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 episode of a scrap life i sit down with hank doan of pnw recycling his dad and my dad partnered with schnitzer steele around the same time in the late 90s so we have a lot of scrap history in common we talked about family business partnerships the scrap industry and how they can all blend together go ahead take a listen all right i’m gonna sit here hank dome drink a beer cheers cheers so hank call me a couple days ago said you were coming to town you got some roots over here in boise idaho yep and uh i was sitting there thinking i’m like well hank if you’re going to be in town you want to come hang out look at the scrappy all right go then let’s sit down do a podcast and only because i know a good chunkier history i don’t know

the whole history but i know you’re pretty deep rooted in the scrap business scrap industry like i am and so i thought i mean this podcast is only about scrap business people in the scrap metal recycling we don’t do anything else i mean don’t really discuss anything else just i like the industry this is this is all i know so i mean to me you’re you’re you know as much or more than i do about this business so i’m super stoked man to get you into town well i appreciate the opportunity to be here and i always try to get to boise at least a couple times a year if i can swing it but with kids and being part of the ownership of a scrap company it seems like it gets fewer and far between but we’ve got three kids now and i don’t think we’re making any more i was about to ask you a question how many kids do you have and how many more are you gonna have so i think we’re done i’ve tried to tell my wife you know maybe we should round it off and have four

and you know get another boy but i think we’re done you know she’s well i won’t say her age but i’ll be 41 this year so yeah i don’t want to be a six-year-old dad but yeah you know we both went to boise state and met at boise state and i lived in haley you know from the time i was 13 to 18. ended up at boise state so i lived in idaho for 10 years so anytime i come over here and hang out also see scrap that’s a good trip yeah no i mean it’s a win-win it’s a win for me i’m glad to have you so you grew up in haley at least from 13 to 18 you said yep but why don’t you kind of give me like a just a little bit of background on your the roots of your family business meeting the scrap and kind of where it all where it all started for you yeah and your family well i’d say for my family my grandpa started in the 60s and he was kind of one of the first mobile uh crane guys he

built his own mobile crane on the top of his trucks um he’d actually been working for a aluminum caster in portland at the time and you know new metal and was a really mechanical guy and had a friend that was going around picking up scraps so he’s like you know i like that i’m mechanical i can work on trucks and so he just started going around oregon all over the northwest really and it really was a true family affair so i’d say that was like probably early 60s okay they didn’t incorporate till 77 but during that time was kind of the initial phase of growing they bought their first facility in like i think 80. so when you say they this would be your mom and your dad or your dad and your grandpa this would be my grandpa and my grandma okay grandma yeah just like me yep yep and then he had uh her my grandma’s father working in the business as well okay which he ended up training my dad my dad would drive truck and my grandpa virgil would be with him and that’s who where my dad learned scrap

from and also from my grandpa richard okay and so you know that was 80s they bought another facility 84 and then it goes from there my involvement in the early 80s i was born in 79 was being around my grandpa shop so i’d see him you know working on trucks all day or night go out crush cars whatever you know get scrap come back completely covered in grease you know as kids we’d be in the pool screwing around he’d come up and go down to the basement and wash his hair with tide to get it out to get it out and you know my childhood was kind of seeing that work ethic from the ground up and so my summers to make a little money i would clean radiators with my grandma nice and so that was kind of my introduction to being around scrap and this the first facility that you guys um you guys bought the actual um the actual facility which was was where that was in gresham oregon crescent morgan yep so if people aren’t familiar with oregon it’s kind of it’s on the east side of portland okay so

kind of heading out towards the gorge it’s like it’s a 20-minute drive yes we’ll have that facility today right yeah so when my grandpa passed 95 or six my uncle rex actually took over that facility my dad who had been working in the business since he was 18 took over clackamas and in 2009 we actually ended up buying that facility back from rex nice so now we have gresham clackamas portland longview hermiston oh yeah so i haven’t i’ve been to the longview facility you know we’ve shipped some scrap in there stainless to uh elg right yeah um but i’ve heard it’s beautiful one of these days i’m going to get my ass out there i’m going to look at it and with my own eyes and see it in person but the drivers love going in now they say it’s you know there’s a lot of space and it’s clean it’s easy to get out of so yeah the yard in hermiston um the last time i was there um garrick mickelson was still running that yard that’s right yeah um who’s a good guy yeah you still he’s still work with you

guys still part of our group yeah good guy moved to utah and his wife was ready to get out of washington so they moved to st george and yeah doing well so it’s ex explain to me so you guys you guys have a shredder in portland yep and you guys put that shredder in what year so i believe they kind of started going and um commissioned in 09. okay so you know rough rough time in the scrap business well but i mean i guess if you’re gonna if you can make it no nine yep then i mean the i don’t the covid or anything else i mean other than that 16 15 16 mark was pretty tough yeah but uh if you can make it no nine in the scrap business i figure you can make it through about most for sure so that was rivergate scrap which is the other so yeah that was kind of where i wanted to just kind of because i mean i understand it at least a little bit but i want to kind of let every you know get everybody to kind of how does the relationship

