join us every friday on clubhouse where we will be talking scrap with industry vets nationwide all right well i’m going to dive right in uh thank you for everyone for joining us um basically going to be talking to adam and brett we’re going to open up for questions towards the end and pull people up to speak um and really i want to dive in this episode highlighting the family business aspect of the scrap business which is intertwined i really want to dive in and adam you can go first like how did your family get into the scrap business um yeah about in 1938 we were like in the auto parts business my grandfather was i had like a once uh one retail uh place for auto parts and uh years later my father got into it and he was on the retail end uh they had a location in a week of new york on the same site that he was like born and raised okay then i got into the business about i’ve been doing it now 30 years my dad retired about 20 20 22 23 years ago he retired and um

then you know then i started taking over there and then got into the automobile shredding business so they were like more on the retail automotives the auto parts side and then i got more onto the ferrous star processing site were they selling new parts or were they selling uh like was it like auto salvage um it was some new it was some new it’s kind of like a napa type setting thing but thumb salvage but uh mostly your newer parts and brett how did your family get into the scrap industry you know my grandpa started our business in 1972 so he ran it from 72. he had this a little small yard in uh in nampa idaho and then and caldwell and then eventually they consolidated the two into one in caldwell which is our original location which is where my office is now um and he ran it um but mostly a real family business aunts uncles um my grandma ran the truck scale and uh until i mean my my dad came into the business and as soon as he could walk soon as he could do as soon as he could

participate really um and then my my dad officially bought my grandfather out in 97 and that was when we partnered with schnitzer steele at the time citrus deal had bought 50 of united metals and from there i i came into the business you know and as soon as i could as soon as i could participate soon as i could uh be involved in the recycling center to run a cutting tourist around this year to you know and i went to school went to college oregon and came back and 04 uh started working full-time awesome awesome that leads me right into the next question really um did either of you feel pressured to get into the business to keep the family business going or was it were you both kind of open to do whatever you wanted go ahead yeah so no my father never pressured me at all i don’t even know if he really wanted me to be in the scrap business back then um i was a fine arts major um at a small art gallery in new york city well i had no background i never really grew up in

the scrap business um and then a family member had passed away and my father had asked me to come help him for a summer when my sister passed away um i moved from new york city just thinking i was gonna help for a summer and uh i ended up staying uh a few years later he retired and i just didn’t want to do the scratches anymore they sucked you back in hey what made you want to stay in the scrap business like did you just have a passion for it was it just kind of in your blood you know no i didn’t have a passion for it and i don’t think it was really in my blood back then i mean it is now but back when i was younger i didn’t really like the scrap business uh but when my father had retired he had retired pretty much cold turkey i really didn’t know what i was doing um i had borrowed a lot of money and um i was pretty much all in so my plan on leaving the scrap industry i never i just ended up staying because i had to

stay i like you bet on yourself and looked like it paid off okay so well it didn’t pay off back then i mean i went to prison for a year so i guess it wasn’t the best payoff back then yeah the long game off but back then it was a it was a total show back then it was my own fault like you know i didn’t really know what i was doing i thought i knew what i was doing and uh it was like most of the decisions i made were pretty much epic fails back then but then as i got older i got a little more conservative a little more methodical um understand my specialty now is the production end of the business and um after you get the production end down it’s this isn’t the most difficult business to be as if you if you have to production end you know taking care gotcha brett what about you did you feel some pressure to you know keep staying in the family i always i mean i’m different than adam in that regard and that i always loved the industry i grew up

in the scrap business i mean i grew up at the yard you know i worked saturdays as a kid and i always loved i was the kid that came to the yard and got all the steelies so when we played marbles i’d take them to school and trade them or go and try and beat people at marbles because i had all the big heavy you know the steelies and i could go there and um i was just kind of uh like i loved being around there i love throwing rocks through car windows we’re about to get crushed i worked in the recycling center at a pretty young age so i kind of always knew what i was going to do my dad at one point i think i was in high school i was like man i want to go in the office and my dad was like you’re you ain’t going to the office you sure ain’t going to office until you at least go get some education um just you can stay outside recycling center work outside you’ll always have a job but you’re not coming in the office until you at

least go get a little bit smarter um so for me it was i always knew what i was gonna do so when i went to school i went to school mostly because i want to play sports in college i did that five years later um when i came back there was no ever any hesitation about what i was gonna do um for me so i i so that’s why it’s easy for me to wake up every day and do it because i love it you know it’s kind of always been in my in my blood got you that’s cool so neither of you had pressure um i’m sure so adam i’m not i think i see your posts that you have a daughter i don’t know if you have any sons um and brett obviously you have two sons i know are you hoping any of those adam your daughter or brett your sons stay in the industry or are you open to them just doing whatever they want i mean i have three daughters three daughters okay one’s ten and the two are twins that are four i mean the 10 year old

