids and like i remember my parents always having that conversation like hey you know like say like when i was eighth ninth grade i started going the wrong way and my dad’s like no dude like you are who you hang out with if you hang out with a bunch of criminals like that’s what the route you’re gonna go yeah people causing trouble goes you need to figure this out and so i it was like mine after my ninth grade year or before my ninth grade year i kind of totally flip flopped my friend group into people that were into sports and ended working out and it you know they weren’t nobody in

our friend group was like a great great at school per se but nobody was um you know really lagging it was just kind of was more we just people that we played sports together but that totally changed i think my course it was because my dad just saying go hang out the people that you want to hang out hang around are people that are good for you you know that help you make good decisions yep especially when you’re super influential like as a teenager teenager yeah you can hang around you know you’re going to make your mistakes no doubt oh yeah but you know if i can if i can give my my kids one piece of advice when they’re young i’m going to be like you kind of are who you surround yourself by and i think that that gets even as you get older it’s even more important you know go hang around smart people even if it’s not your industry your business your whatever and you never know like what they got a thousand pieces of knowledge and to rub off on you right that’s two more than you had to

start with exactly so who’s been like you’re i mean in the scrap in the scrap business the scrap industry kind of who um has been your like mentor who have you kind of leaned on the most on like what’s your you know what you’re doing every day uh definitely nick like our boots on the ground yeah yep boots on the ground guy um i probably talk to him 10 times a day throughout the day so yeah it’s good to have a constant like relationship and guidance on pricing and customers i’ve always really looked up to how nick takes care of his customers like there’s nothing more important than the customer and that’s so important in our business like in any business but in our industry like that’s number one yeah and so i’ve always seen how important he’s made it and that’s helped me like really follow him in that way so that’s awesome yeah absolutely it’s what to me like when you can find people in within your company that you know you can really bounce ideas off of and you know like the reason you’re in town today is we did our

um quarterly um managers meeting um yesterday afternoon right right and where we do you know as much as we’d like to do it more often we at least once a quarter try and get all the brands in the room and kind of bounce ideas and kind of discuss what’s going on in our industry together and that’s like one of my favorite meetings because everybody sees things from like a different angle they have a different set of eyes so i don’t know everything about our business and i don’t know you know i don’t you know from the finance and to the day-to-day purchasing in to the hr to the insurance to i mean and the list goes on and on but we have it all broke out and everybody kind of has their lane and their segment right and like that’s what i love just watching everybody kind of speak to what they are really knowledgeable about and then listen to what everybody else has to say because then they get they can kind of understand like the full aspect of the business without being like in that specific exactly all day every

day somebody’s half idea is going to complete somebody’s exactly somebody else’s idea you know and i think about stuff one way sometimes and then i get like totally flip-flopped around because somebody’s like what do you think about this i’m like oh i didn’t even think about it that way man right so as far as like the like what do you enjoy the most about the scrap like the industry the business like what’s your like what what do you what’s the big my biggest thing is like the challenge like it’s a new challenge every day um and then the people like i love meeting new people i like learning about other people’s industries and that’s like my one of my favorite things about what i get to do is when i go somewhere and i get to see how things are made or you know how their plant works and um that’s like that’s awesome for me because that’s just that much more that you just learned so i i love to learn like it’s like a hobby of mine like i just love it like if i can learn something every day like

i don’t know it’s that’s where it’s at for me and just the just a change you know there’s nothing nothing’s the same every day the only same thing that we’re repeating is scrap but there’s a different avenue and challenge like every time kind of scrap is a different different company that’s that’s producing the scrap it’s you know yeah one it’s unique like no but not very many people are like yeah like i work in the scrap industry you know so you’re like what is that what do you guys think yeah i’ve had so many people they’re like you’re like a scrapper like i’m like yeah i guess you could say that like yep and a lot of that’s because i think that there’s just not a lot of females in the scrap industry right like so i mean for it’s that’s why i’ve always thought like i’ve always thought it’s super cool for you in the fact that you kind of bring like a different element and a different set of eyes to the table as far as the way you see things you know um and i think the other side of that

is is you can be a female in the scrap machine you don’t have to just be an office staff right you can actually grow if you’re willing to grow and you want to do more like the opportunity is there right i mean at least with our business our company there is um i don’t i don’t care where you’re from whether you’re a male whether you’re a female as long as you have hustle right as long as you’re willing to go out and like put the effort in and be willing to learn and i think like what you said the other side the other thing i think is super important is you don’t have to go to college to want to learn right if you want to be an excavator operator you can go get on an excavator go run the goddamn excavator yeah figure it out put in time and figure it out right you want to be a welder yeah go be an apprentice somewhere and let somebody that’s been welding for 20 30 years teach you how to well yeah you know like that’s right reach out yeah like go do it

go you know go figure out you know what you want to do like what you’re what’s interesting to you and you know your it may change but right if you’re always willing to learn then one thing about the scrap business that is it’s always full of lessons yeah it’s like sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s tough so like let’s transition but how has the the whole covid virus deal affected your area i mean over here in idaho we’re a little bit more conservative of a state so we have we haven’t been totally shut down per se but has it affected your area very much it has um retail wise you know more than anything some of the some of our commercial accounts slow down a little bit but the amount of agricultural and food processing that we have and the whole mini cassia area has just i mean it didn’t slow down too much so i know it’s that in our pipe business i mean the water is going to come it’s going to hit the ditches in march right you better get the pipe in you know like in the plants if you’re

gonna if you got the field they’re gonna plant it you know i mean you’re seeing them you know some in some places you know they’re dumping the potatoes or the honey whatever they the onions just because there isn’t a home for them but there’s enough still enough of a home that they still planted it they still harvested it and they’re going to harvest you know yeah and but on the scrap end you know we’ve kind of seen the same thing over here in the boise you know the ada county area it’s slowed down on the retail end because people just been kind of cooped up in their house right i get the feeling that it’s going to turn back on um at some point you know i feel like the commercial the commercial side of the business is starting to pick back up yep um slowly but surely and uh it didn’t drop off a ton but it did drop off some so it’s pretty pretty resilient industry in that regard yeah yeah for sure yeah i think it’s gonna i think it’s gonna bounce really good too when it does so so if

you’re gonna give any advice to like to females out there about the scrap industry the scrap business i mean as far as um maybe making them think twice about getting involved i mean well do you have any any sage words of advice for them or i mean yeah it’s like it’s not easy you know um but if that’s what you want to do like go do it just educate yourself figure it out throw yourself out there and get it done like you have to there’s times you have to work twice as hard and there’s times that you don’t so but i think that goes along with anybody i mean it’s just on your your personality what you want to do your character and how far you want to take it really so nice well to all any of the females out there they’re that are in the scrap business or they’re interested then uh listen to amy she’s got some good advice for you and anybody else out there whether you’re male or female if you just have hustle and you just have like a a want to learn and do like this is

a great industry it affords a lot of opportunity it’s not the glamorous you’re not working in silicon valley you know and you’re wearing a suit and tie or riding a skateboard to work every day it’s not that job but it’s a tough gritty super fun industry that you can get i mean you can meet a lot of people when you go to dinner in town and you see people from the sugar factory and from this place and that place and you know them all like there’s something to be said yeah for that exactly now you touch every industry for the most part in the scrap business you kind of have your hand in a lot of industry that people might not even think yep i agree 100 thanks amy for saying all right appreciate it thank you thank you brett