um because you guys did a pretty unique thing and we can get into it later yeah i got a lot of respect for you guys and a lot of you know i’m kind of uh from afar i watch and kind of how you guys are doing things i just got a ton of respect for how you guys go about your business appreciate it likewise um but i’m i’m super curious of how that relationship between you and the guys at rivergate came about and what synergies you guys saw that made sense so rivergate was is actually two other families which the boers family george burt and justin have all been active and still are active in the business and fua daude who was at one point a pretty you know big wheel commercial manager at schnitzer steel oh yeah and he came to work for george bors i believe in 2000 i’ll probably mess up the dates but i want to say 2006. and so fuad came over brought a lot of you know big company know-how to rivergate scrap and and with george’s you know grit and determination they put in a shredder

yeah and so you know fuad came in they’re 06. sean who’s another one of our partners sean’s about 10 years younger than me i’d like to say he’s my little brother i mean we do a lot of stuff together spend a lot of time together travel internationally together he’s been working at that yard since he was 18. so he’s had 12 years in the business at that yard so he knows that probably pretty intimately the shredder and everything the operations behind it smart he’s a smart kid too like smart he’s not even a kid anymore but i’ve known him for i’ve known him for a long time and i got a ton of respect for fuad and sean as well in his business so fuad and my dad knew each other because when we were a joint venture with schnitzer from 96 ish to early 2000 my dad and fuad would travel together so rs davis at the time was one of the largest car crushing companies out in the northwest fuad was the buyer and so they’d go out and line up jobs together and even spend some time working jobs yeah you

know just so they could spend more time together i guess yeah but that relationship grew and when rivergate put in their shredder they came to us and said you know will you ship a scrap yeah i mean if all things being equal like we want to support you guys we want to see you do well and so from 2009 to you know call it 2012 we did that and then you know we started having discussions you know where do we want to take this how do we want to work together and that led to pnw so what is the when you talk about like a like a partnership or you know when you talk about combining three families into one family right because i mean i know how you guys view your business i mean you just call shawn your little brother and yeah i know how i view our company i mean i view all these guys that you know i’ve kind of recruited in to our business as my brothers and my family and like we run it that way right when you have three different families is that is there some

is there tough dynamics that you have to work through or do you try and work through those out the gate like what do you guys do to make that successful yeah you know i like to say we dated for a while and figured out if we could you know be together because we were a joint venture from 13 to 17. okay and got to know each other of course there’s all the numbers and the legal part of going through a merger like that but really you’re learning people’s personalities and saying can i work with this person every day yeah you know and just really like okay they have their families we had our family you know the fight the family dynamics you deal with yeah i mean there’s challenges there and then you throw um people with different backgrounds and all those things so kind of going through the fire the daily grind you know we saw the same markets you did in 1516 which was right after we started pnw you know you learn a lot about yourself going through that yeah in your group and i think just going through those things

made us realize okay we’ve been through the fire we’re still here we enjoy working with each other let’s let’s look at moving this to the next level yeah so that’s what we chose to do but yeah it’s it’s certainly personalities and you know people we have juan you know fuad’s lineage is from syria and lebanon yeah you know he grew up in lebanon he has a different perspective on just life in general you know coming from a different country and then becoming an american citizen and you know that creates a lot of dynamics but i think it actually makes our group really strong i think it’s a good thing yeah when i think about that i think about you know you get some some guys from you know gresham oregon you get some some people are well traveled you know it’s an international you know some whether you know it was lyria or or severe wherever that wherever fuel is actually from no one really knows it’s lebanon yeah lebanon so when you get people from all walks of life you know guys that worked at big public trading companies guys that um are

you know just ground up bootstrap like go hard hard hustle hard work hustle guys out from the country yeah and you can you can find a way to put all those personalities together you got college kids you got i mean if you can find the find the way to mold that into one i think it makes you stronger just because it gives you a ton of perspective and as long as nobody’s trying to dominate the room per se and everybody has respect for everybody’s opinion and you can make a good decision collectively as a group yep i think that only lends like credence to your ability to weather most any storm because sure you have a lot of you know you got a lot of smart minds in one space yeah and the boers family was from the netherlands their dad had lived through world war ii of course and and george or actually bert’s the oldest i believe and if i’m wrong he’ll let me know but uh he’ll call you god damn it i think they came over when he was 12 and his dad already was kind of a scrap guy