i think likes the business but you know i’m not gonna force her to be in this this is a really tough industry um you know only if she really wants to it’s great because i don’t have any family in the business i don’t have any brothers or sisters my dad retired a long time ago um and he’s non-active in the business um so it’s just me here so it’d be really nice and this company is it’s grown into you know in the past i’d say in the past five years it’s it’s a handful this company you know and uh it’s a lot for one person to do and i i mean i’d love her to join and i love her i love when she comes here but uh you know right now i’m on my own and uh i got a good staff and a great crew here but uh just being the only family person in the business makes it tough gotcha brett you know my two boys i i ask them all the time like hey you guys want to go to work with dad you guys want to do this

and they look at me like i just asked if they wanted to eat it turd and i’m like all right i guess i guess there’s not a lot of interest you know um i i don’t i’m not gonna pressure them i don’t if they don’t love it like i loved it i’m okay with that um i i enjoy getting up and doing it but if they don’t man i don’t want to mess up my kids i want those kids to go if they want to play xbox or if they want to you know play sports or they want to you know go to be a doctor or just go do something on the marketing side or whatever in in this world i want them to have a shot at it and i don’t want them to feel pressure to come into the scrap business it’s a interesting business it’s so it’s a passion of mine but i can’t i can’t tell you what your passion should be i mean just like adam i can’t i mean you at least if you you’re a fine arts major you go you go taste that you get

to go enjoy it see if it’s something you want to do or you can do and i mean to me i want my kids to have that option if they want to be a fine artist maybe i want to go check it out i want them to like if that’s what you want to do go do it i mean i’m not good at selling businesses i mean i don’t know if that’s not my my strong point but when it comes back down to it if neither of my kids are interested i guess at the end of the day i’ll i’ll find somebody that wants to wants to come do the dance so very good i think a lot of people i’ve talked to in the scrap industry they all have different paths that led them there i think a lot of people unless they grew up in it like like you too or especially you brett where you just knew that’s what you wanted to do but even talking just taking mike foon for example like he is similar to you adam like he kind of went off and did his own thing and

wasn’t really planning on being in the business but got led back to it um i think i keep hearing that more of a recurring theme like people think they don’t want it and then they they find their way back and then they grow grow to love it or they always love they didn’t realize it and then people like myself outside of the industry or outside of not having any family involved with it not knowing much about it i took an entry level job and just grew through i didn’t realize that world existed and i just started learning and learning and learning and that’s what’s cool about it and that’s what’s cool about the exposure and we’ll get into this a little bit later like how do we get people outside like you know family like interested in it excited about our industry and i think it uh i think it that just takes exposure um let me get to the next question adam you already answered this book brett just for our audience i know they answered this but everyone else does it who within your family is still in the business uh nobody

um i my mom and dad they both are retired um 2016. um my i don’t have any any dna left in in our business uh any family i mean now i consider obviously all the guys in the crew that we’ve put together over the years my extended you know family and i always i always laugh i heard somebody say it a while back i think there’s a lot of truth to it is your you know your family like your true dna family that you know your your blood you don’t get a choice right like that’s just who who’s you know who who pops out beside you or you know your aunts or uncles or whatever but your real family are people you get to choose you know your you know your friends your whoever else you know you bring into the business and you bring up through the like so i look at it as a family business still but really from a blood standpoint there’s no there’s no there’s no blood left in our family it’s just myself um and then obviously our our team that we’ve hired over the years and kind

of put together and to help build it gotcha thank you and i i know you you treat us like family i feel like we’re a family over here and um i think you find that uh you know i’m sure in any business you know the people that grind it out together work together they just they i mean we see each other more than our our blood family you know a lot of us and adam i see your posts on social media i mean you’ve got your crew your people that you take pretty damn good care of near as i can tell so i would assume that there’s a lot of that component for you as well right yeah i mean i’m not i’m i probably should be like a more social person like at work i’m not i don’t really socialize too much like you know because the with this with the staff here the team it used to be different when i first got into it even 10 years ago or 15 years ago it was a smaller company but now like we have 700 employees here yeah it’s been difficult uh you

know there’s a lot of new faces a lot of new names so i’m spending so much time just trying to you know at least know everybody’s names know the faces but i don’t really socialize too much with you know people outside of work you know people here outside of work very much um so it’s hard as you go the problem is it just becomes i don’t know how to say it but just as you grow it changes the dynamics of the company and sometimes you lose that family feel the bigger you get and that’s one of the things that i regret the most of the company being the size is that that family feel sort of does it isn’t as strong as it used to be and it’s hard there’s no doubt as you grow the business to keep that absolute family you know family feel i think we’re around 200 employees um but but i i we i’ve always maintained a core group of people a core group of people that helped build it from a 30 person company to what it is today and those are the when i think of a