yeah they were doing they were scrapping out of their house and so they grew up around it and got to scrapping at an early age and bert had mount hood medals and you know later became part of the group that actually performed metro metals yeah went through that a little bit and then moved on and went to vegas and started another scrap yard and then george had done a lot of other things rock quarries rock breaking had a feed store and then you know never got scrap out of his blood and so he moved in on the property where bird had been and started rivergate yeah but i know bert so i guess the advantage to say a bird too in that is he was part of a three family merger deal at one time so he could probably kind of walk people through like some of the potential pitfalls sure like hey how do we get this to where everybody’s you know speaking the same language we’re all on the same page so i could see where that there’s some advantage advantage there because the first time i ever met bert was when

he had his yard in las vegas yeah so we went down there for i don’t know if it was an israeli convention or we went down there for for a convention it could have been his reach because you know they do it every other year there but and we went and toured his tour his yard and i don’t know who we were with i was with my dad somebody else it could have been mike hershman but we went through and and toured his yard and um he had that 550 sierra if i could write the mobile yeah i actually never went to the yard i know he had a sierra i don’t know he was a 500 or 550 sierra and he also had uh like a reb like a single ram or non-ferrous mater and he ran it all off of a generator yeah because it was too expensive to bring power in there i think that yard’s still operating is it so he sold it and they might have actually moved out of that location i’m not sure but yeah yeah bird’s a good guy yes i was alone for a

couple years but he’s you you find those guys that have been doing it for as long as he has yep your dad has yeah fuwat has those guys there like that understand the business and they understand like sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s it’s terrible yes now yeah it’s now or every your equipment’s expensive it’s more expensive than the the value of the iron where you’re like oh like we were just talking about earlier so there’s going to be a catch-up period again you know and i think you know that’s one thing i really appreciate about our group is with bert george my dad you know justin who’s another one of the partners he’s my age he’s a little maybe a year older you know he’s been doing it since he was a kid my sister jamie our controller another shareholder like she’s been she’s been running skills since she was 14. so so you have both your sisters in the business i did yeah jessie was in the business yeah and she left about 2011. okay so you know what does she have family family dynamic oh yeah she’s living up near

tacoma okay now working and living life nice just was time to time to go do a change yeah yeah i mean like my dad we were talking about with my dad in this room the other day we were talking about you know different family members and some lasted longer than others some decided they want to go do something different somewhere encouraged to go do something different i mean just it’s that family business dynamic where you’re like oh okay it’s it’s time or you know you find a way to stick it out and stay or you find your your lane yeah but you also realize is you know if you look at it it’s no different than any other company you know and of course you meld it you meld it it’s a family business and those emotions from childhood and parents i mean it all comes into it but if you try to keep it somewhat business of you know maybe this just isn’t the best fit or you know maybe maybe we really need you here right now i mean your family’s gone through that too of yeah hey you know jimmy’s living

over wherever and god he’d be great running that yard you know maybe we can get him yeah you know and really our the early rs davis and same for the boers river gate is it was a truly a family business i mean the car crashing crews were like my uncles my grandpa’s my great grandpa’s you know those were the guys that went out and did the work when i graduated from um college in 0-4 and came to work and we at that time we just had our um caldwell yard in the mountain home yard and uh i remember you know we were part of my you know first couple years was we were doing some demo so i was helping do a bunch of demo and then after we got done doing some demo work for simplot my dad said all right now you know you go and start working on the customers you know buying scrap and which was a good fit for me i enjoyed that part of my job but because i went to school at eastern oregon i was really familiar with that area right and so i started

you know working that eastern oregon area you know eastern oregon lagrange to you know boise that’s kind of my sweet spot because we had a guy in mountain home that was kind of covering mountain home that and going east but uh just doing that doing that part of the job was you know a pretty it was a pretty fun job but i always knew i wanted to grow like i’m like okay we have these two yards you know how do we grow our business how do we grow the yeah the pipe business how do we grow the you know scrap business and trucking business you know and for me it was got to add more facilities well going from like 0 4 to say 08 the business was pretty good industry was good you know if you couldn’t make money in those years you’re never going to make money um but you know over here because the value was growing so much it was so expensive to buy anything like if you want to go buy a piece of property in boise and build a facility i mean it was going to cost you

an arm and a leg so you know we ended up buying a yard in goody in idaho and i remember my dad you know when i was talking about buying this buying this facility in 2010 when the price of commercial real estate really came off yeah um he’s like who’s gonna run it that’s always the question who’s gonna run that yard oh you want to expand over there who’s going to run it yeah who are you going to send yeah and back when you know probably when our parents were growing up you sent a family member that’s right you trusted with the cash box right and you know like oh you’re going to have a couple thousand dollars in the teal and you’re just gonna have some guy run it like that you trust i’m like yeah like that’s exactly what i’m gonna do i’m gonna go find somebody that i think can run it because i don’t have any brothers right i only have one sister she’s a school teacher i’m like i’m gonna have to find something that’s not in our family to run the business but that’s how you grew yeah