family business i mean you know you know there’s there’s people that are there just to get a paycheck and i understand that that’s not lost on me i get it you know we do this business this this industry there’s a lot of turnover and if anybody says that there isn’t you know i i when you start crossing that threshold of 100 employees or more the turnover i feel like because you need bodies to do just some pretty labor intensive stuff and um as much as i’d love to get the turnover down and and you know say that it’s all about culture it’s all about family i mean it’s not lost on me that as you grow you can only you can maintain that so much but it does become kind of a monster and of itself yeah i agree with you so adam you said you have around 700 employees now when you when you took over when you got involved into the business how many did you have back then roughly i think uh 25 maybe 30. okay and brett you said earlier around 30 when when you took over yeah i think

it seems like when i came in full time at all four we had around count truck drivers around that mid 20s somewhere in there so what where did that drive to grow the business and not just maintain it come from where did you where did that desire to like is that more of like trying to put your stamp on it not being just a family business guy that got that job because of the name or is it does that come from something else i i think for me it was more just i had to grow to survive you know my competition is like a sims or notice these participants are like those are my biggest competitors are the public guys but for me to stay relevant and for me to be able to compete and like for me to do my own shifts like i had to have the volume so a lot of it was just to in the beginning was just to survive it was the road to survive in the beginning i got over leveraged because of it but once i got you know the finances under control here it’s been

just a steady you know a steady methodical growth here great and brett and no disrespect take it no disrespect taken we uh we were able to buy schnitzer out in 2016. so i know that i know that so um i you know for me man because i’m i’m passionate about what i do and i’m i’m like a go hard guy right like i don’t know any i don’t have a half like i don’t have turtle mode i only have rabbit so like i don’t i don’t even know how to stop or slow down if that was an option um i only know how to grow and you know if you’re not growing your dying concept i mean i think like just like adam said that he had to grow to survive i think you have to always maintain that mentality of if you’re not growing then somebody’s growing around you right they’re going to choke you out so my goal is to try and go the other way and try and grow our business accordingly so that maybe not necessarily we’re choking other people out but we’re also making enough um making enough waves

and growing our business enough that we can reach other markets and stay alive and stay you know build that ladder of opportunity for our people because if you’re growing now you talk about you know giving other people opportunity in your business because now you’ve created more steps in the latter you’ve created a manager position over here or a district manager or a you know gm or president or whatever like the only way you do that is to grow your business the only way you people to get good people to see upside is it to see upside in the business that you’re putting your money back in and you’re you’re giving them growth opportunity as well or else you’re not going to maintain good people you’re just going to be you know on a slow death spiral um and so for me that’s the only way i know but the key also the growth is you have to have the right infrastructure our growth can be a really dangerous thing you don’t have the systems in the core group to support it uh growth can definitely uh work against you very quickly 100 and and

to adam’s point you know and we’ve had this conversation this is just all full honesty for us we’re we’re teetering on that people human capital you know where we’re starting to redline right where we we’re going to have to make a decision how much more can we grow with our existing infrastructure without starting to create burnout or starting to redline real hard or we’re going to have to start we’re going to we’re going to recruit more people and trust more people and get more people in the fold because i think adam’s 100 correct i mean you that you walk that fine line with growth especially if you try and grow too fast that i mean you know there’s a lot of sleepless nights on on my end where i’m like huh oh okay how the are we going to solve this problem you know like who can we have help do this and so like something your dad rod who’s in our audience listening um he told you brett i think when you kind of took over you’re like oh i want to put a yard in boise and maybe out towards twin um

and out here and he’s like well who’s gonna run it and you’re like i’ll find someone and like he had been in the business long enough for you realizing the people capital is the the hardest part you know and i think that’s without a doubt the hardest part finding the people you know it was always his question he goes that’s great brett great idea who gonna run it and i’m like i don’t know i’m gonna figure that out and i feel you from both yeah i think growth is awesome but i think it can be it can be dangerous to your whole business if you don’t do it the right way agree totally so do you guys still i know neither of you you know uh upstate shredding or united metals has anyone related to either of you uh blood related that’s in the business still but do you feel like the scrap industry in general still a family-based business like it still kind of got that model uh nationwide i i think it does definitely most of the people i deal with or most of the customers that are shredders are still

family-based businesses for sure gotcha brett i i tend to agree i mean you’ve got the big publicly traded companies you know the sims the centers of the world um that they you know they’ve grown you know pretty big over the last you know few years especially say the last 10 you know they’ve kind of created these monster entities you know say even with new core buying not djj and you know got the big brokerage house underneath the steel mills and then they got their own set of scrap yards as well shredder yards um i think they they’re getting farther away from that model um and it’s sucking some people with them but i think there’s a just still a big jag of our industry that’s very family business oriented or very still say mom and pop shops but a lot of you know um still smaller business entities they’re still fairly family family oriented and i feel like those there’s that’s where the most potential growth is in our industry is those facilities if they can figure out how to dial in what their opportunities are um the big guys are always going

to be there i don’t care what industry you’re in but i mean there’s nobody i enjoy competing more against than those guys because i feel like i got a competitive advantage because i can move quicker gotcha do you guys do you think the family business aspect of the scrap industry has helped the industry as a whole or heard it um i know that’s a tough one to say i mean i’ve seen a lot of businesses break up because of family um i think there’s like pluses and minuses to it but you know getting back to what nick said the public companies are not the same as they were five or ten years ago the bigger companies are getting smarter they’re getting more aggressive they’re getting more nimble so i i think you know in the last go around in the downturn i think a lot of the larger public companies learn their lesson and are acting you know a lot more like smaller companies now gotcha at least yeah fair point very good and so another thing like i kind of brought up earlier is finding people finding people that want to get into

the scrap industry um to do more things like in the management aspect of it to kind of move up the chain and not just take a job do you feel like the lack of maybe being able to find that has kind of also been a reason this crap industry is so family based because you know you get the family to do because you know they they almost are obligated and i’m not talking about your two companies i’m talking about just in a hole do you feel like the lack of being able to recruit people to maybe force the industry to be family based one thing i will say like back to adam’s previous point about you know when you don’t and he said you know i’ve seen a lot of businesses break up over family and i think one of the reasons why this is just my my opinion but i think one of the reasons why he’s probably been able to grow that business is because he doesn’t have a huge family to answer to um and doesn’t have to appease a bunch of other people i mean i think he’s able to

make a decision and and move forward with it right wrong or indifferent and i think the same goes in my position is you know i have a set of checks and balances with our cfo and you know our guys and our you know our core group that we kind of will run through some decisions but there’s no there’s there’s nobody else that you’re really gonna have to to say okay sister you know i know that we’re gonna put all our money back in our business this year and you’re not gonna be able to go on go buy that that new house or that new boat are you okay with this are you willing to put your money back in because i think this is the right move when you don’t have to have that pressure or that that that someone chirping in the back of your your mind or you can say i don’t give a this is the right move we’re putting it back in we’re going to build this facility or we’re going to buy this piece of equipment or we’re going to do x i think that that enables you to

grow without that family component where everybody has to be on the same page right gotcha i think that’s where where i could see it and i’ve been fortunate enough to work with united metals under brett where we don’t have to deal with a lot of that family stuff that could get get people that aren’t in the family upset so that’s one aspect i think that could really kill your business where a family member in the indus in that business gets special privileges maybe gets a unfair advantage to versus a guy that just started outside the family it’s just it’s an aspect that i think if you had the family involved to a certain extent where you basically they could do whatever they wanted and couldn’t even get fired you know because because of the family aspect i think that can just kill your morale so that being said you know what are your thoughts on people outside of a family like being able to break in and be one of the top guys in a you know in a scrap company what are you guys thoughts on that versus when there are family involved

where they get that unfair advantage i mean finding good people is the whole that’s the hardest part of this business and getting people younger people that commit to this industry it’s ground what i do for a job is groundhog’s day i mean basically i’m doing the same thing the technology changes so that’s part of in the shredding business but basically i do the same thing every single day if i could find the right people i’d open up a hundred more scrap yards i mean the shredding business after doing it so long down to pretty much a science to it i would just keep you know opening up shredders but as your dad said it’s impossible to find staff to staff these people we are at burnout at this company here we have people working you know 12-hour shifts six days a week um it’s a long day here and what we’re doing now is we’re going to the local university syracuse binghamton and we’re trying to recruit people like young people that are engineers electricians and trying to bring them in that way right out of college got you but a lot of

people don’t want to come in this industry so you have to make it financially feasible for them to take a shot at our industry outside of college so basically we basically have to overpay in the beginning to get the really quality applicants here and i think you could probably lump the scrap industry in with most blue collar industries right now whether it’s the trucking side of the business or a plumber or anything that’s been there’s been a blue collar industry for a long time it’s i think we’re we’re not fighting a a battle that a lot of these these other industries aren’t fighting it’s unique for us because we’re we’re in that groundhog day we’re in that day-to-day grind you know that’s the world we live in but i you know and i i deal with a lot of commercial uh accounts a lot of our you know uh manufacturing customers as i’m sure it does you know adam has probably something he still deals with and they they’re having a they’re having a similar battle you know trying to find good people and trying to get people motivated to go to