so when we talk about like family dynamics like that’s how those things a lot of people grew their business was like all right which family member can we trust to go to xyz town and run that business yeah and you know and then taking that step you know from okay we still have a lot of family in the business obviously but as a percentage of the overall business population it’s it’s very small compared to what it used to be yeah and going through the years you know you see you guys have seen it all okay you have good employees and you have employees that aren’t so good and they teach you a lot about your processes and how you need to improve yeah so if you want to open a location okay this is what we do here here’s our checklist you know here’s how this runs here’s what your daily activity is you know and that’s just going from a small to a medium to a larger business yeah here’s all the things we need to get lined out to build a facility and it just takes time you know you still have

experience every time you do something i mean you learn from it you get the hard knocks like you know you can go to college like you want to but like the best way you learn is to go to work yeah doing whatever that whether it’s a scrap business or trucks or whatever it is like you just go to work by making mistakes having other people make mistakes for you so you can learn from their mistakes and your mistakes yeah i feel the most fortunate about that is you know being involved in a family business as you you get those experiences i feel thrown out you faster you know your acid you get the opportunity to do more things at an earlier age than you probably maybe you’d get those opportunities somewhere else but it’s just different when you know your family’s name is behind it you know and what you do every day you do for sure like you you try and you want to do a little bit better yeah and it’s kind of your your gig you know you’re kind of like okay like i want this to work you know i’m

going to put in the extra hours to make this absolutely still work and then you get lucky enough to find like you know find people that want it to work as bad as you do and then that’s when you’re like oh okay like you’re gonna be you’re gonna do well here because you you get it like right you know you understand like what it takes to make this thing happen you got you have patience or you have xyz skill because like probably one of my favorite like most of my favorite outtakes from when i had this conversation with my dad was you’re not gonna get it done in 10 years you’re not going to get in 20 years like it’s going to take you 30 40 whatever you know years people so enjoy the ride right enjoy the journey right but understand like it’s not a it’s not a one-and-done like you’re not gonna you’re not gonna rule the world in a year no and i don’t care how much money you start with if you walk in here with 20 million dollars and you you walk into boise idaho or portland

oregon you have 20 million dollars spent on a piece of land and some equipment and all that that’s great right you’re gonna have the nicest you’re gonna have to buy the best piece of property and a bunch of nice equipment but guess what like everybody else has all the reputation and the roots of taking care of their customers right and doing what they said they’re gonna do and all the stuff that it takes to really get that that off the ground which is like what you guys and and rivergate and you know the boar’s family have all put down those roots in those areas and said you know we’ve been doing this a long time yeah we understand the business we’re not here to to exit tomorrow right like so i mean that that part of the competition you know is you can’t buy that no absolutely there’s no amount of money that buys that like in the area you know when you’re in the community and you know everyone networks differently but you know you have your relationships your employees have their relationships and they know you guys do a good job and

they’re going to do business with you yeah you know versus what the other options are so i think that’s a good point you make though is what it takes to start a scrap yard today you know i listened to your podcast with your dad and your mom you know and i thought back of okay when my grandpa started you know what did it take it took grit it took know how to fix stuff when you’re out in the middle of nowhere and it breaks down and it took your heart and dedication you know now what’s it take it takes all those things but it also takes a shitload of money yeah to go out and okay get a property that’s going to work where you can move material that’s logistically has some advantage and then you know everything that goes beyond that all the equipment it just costs so much more than it used to in relation to where we’re at yeah and the people yeah that want to work in this business the amount of volume that you have to take to to feed those people to to pay for the equipment to

you know pay the taxes on the property and you know the list goes goes on and on so then it becomes somewhat of a volume game if you want to play legitimately yeah and do it the right way yeah and not do a half-assed job like there’s a lot of that that goes that goes into it i mean it’s just it’s not it’s not a it’s not a one-and-done deal anymore like you gotta you gotta be really like dedicated you’re really willing to put a lot on the line you know put all the all your chips in the middle of the table and say well here we go yeah you know so one thing i like one thing that i’ve um i’ve talked to my dad i told my dad the other day on fourth of july i was like hey hank’s in town i go and i’m going to sit down and have a podcast with him he goes well it’s cool and and uh and just i think just by me saying that we didn’t really get too far into it i knew i could see the wheels like

spinning because there’s a lot of like similarities to like his situation and your dad’s situation you know having a partnership and then deciding it was that there’s an opportunity to you know be you know a family-owned business again and i and i remember him like vividly saying you know your dad he’s like he did it oh mick did it right he’s like he got out that deal pretty early and kind of built up his business and i always knew that my dad had a lot of respect for your dad yeah because he he saw that you know and he and he saw the opportunity to you know buy back you know because you got right just to give like a little bit of backstory to that is your dad and my dad about the same time um partnered with schnitzer that’s right right in that 96 97 those years yep and for different timing reasons but somewhat similar with your grandparents want to move on you know my grandpa passed away pretty young he was 59 and my grandma didn’t want to run the business and my dad had been the guy for

a long time and and you know that was the way he was able to take advantage of that opportunity yeah and so he did and you know then the market did what it did late 90s and i don’t think schnitzer was you know as ambitious with acquisitions at that point was also maybe thinking how do we divest yeah you know but i was in college at that time so i don’t really remember what was going on other than him telling me you know i think i’m gonna go out on my own again yeah on my own and he made the choices and you know they had enough leverage to make that happen and i think it was a really good thing for them for schnitzer and rs davis yeah you know going through that time and learning from each other and then you know making the break and we were still a really good supplier for a long time after that happened yeah and i think that that’s the you you do those you have you have those partnerships and like i mean i think that you could probably learn a lot about that

partnership and that relationship and you can use those for your existing partnerships and like your you know the good things about it the bad things you know from the start to the end like okay how do we how do we exit gracefully how do we enter gracefully and everything in between you know and i think there’s there’s a lot to be said for you know going back for those those lessons in life and kind of how do you how do you make it work um but so now for you guys you guys um also you go basically from a partnership you know with them to now you guys basically compete with each other and that dynamic um which i’ve always thought was pretty cool that you you guys were able to find a way to you know find an export type facility right which is your facility in longview that’s right yep so i guess and the reason i bring that up more than anything is i i always i like i i love the story of going from a yard aggression yeah to your export and scrap all over the world right right

like first it’s a big step but it takes a long time a long time but it takes like like that’s the like that’s america like that’s something that like that’s the american dream for a lot of people you don’t have those opportunities in other countries that’s right like those don’t exist i mean if they do they’re very very few and far between yeah the people that hold the power and the money is a very you know small percentage of that population whatever country you want to look at you know and there’s great countries around the world that maybe that’s not the case but i do think overall that’s the way it is you know having traveled a lot of the world and you see that is you know the power is held very closely at the top and in the us if you have the ambition you’re sharp you work your butt off you take the risk i mean that’s a lot of it is you’re willing to like you said put your chips in the middle of the table and see how it goes but if you believe in yourself and you believe

in your employees you know you’ve been through a lot of tough markets like you’re going to figure it out yeah whatever it is well and you and you you have those relationships you have people you can lean on but you have a country that i mean i think that’s kind of the what’s getting lost lately for me is you know as as a country we’re not perfect there’s a lot of issues that we have that we need to work on you know and some of those issues are different for you than me and somebody else right and i’m not gonna get into that that is what it is but i think what gets lost sometimes is like how many opportunities do exist right and how you can write your own check you can like create your own path if you’re willing to do all those things that you just said hustle grit bet on yourself you know establish good relationships work your ass off like all those things that you know people you know certain generations you want to say like hey like it’s going to take you some time to be the yard

manager right you know it’s not but there’s a career path here for you if you want to work hard yeah you know but to get into the country stuff i mean there’s so many different angles to it but what i try to keep in mind is the big picture of you know look at where how this country started nothing nothing in history has ever been perfect right and we fought a war to write the wrong that how it started doesn’t mean it’s been perfect since then but i think with every generation it’s getting i’m hoping it’s going to get better and i think that’s a lot of what we’re going on what’s going on right now in this process yeah it’s the next iteration and i think america will be stronger because of it we’ll go through we’ll have our differences of opinion and hopefully we come out and looking much better and stronger it’s just it’s a tumultuous time but that’s been a lot of the time of america i mean any country it’s going through gyrations of what the populace wants and you know a lot of people want different things and

i think that you know go out and vote and vote for what you want and hopefully the best idea wins at the end of the day well i kind of liken it to like when you let’s say when you enter the scrap business when your dad’s running right i’m drinking faster than brett because i’m on vacation as well but like let’s say let’s say you um your dad has a certain way of doing things right yeah and you come into the business yeah this is the same the same way as i see like exactly what you just said so the next generation they kind of have a way they kind of run around the country right so when you came into the business and so this is before you guys ever partnered with anybody it was just you your dad your sisters my two sisters at the time so straight family business yep my stepmom stepmom yep so did you go did you run into any dynamics because somebody asked me this question earlier today and they’re like so what do you how did your dad take the the fact of you know you

want to come in and do things a certain way and like was there ever any like head bumping and i said oh yeah yeah i’m like it wasn’t like like it is today where it’s like we you know we’re you know best friends like there were some times where we didn’t talk for multiple weeks you know yeah and we worked together yeah yeah scenarios you know what my parents were divorced when i was young so i would see my dad about every other weekend but honestly he was working so much you know and i appreciate that as he’s working his butt off to provide for the family you know i didn’t get to see him as much as i would have wanted and then i moved idaho when i was 12. you know went to college at boise state like okay i need a job i was working for a plumbing company here in boise and went to work for familia over in portland got a job after a couple years i was thinking about going back in my mba yeah he’s like i need somebody to buy scrap it’s 2007 prices are super