work every day and realize there’s a lot of upside to you don’t have to be a college degreed engineer um or some some crazy degree to their offering nowadays to be a successful person or to make good money you just got to be kind of motivated you know to learn a task and and get good at it and stick with something so i think that more than anything it’s we’re kind of just fighting that blue collar work um people capital issue that a lot of other people are fighting and you’re gonna have to overpace people to get them in the door and realize that it’s kind of it is a cool unique industry um or you’re gonna have to take some chances on some some people that have maybe a little bit more of a sketchy past but they want to redeem themselves um i think that there’s a you know multiple different avenues to try and find people but to say it’s not getting hard is would be a lie you know because it’s getting harder and harder every day yeah five years ago we’re paying a mechanic 25 an hour if you

look at the post i just did for a solid mechanic we’re paying on the east coast 45 an hour now yeah and is that like a degree like uh i mean do you have to have you know you talk about i mean that’s just get it if you’ve got any you know good diesel background any mechanical background then let’s talk type of you know wage yes it’s just like with truck drivers i mean trucking i think uh five years ago were probably 16 17 an hour for trucking now we’re 25 an hour to start because you know we’re running 200 in almost 240 trucks now and to keep people i mean a truck driver they’re such in demand that you know they can get a sign-on bonus somewhere else the next day um you know they have people knocking down their doors so we have to pay a wage that you know one attracts attracts a good quality driver but also you have to pay them enough that they stay also yeah which i mean your east coast wages even versus our wages over here that’s pretty steep and but i mean just

the difference that you said in five years and i don’t know what to attribute that to obviously inflation um but also just back to that old good old human capital i mean where does where do you get the people i mean most people if you want if you want a good one you’re probably taking them from somebody else it’s not like they’re just you know coming out of school ready to ready to rip all the time um whatever it’s true if they if they’re not working right now there’s usually an issue correct even general laborers general laborers here seventeen dollars an hour to start yeah we had we had the bumper 15 just to get to get them in the door yep in our cost of living here in idaho has just gone up so much in the last year so just so people can have a livable wage too so they can be happy and like be functional you know so it’s just it’s hard to keep up and i saw i didn’t read it i saw dave reinke from mz they posted something about kind of aspect of how high the wage

needs to be right now and some companies can’t manage it some smaller companies can’t make it happen so it’s putting some real small companies in a real big bind right now until everything kind of catches and levels back out with each other you know for sure um well that’s is there anything that you two would like to add or get into before we open it up for questions i don’t know right no i just want to say i appreciate everybody coming out and taking a listen and uh i think that this clubhouse app is couldn’t be great for for a lot of industries i think it can be great for hours and just um connecting people talking to people helping each other out you know giving advice where where where you can um and just you know that’s what makes you know that’s that’s what i love about our industry is our ability to communicate and help each other so i think that was the whole reason behind getting this set up was i mean i don’t know everything obviously i’m i ain’t the brightest crayon in the box but i i i’ve been

around the scrap business for a few years and if there’s something i can do to help or a question i can ask i just want people to know like i’m available i’m i i’m here to help if i can yeah the reason we started doing this is just bring all the scrap guys together scrap guys and gals together to chat about issues to kind of have a spot where we can all meet every friday um i know everybody’s busy so if you can make it you know check us out we try to do this every friday and we’ll keep doing it and i do have a few questions out there i’m gonna pull mike up to ask a question oh sorry about that well earlier i was just gonna chime in nobody’s talking about the beavers are we talking basketball again yeah we’re back to basketball now that was my earlier question um no i just wanted to thank you guys for having this well it’s not a podcast whatever it is now a little clubhouse chat it’s nice to be amongst people of a similar background as you know my brother and i

have our own family business here in portland and kind of going through the same struggles that everyone else is on a little bit smaller scale actually well thanks for joining mike and like i said man i know this was your first time but like check us out every friday and you know i got your number you might know where you can collaborate and kind of see what topics we want to talk about every week okay sure sounds good thank you and i got another one here okay josh there you go hey josh what’s your question uh first of all uh thank you guys for putting this on great call very informative um this question question’s for adam i know we talked about this a little bit in the past but when you’re hiring drivers currently um because i know you just grew your fleet you know pretty massively and you’re taking them from other companies um you know what do you think is the reason they are choosing to come to your company is it being home every night or what are the reasons i mean it’s a little bit of everything we stress