high and i need someone to go out and see customers so i did that you know long story short is yes when i came into the business i looked at it as this is awesome i get to spend time with my dad you know and that to me like has meant so much in my life that i’ve had that time now yeah you know from okay what was it 2007 so i mean 13 years ago i was 27ish you know going through those times and learning from him seeing him up close in a business environment was way different than anything i’d experienced as a kid really because i wasn’t old enough you know when i left for idaho to really understand what he was doing and my grandpa were really doing every day besides working their ass off yeah you know so yeah but i think my dad is ultimately patient you know with my sisters and i you know he he was never a dad to say do it this way you know i i try to remember that as a parent too it’s like people just got to figure it out you

know what i would say is i remember him telling me you know i was the guy pushing you know back back when i was younger to your grandpa you know and he’d get pissed and pick up a telephone book and throw it against the wall and be like stop you know he never got to that stage with me but you know that’s i think every generation goes through that and i definitely push you know my sister pushes shawn pushes justin pushes and we’re definitely pushing things forward and we have the benefit of our elders still being involved and being like hey guys that’s not a good idea yeah or hey yeah yeah run with it yeah and there’s some some when you’re probably sitting at me and you’re like yeah that seems like a good idea and no no let’s uh let’s back off that one yeah yeah i mean our kind of a joke is i mean justin just said something the other day it’s like you know we’re always looking at things like you are and we’ve gotten one thing done he’s like well it’s you know monday tomorrow’s or you know

monday next week i’m sure we’ll have something new we’re going to look at it’s like yeah yeah of course you got to be well when you have will that’s that’s the other side of that coin is you know um when you have the new generation come in you know it’s not that they don’t respect what you’ve accomplished up to that point it’s just that they have if they’re doing it right and this is why i don’t look at the way what’s going on our country is a bad thing because i think you hit the nail on the head is i think there’s a lot of people that that want what’s best for the country they just don’t know how to do it they don’t know i mean and you’re going to make some bad decisions on the way i think there’s maybe some bad decisions getting made there’s probably some good decisions getting made but but generally speaking i hope in the back of my mind that everybody wants what’s good for us as a country just like when you come into the business do you want what’s good for the business like you

do yeah today shawn does justin does like they want what’s good for everybody you know going forward you know i i enjoy if i get right any check at the end of the you know every couple weeks or whatever that is once a month and i get it and i write get it right to my parents like that’s a good feeling to me yeah like that means i’m doing my job and that means i was i was able to get enough my way to where i feel good and i enjoy what i’m doing but i’m also able to let them go enjoy the fruits of their paper right right and you know my parents aren’t involved in the day-to-day business anymore that’s their choice that’s what they they want to do um but there’s a lot doesn’t mean i don’t you know call them up every once in a while and i about probably once a week or i’ll text my dad mom in the morning i say hey you guys up for a cup of coffee yeah yeah so i’ll just go to their house yep hit the keurig drink cup

of coffee with them and i’ll just download everything that i’ve got going on and i’m like there it is yeah and they’re like all right good luck sounds like you’re doing great or whatever that is like i’ll leave and then they’re off doing their thing you know that’s cool so i try and keep them in the loop just because there’s sometimes i’ll run into something i’m like what do you think about this you’ve been through something like this before yeah just so i have a sounding board you know and that’s what i appreciate about i mean all of our elders in the company you know you can call them any of them be like what do you think about this you know that’s the way it should be but it really so yeah it means a lot yeah free sounding boards yeah i mean you guys george burke fought my dad who have been around yeah they’ve just been around it so long and i’ve seen every type of market and i mean same for your dad yeah you know he’s been through through the fire yeah when you see those you know for

my dad when you see that you know 99 market and then you see the 09 or you know then you see the 15 and you you know then like when i was you know we were talking about this when you see the coven market come around you’re like yeah this is this is a little new now that there isn’t challenges with it but it’s more like oh geez i mean i mean i’m sure there’s a lot of similarities to it to it as well so i mean you guys being in oregon um weathering the storm over there has has been is it is it creating any challenges any issues um opportunities you know i just think it’s a when we’ve talked about this before when i visited you last time it’s a much different regulatory environment in oregon versus idaho and even washington versus idaho you know good things bad things i won’t get into the details of it but you know i would say the the majors in oregon and washington early on because it was coming in from the west coast and the east coast but we’re on one of those coasts

yeah and so the reaction early on when we really didn’t know the data um was very draconian you know and if if it ended up being a plague that you know was going to kill 20 percent of the people i think that’s the right thing but as the data start to come out and i’m not trying to minimize anyone that gets extremely sick from it because i could get it you know a week from now and die from it it’s serious um but overall i do think um hopefully the numbers trend in the right direction over time yeah and we get to a better spot as a country with it because i don’t think we can keep doing what we’re doing with with locking down in this fashion and have you know smaller businesses services tough on business it’s extremely important yeah i mean for us we we fought through it you know and sean spent a ton of time shawn david with our group because he’s the israeli president and he spent a ton of time making sure that we could operate you know in our region yeah so oregon washington alaska british