you know you’re home at night you’re not having the lug produce you know up here there’s a lot of places like cbs warehouses amazon walmart so we’re saying that you’re not you don’t have to move the freight yourself um home at night is big and we also try to cater to the spouse too you know we’re trying to be very family friendly when it comes to truck drivers with the fleet that we just bought most of none of our trucks are over three years old here um so get the younger driver in the days of instagram we made sure like we chromed out the trucks you know it was a i don’t know it’s probably a couple thousand dollar more expense but you want to give these younger drivers you know something that they can show off and take pictures of and that’s how we’ve been able to get other drivers is you know make the trucks so they they’re really proud about what they’re driving and at the same time you have to pay a wage that is going to keep them here um but also we do like we on sarah which

is our software today i can send a message to all my drivers all at once once in a while i’ll do a sign-on bonus i’ll tell a driver if they refer another driver and they stay here for say 60 days we’ll give that driver a thousand dollars and that’s the biggest way we’ve been able to get drivers is to do a cash referral program with the drivers that we already have here because they’re talking to the other drivers whether out there you know they’re socializing with the other drivers and that’s the best way we’ve been able to get drivers wonderful great answer thank you so much you’re welcome sir thanks josh hey if i could just chime in what was the dispatch software that both uh brett and adam use we used him sarah here sam sarah yeah if anybody has any questions to um anybody here and i’m sure i’m speaking i don’t want to speak for brad or nick but i’m sure the same anybody wants to message me at any time you can find me on social media or you could you know hit my cell number here called the

business any time after this podcast if you think of something a podcast clubhouse if you think of something i’m always available to help out anybody in the industry yeah appreciate that thank you guys sam here um well you brought up adam chroming at the trucks that’s one thing that’s been big uh brett can elaborate more on this on our hauling department barry and the hauling department does a great job just making some bad ass looking trucks and we get comments all the time and i think that is an aspect that never really seemed relevant to me until like i start talking to more and more people yeah but it’s true because like when i see you guys linkedin the thing that always like catches my eye is your fleet you know your fleet’s always sharp always looks good yeah and i think that’s like first what attracted me to your company was i saw these cool truck pictures that you guys posted so if i was a driver i’d be like i want to drive that truck i want to work there they care about their fleet and i think when you’re doing that

a big positive yeah that came from my dad that’s a that’s a rod eckhart you know my dad and i used to fight about trucks that was our big you know we used to fight about trucks probably more than anything we ever thought about was you know why we spend so much goddamn money on trucks and and really it came down to he’s like you want to have drivers you want to have because he’s kind of the one that kind of lamented that into my into my brain was if you want to have if you want to have truck drivers and you want to have a full fleet then you better make you better have nice trucks and you better take pride in your trucks and you better figure out what you what you got to do to get them in the seat and if you give them a nice truck if you give them a nice piece of equipment more than likely they’re going to take care of it too so now you get the double win right someone is proud of it they want to wash it they want to take care

of it now when your truck rolls in to a customer or to a vendor or whatever that looks sharp it looks nice and and it took me i mean i ain’t gonna lie it probably took me seven years to get over that hump i’m a slow learner and that still took me that long before i’m like okay i finally get it you know but that’s that that’s the truth and when you say you spend a couple extra thousand on chrome it’s probably the best couple thousand dollars yet you spent because that’s gonna you know at least gives you a crack at the next the next driver which if you want to be able to move material in our business and that’s something that we could probably touch on real quick you know it kind of leads me down that road is our business is built on transportation i mean i don’t i don’t if you want to move scrap whether it’s inbound or outbound your ability to control your transportation and control your transportation costs are what’s going to be your big differentiator in my opinion yeah i agree with that i don’t think

transportation has ever been more important than now you know there’s no independence they’re hauling scrap anymore they can find you know other loads that are easier on their equipment salt aggregate other things like that to haul so what you’re doing you know is smart because you have to be in control of your own transportation you cannot rely on outside the days of relying on outside trucking are gone we’re basically a big trucking company that does scrap exactly 100 now that’s i mean that’s a good analogy is you’re in the transportation and you mean really you’re in the customer service business and if how do you service your customer transportation you know you’re there to pick it up whether you’re receiving inbound roll-offs bins trailers you know that’s customer service but customer service in our industry revolves around transportation and i mean you’re just a big ass customer service transportation business that happens to be in scratch yeah and where it also helps like owning your own trucks is like the market’s gonna drop you know middle of the week on the first the mills are gonna cancel the orders but having my own

trucks you know i can shut down the mill strobe yeah and they’ll save that order but if i was real outside transportation most likely what 50 would show up maybe oh yeah and and now you’re relying on other earlier line on outside trucks so everybody else and their dogs trying to save that mill cell too right so now you’re now you’re paying more to move that scrap so really what are you saving or what are you gaining by outsourcing that or or you know in sourcing or whatever i mean i’ve always said our tr our trucks make us money that nobody sees on paper right so if you have the ability to move your material just like you alluded to item when you when the market’s going down and you can really fill your order or cram the material in nobody sees that line that doesn’t go to the transportation company it goes against the scrap books because we run a set of books for our trucks we run a set of books for the scraps so the scrap guy the scrap side gets all the benefit everybody looks like a hero on the

scrap side but it’s really the trucks that enabled it to happen yeah i agree oh i’m gonna ask i’m gonna pull someone up to ask another question one second all right this is andy he’s one of our our loyal clubhouse guys jump up there andy hey bret and adam i just wanted to say i appreciate y’all doing this it’s been very informative um two questions that i have related to transportation um number one are you running your transportation department brett you spoke of two different books do you run those as two separate companies and then my second question would be on your material if you’re advertising that your drivers are home each night i assume that you’re hiring out any crate that’s a distance you can’t deliver in the same day so we when we first when we were partners with um schnitzer from 97 until uh 2016 it was one company when we bought alex schnitzer and became uh independent again we we ended up splitting off here not that long ago we ended up splitting off the hauling side because we basically run we run 40-something trucks we run a set

amount of trucks that are what we call our over-the-road trucks so these are these are the guys that are delivering scrap to the mills they’re delivering scrap um they’re delivering to the coast so those guys are home every other night and so that’s it it’s its own company and then we run you know obviously all of our local trucks which is all our end dumps roll off trucks bin trucks um and so that’s all operates within the the scrap united metal side so we do it for two reasons one because your trucks are probably your biggest risk as that you have out there on from a business standpoint you know that the risks that’s involved when you have uh the trucking side of the business um especially when you’re hauling other people’s material on the back call for us so that’s why we run two separate sets of books um go ahead adam if you if you have anything you want to add to that yeah we’re breaking uh the trucking um our goal by you know the end of this year is that 300 trucks on the road but um the

accounts exactly where you said uh trucking is the biggest risk also insurance wise so we’re gonna be breaking that off into a separate company doing its own people um it’ll be its own corporation on the side um and for long hauls we don’t do any of our long hauls anything that’s long haul is going you know that would require an overnight um we are subbing all that out still and we do so about we do sub out we we ran it i looked at the other day it depends on the month depends on how much non-ferrous material that i sell for the month and where it’s going um if it’s not within our three-state corridor which is idaho oregon washington and a little bit of montana then we don’t haul it ourselves hey because we don’t want to license our trucks for that and b just because it gets us out of our wheelhouse which our wheelhouse is scrapped to scrap to the mill scrap to the shredders and then building materials and whatever else in the back hall coming back into the valley so we’re pretty narrow in what we do

and how we do it so anything that’s kind of an oddball shipment you know that’s all that’s all outsourced so maybe we probably outsource depends on the month 100 to 200 you know outside trucks a month okay i’m gonna ask bring up a few more people i got three more questions here all right nick you’re up um hi again uh like everybody else said thank you for taking the time to have this chat today i appreciate it for sure um so my question it’s a two-parter and it’s for for adam um i know that upstate’s a family business but it really is pretty big and uh i would call it medium or even a nimble large business but uh how far do you want to vertically integrate and is there one sector of this business from collection through belt that that is like the crown jewel that you guys really like to focus in um i mean we’re in the new steel business um part of our companies in the new steel service center business um i always had this dream of you know melting my own steel i don’t know i don’t

know actually thankfully to ever melt my own steel um that would be the last integration because we sell the new steel on the retail or wholesale end um so like if we sell to newport we’re buying back this deal from nucor she played rebar channels beams but i think um i think you know my growth in the future is definitely going to be on the fair side in the shredding side we get a lot of non-ferrous by default just as we open up new facilities but i’m definitely a ferris guy and i love the shredding business and with the new technology we just built a heavy media plan here our dry media plant here uh so we can run our own sword right here in the window and i have to export it um but i think um the future for us is with the new technology uh that’s gonna come into the scrap metal business uh that’s where my focus is gonna be okay thank you thank you nice talking today what about you brett what’s your what’s your plans how far do you want to go you know that’s a good

that’s a good question i sometimes my eyes are bigger than my stomach you know i think a lot it’s just really going to be a matter of like what opportunities open up when i when the when the market starts to get heated up like it is right now it’s kind of when i start to pull back um i think nick you probably know me you know me well as well as anybody especially on this call i don’t i don’t really get too aggressive unless the market’s just really starting to get sideways and get shitty i mean i feel like that’s what i made my my best deals is when everybody’s running for the door um so for me i just kind of wait and try and pick our spots i don’t i don’t have a you know i don’t have a set time or a set idea of what of what i’m gonna do as much as i just kind of look for opportunities that make sense that we can like either leverage our current assets or our current facilities to to grow i’m i’m more interested in the waste side of the business