columbia you know it wasn’t affected as much but yeah so i mean we made sure recycling is essential and that was a nationwide effort and israel played a big part in that so because it wasn’t a certainty no that we were going to be allowed to operate so i think that’s really important to point out the work of what israel did federally and in the states because there was a lot of effort to make sure especially in the places that were locking down to educate legislators let them know like okay you can shut us down but when you haul your garbage to your transfer station you sort out your recyclables you want somebody to handle that or you just want to landfill it and lose all the economic value from it exactly you know that i mean just how much more trash is getting produced right now i mean you know you make it takes you took decades to make all the headway that they’ve made you know and hopefully it’s a short-term gig but i mean you talk about the amount of masks and rubber gloves and you know ppe and all

that extra trash that’s that’s getting accumulated you know you’re you’re you’re a single stream guys are i mean they’re getting inundated with you know volumes of stuff that they can’t even handle sell right turn into a commodity anymore i mean it’s which started way ahead of this but yeah but it’s a whole other topic that’s a whole nother oh yeah that’s like a whole six-pack yeah yeah but i mean yeah it’s it’s that whole deal is a it’s a it’s a crazy dynamic it’s a crazy deal and i i’m with you that i hope cooler heads prevail i’m happy that i’m not in the restaurant business yeah or the bar business and you thought restaurants had a hard time making it before man i don’t i feel for it for people in those industries you know the hospitality business um that’s it yeah i’m i’m thankful once again that i’m in the industry industries that we’re in just because we are i think most people are now starting to deem themselves essential yeah at least it feels like that you know but if you’re in those hospitalities i mean there’s no way to

say that i think you can both smart but usually people are going to show up and want to rent a room exactly or a house an apartment you know huge credit to the people that are on the front lines you know let’s say that obviously the hospital workers but the grocery stores you know the checkers there i mean the people that make the economy go i think that highlighted more than anything the last three or four months is you really understand you know who makes things happen and we’re part of that oh yeah absolutely and just and i think hopefully if my my one big takeaway from this whole deal and i i i truly believe it is if the unemployment stays it stays high is people will start valuing their job yeah more yeah and whatever that job is and i don’t care whether you’re like a grocery store clerk if you’re a you know you’re cutting iron with a torch in front of you all day or work at office admin or whatever that is i think hopefully if there’s anything that people will value going back to work because when you’re

at home and you’re just cooped up i mean there’s a lot of that that’s not as easy it sounds all good in theory after about a week or two i think people started to realize oh maybe this isn’t that great like i kind of value going to see my colleagues at least if you enjoy somewhat of what you do yeah i mean i hope that’s the snapback from it you know but there’s definitely you know not to get too far into the politics of it but i think that’s a big question for the country and and for people’s self-worth you know because there’s a certain portion of the population this could be said worldwide that doesn’t want to work yeah and i think there’s a lot of value and well-being and going to work every day and providing for your family and it seems like there’s been a little bit of loss of that maybe that’s what you’re alluding to is you know maybe it’s just easier to not work well okay like maybe it’s easier physically yeah but is that good for your mental and health mental health and your your

physical health it’s not no is it good for your family no i mean is it is that is that really i mean is that the you know is that the the bar you want to set for your for your kids yeah and say you know yeah we’re good just you know we’re just gonna get paid to sit here i mean if that’s if that’s if that truly is then you know you you probably never valued your job in the first place and you or you didn’t you didn’t find something you really enjoyed doing but i mean hopefully people become more thankful for all the little things the you know the family time that you know the the staycations of just hanging around with your family and doing the hunting the fishing the camping the whatever you enjoy doing as a family playing games on a board whatever that is like hopefully there’s like the one that’s the one big takeaway is we get through this and make all right let’s figure it out i know all the parents are hoping let’s get these kids back to school yeah oh yeah or a lot of

them i shouldn’t say oh no i think that there’s there’s a there’s a lot of that yeah my wife’s a school teacher for a living yeah and and she’s ready to go back to school you know i mean she’s ready to you know give back to her colleagues and do that i mean but she’s one of those people that really enjoys what they do so like what’s the big a couple more questions and i’ll let you get out of here but what’s the big what do you enjoy the most about your job about what you do like what’s about when you think about the scrap business yep i mean what is it that that you like yeah i’d say number one is just you know seeing our employees succeed you know to make that kind of just an overall statement as i i love the stories of you know someone that started around the same time as me and she’s come up through the company she’s run our biggest facility she’s doing different things now but seeing those success stories and being part of it yeah um you know it’s really awesome just to