um just because it feels like that that’s that there’s there’s some opportunity there it’s kind of starting to present itself um but then again you know like i said i’m more of an opportunity guy i just kind of wait and sit and wait back and just kind of try and hold my hold my cards tight until really starts to hit the fan and then i feels like that’s when you can make the best the best moves is when like you said where everybody’s running for this door yep yeah timing’s everything and when you hear that expression i think a lot of people think timing you know it’s just by luck i think timing you can control the timing too so i think you know that’s just you know part of the business plan so you know i’m excited to see what upstate shredding does and obviously excited to see what united metals does in the next 20 years thanks for the question nick and i got a couple more hey i was going to ask you guys has anyone heard that new core might open up a couple mini mills in washington i haven’t

heard that i deal with nucor all the time but with this kind of market with this kind of margins they’re making you’re going to see nucor opening up a lot of stuff for sure yeah see brett and i need to put a shredder in together if a new core opens up a mill that’s closer to us i’m going to leave you shredders to the smart guys i got them all right i’m going to bring up we got a new new question coming in how you doing hey how’s it going uh so uh well my question was kind of related to uh to what said uh like if you guys ever actually consider how to feel that looks like but i guess cover that um i really like what you guys said about the trucks and uh i actually made a comment the other day that i was kind of related to uh you know it just said like you know it runs a lot of risks and stuff but how the current market is looking with the lack of drivers and lack of not just drivers but people will go with the killing and

stuff like that um one of the biggest things i learned is you know engaging in this business is the value of the trucks is much more than what makes it kind of like all right it’s because i’m in mexico man so that’s probably that’s probably why i’ll just i’ll have to go ahead and wait on uh wait on it well you can find us you can find all of us easy so hit us up yes sounds good thanks man thanks for having me on though thank you hey thanks for coming all right last question how you doing david hey i’m doing good i’m uh uh thanks for hosting the conversation guys uh i guess i’m on here i’m the other half of bob’s over here with mike so um question for you both on uh strategic growth most of what i’ve heard in your history and most recently in the last you know five to ten years is some significant growth on on both fronts would you say that most of that is through mergers and acquisitions or is that an organic growth or how how have you characterized that over the years um

for us here originally it was just you know buying other companies buying mom and pops but going forward most of the stuff i’m doing here is green fields um i don’t really want to take on environmental liability from other places which is one of the biggest you know that’s killed more deals for me than anything was you know the success reliability with uh i’m working on a deal right now buying another shredding company and the hold up is the environmental um so most of it now i’m just looking for good property in good areas and working with the local municipalities to be able to tell us where they would like us so we can get a permit and uh open up brand new facilities for the amount of money i would be spending on an acquisition i could be making you know a really beautiful environmentally compliant facility brett you know i mean i’m not i i err on the side of i don’t i don’t buy out other companies just because um the environmental part is definitely one of them but the other side for me i mean we made a run at

buying someone out over here in easternish idaho a while back and we just could never get over the hump and we spent you know a year working to get over the hump and we just ended up going and we found another piece of property put a yard in and basically just random competition i think they filed bankruptcy last year but i mean ultimately my my thing is is um is is very opportunity driven it’s very like does it make sense does the deal make sense but we are definitely a brownfield or greenfield company i mean we don’t we go open up a yard we look for where where it makes sense where it’s underserved or you know the facilities there aren’t aren’t taking care of the market and then we just we kind of look for a piece of property and just it takes more time and i think that’s why a lot of people don’t go that route is it’s it takes more time to go establish a new yard build it out find the people and then you know you got a couple years easily of of just generating the the customer

base to know that you’re you exist and to start generating that that customer flow so i think that’s why you see a lot of bigger companies especially on the publicly traded side is they don’t want to take the time or or spend the effort it takes to to get that ball rolling it’s a three to five year process from start to finish and so because i’m i’m more time my timeline is extended my timeline is longer i’m not trying to get rich quick i’m i’m more i’m more interested in in you know starting a yard from scratch my own way doing it creating our own systems not having to retrain of people to how to do everything our way so i kind of err on the side of just starting one from scratch awesome well i i think that’s all our questions thanks for the questions from everybody thanks for joining us adam and brett and i’m excited to keep this thing going every friday so all right thank you guys thanks everybody thanks everybody all right have a good have a good weekend everybody great good luck to your team thank you nick

yeah thank you nick for uh putting this together and uh i i appreciate everybody that dialed in and we’ll we we recorded it so hopefully we’ll we’ll uh put it out there for you to have androids they can so they can listen and hopefully people glean some glean some information from us somehow some way awesome thank you everybody have a good weekend have a great weekend thanks all right take care