have that experience with employees and then i think for me personally is i always tell my wife scrap never sleeps because it really doesn’t i mean it’s always trading you know i know you’ve sold loads of scrap in the middle of the night at some point oh yeah and i i like the fast-paced nature of it and how you know you go to bed you wake up it can be a really good day or hey yeah market’s off a little bit we’re going to do some different things but i like that um kind of international flavor to it yeah is okay we’ve been selling to xyz country for the last five years while things change and you know this the consumers are now spreading out over southeast asia because they need to be in some different markets and hey all of a sudden this market’s hot now yeah we need to take a trip there we need to go see those consumers and learn about them and what they’re doing and see if we’re a good fit so i just like to constantly changing dynamic of the business yeah it’s never stagnant you

know we figure out new ways to recycle and there’s new products that are made that we have to figure out to recycle i think the opportunity like if you’re looking for it it seems like there’s always opportunity to grow and it doesn’t even have to be like geographically right it just there’s always opportunity to grow your business if you’re just kind of on the hunt to like okay what can we what products can we buy produce process and like what commodities are you know going to be the next you know big ones that we need to kind of get in front of or right or what’s coming down the line that we need to be prepared to handle so we can process the rest of the stuff effectively i think that’s what excites me about the business too is the future you know thinking about the way ai is going to affect the business and also you know how does the world at large place value on recyclables yeah you know and not to say mining’s all bad i mean we need we need mines to produce what they’re producing because that’s the beginning

of the chain but at some point uh how does society reward the recyclers you know and you and i talked about that on the walk is you know look what it costs to be in the business and at some point um you know i do think society will figure that out and i think it’s starting yeah where you’re going to see additional value placed on what we do every day because people realize how valuable the resources are and if we don’t capture them then they’re gone you know unless you want to go mine landfills which people do there’s truly like a urban like i was i kind of got on a kick there for a while but there truly is like an urban mining component to what we do i mean people think about mining they think about these big you know huge talk of trucks and huge excavators and you know digging up dirt and running through a series of machines that are you know creating these alloys where like basically that’s the same thing that we’re doing but just with leftover crap like you know you’re running big shredders and you know

breaking it up you’re basically taking breaking up into small pieces and sorting off the alloys and then basically refining it into something new again right i mean it’s the same thing they’re doing but i really love like that urban mining component to what we do yeah so my one one last thing my wife asked me this we were talking last night and she said uh you know somebody she was watching something on i don’t know like facebook or one of those videos and this gal asked this question she said if you’re ever interviewing for a job like this is one last question you should ask and i was like well i’m not really interviewing for a job but she said tell me somebody in your company that was super successful and and why they are successful and i was like well that’s a good question like if you you know if you want to know like how to how do you build you know how do you come into a business with not knowing anything yeah just tell me somebody and what what what did they do that was so good you know that

to build that up so i mean when you guys look at your business and your partnership and the relationships going forward i mean what do you think separates you guys from the other guys like what makes you guys better than you know your competitors or you know or what just makes you good in general yeah i mean kind of yeah i know where i’m going so i i would say that like i talk about our ownership group that’s a huge component of having been through all the different markets and being able to lean on that experience but really it comes down to our people and how we treat them and we try to always treat them as family even though we’ve grown to this size and we’re always conscious of okay we’ve gotten bigger we need to have this policy but how does it actually affect our people yeah um you know because you you have to grow you have to have more protocols as you get bigger but trying to limit the bureaucracy and then i think about who’s our bench yeah who are the guys that are coming in and gals that

are coming into the business because we have a lot of females and leadership positions and they’ve grown all the way up with the company as we’ve scaled as well is how do you get that bench ready because we we do have a lot of older people in our employee group as well that have been in scrap for 30 years and i mean their stories are right alongside our ownership group they’ve grown with the company but those guys and gals aren’t going to be there forever and so getting the people that understand this business want to be in it teaching them okay some of the old way and some of where we’re heading and then being prepared okay which right now if i think about our company and our employee group is i can think of four or five people i could plug in tomorrow if we bought a yard and say okay you’re running it because i know that we’ve put in the work to give them the tools to run it and i also believe in them because they’ve been loyal to our group they work their butt off yeah they’re ready to

go so i think that’s a lot of what like separates us from maybe some larger companies and smaller companies that you know maybe they’re not putting the work into developing those people and getting them ready for those opportunities and showing them that there are opportunities down the line if you ever want to grow you gotta you gotta build the bench you do like and i think as i never thought about it that way but that’s a good that’s a that’s a good thing to end on but it’s a good point like if you want to grow your business build a bench absolutely get them ready yep that way when you do that when the opportunity does present itself you’re like yeah because that’s always the question okay we want to we want to buy a yard or we want to start a facility who’s going to run it back to the old school yeah who’s going to run it much appreciate it bud thanks man thank you for coming by appreciate it thanks for coming out and drinking cold beers and hanging out absolutely you