all right we’re live here at uh scrap Expo on the second day we might have had a couple extra cocktails last night to celebrate the first couple the first day but I’m sitting here with uh Justin Trent to do right yes sir from uh out of Florida but his company is uptime which Nick is the one that told me about up time he goes dude you gotta check this out you gotta check this product out he goes it’s legit you and I met in uh isary down in Vegas yeah so we were basically like hey like let’s let’s let’s connect let’s make this do the podcast set up and make it happen so I’m super stoked we were able to do that and so we’re here today yeah man uh thanks for having me on uh I’m honored to be on your show I think it’s uh really cool what you’re doing man and uh excited to talk a little bit about scrap a little bit about uptime and a little about about what you do ultimately like one thing I love about like the what we do like I’m I do the podcast
right but I’m an everyday operator like I’m in this scrap business every day like when I leave here and I go back like we’re gonna go look at the yards we’re gonna I’m gonna see what inventory I got I’m gonna sell the scrap I’m gonna discuss with production like I’m every day boots on the ground like in my stuff right and it from what I understand statements for you like same for me man I mean you’re in it I’ve been in the scrap business about 18 years and uh being in that I started to see some issues that we were having operationally and that’s kind of what led me to develop uptime you know trying to hold guys accountable to do their daily inspections to remember when’s the last time we did a service on a machine instead of looking at a an oily filter that has some dates smudged on there yeah having an Excel sheet having a big board you know the the data was uh fragmented and it was hard it was hard to figure out what was going on it was hard to hold guys accountable like you know what
they were doing in the yard what I was doing with my equipment and that’s kind of what led me to develop uptime PM so what is you tell me about your uh your yard where are you located so so I work now what with a company called resource metal recycling okay down in South Florida we’ve got four operations down there we got a shredder uh in uh in Broward County Pompano Beach and uh we have you know we’re full full service so we have the shredder we have a pretty sophisticated Downstream that we just installed uh we have our main non-ferrous processing facility in Lauderhill um that’s where we also process the heavy iron okay and then we have a two additional feeder yards so the other feeder yards feed the non-ferrous into our Lauderhill facility uh and the cut grades into Lauderhill and then all of the shreddable goes to the shredder and that’s really uh just a commercial area we don’t buy any Peddler scrap at the at the shredder at all no it’s a tight footprint down in South Florida yeah uh and uh uh land is at a
premium when I was uh I went and did a podcast with Adam Weitzman up in Upstate New York right and at his Owego facility they don’t take retail retail scrap either right it’s just tons in tons out they just jam it through there comes down to your transactional cost I mean yeah if you can buy 20 tons of scrap from that one guy and it takes you know it takes five a lot of push-out trailers down in South Florida too they don’t offload it with a lot of push-outs and a lot of dumps you know so if you can buy 10 or 15 20 tons from one guy get them in and out and instead of having to deal with the Peddlers although we all know that that’s where the gravy is yeah but uh you know you have to deal with 20 30 40 50 of those guys to get the same amount that you’ll get from you know a commercial account so you focus on being efficient getting the scrap in and out shredding to the ground every single night and the only way to be efficient is to have
like good equipment like equipment that that’s it’s in working condition that all that so ultimately like and this is kind of where I’m going with it is you know equipment is like the Game Changer in our business right like the ability to have you know running equipment operating equipment then then obviously have new equipment good equipment and it you invest in back in your business and being willing to make that investment nothing in the scrap business is cheap right like my wife and I have had this conversation a few times and I’m like you know I bought you a new a new Ferrari today and it’s like a Cinnabon yeah right right I’m like because you’re talking about every time like the barrier of Entry is is high so going into like what you what you’ve got what you’ve kind of developed with uptime is how do you make sure that the Ferrari is getting taken care of exactly 100 you couldn’t decide it better I mean you spend four or five hundred thousand dollars on an excavator and you have an hourly guy making maybe 20 25 an hour yeah and and you
and you take that 500 000 asset and expect him to take care of it right yeah and you’re using a pencil and paper checklist and I mean I do the same stuff like I mean I’m I’m in that boat so like I can’t sit here and say like we’re the most updated and do all this like there’s certain things we’re really good at and there’s certain things that like we we need to like keep pushing forward yeah I mean it’s all about accountability it’s just it’s not just about the accountability of the operator who’s who’s on the piece of equipment every day yeah if that operator is reporting things and and either management or the mechanics aren’t getting it done I mean there’s a lot of stakeholders that have to make make sure that that machine is running right so you want to hold your operator accountable but you also want to hold the management accountable you want to hold the maintenance staff accountable and you need that equipment to run so you can capitalize in good markets and when it’s a bad Market yeah still you’ve got to be able to operate because
you got to do whatever you and you’ve said this a million times who just heard you say you gotta hustle and grind even harder you have to yeah I mean that’s the name of the game for us right to name the game for our industry and the and why I love like I had like I I did a podcast yesterday with uh Sean Davidson right like he’s big on the tech side of our industry and trying to figure out how to close gaps tighten stuff like where it’s like there’s a you know a huge thing like this just look through your process and see where there’s some old school shift that you’re doing like Excel paper like we let’s eliminate that right and then so he’s looking for opportunities Investments that make sense to do that right which is what you basically create like you went through your process and said I’m I got Excel sheets and like a guy with a pencil and a clipboard doing stuff that we should just be basically and and not only like to take it like even a step further but not only on the uh um
maintenance side but also on the regulatory side like the OSHA and all this that goes along with it like if something happens God forbid like in your yard yeah they’re gonna say let me see your maintenance records on that piece of equipment on that truck on that train thousands of dollars and fines you better be able to produce it and put and if you know about it it’s like gross negligence yeah and that could be there’s a lot of penalties potentially yeah especially on the forklift side the the lift the lift trucks I think OSHA calls them yeah those are those are regulated if they come in your yard you know seat belts not working fire extinguisher is not there uh it could be potentially a big big so how long um how long have you been in the scrap industry 18 years 18 years yeah so I started what what got you into the dark side so you know I was in college I just got back from a study abroad in Mexico and uh my cousin called me up and uh said he needed a translator to go with him down to
Central and South America yeah I had about like three or four weeks left until I had to go back to school and I was like man I’m broke I’ve been in Mexico for six months I have no money I’m painting houses here he’s like you know what do you making an hour and I told him it was like what 10 or 15 yeah it’s an hour he’s like all right I’ll give you 2 000 bucks and I’ll pay all your expenses but you got to meet me at the airport tomorrow through that damn paint brush down I was like oh I’m going to Central and South America so so uh we ended up going uh to Panama Costa Rica and Venezuela and I was just translating for him and uh no idea just because you can speak a language fluently doesn’t mean you like know every register of language like yeah I didn’t know scrap I didn’t even know what it was I was some you know dumb college kid yeah and uh so after that two-week span uh you know he wanted me to kind of quit school and I said no
I’m not going to quit school I have two more years left so he said call me next summer so called him next summer uh he ended up sending me to China for three three months I went to China and worked in a processing facility in taijo okay uh basically lived at the scrap yard but I but I didn’t eat at the scrap yard luckily I ate with the family so it was really nice uh but kind of learned the scrap business and that was like my first real dive like getting my hands into it like this was a motor processing facility a wire processing facility and like a mixed metal processing facility so I’m over here you know the only American uh at this place people are kind of looking at me funny and I’m just out there trying to learn I don’t know what I’m really doing yeah um you know finally uh after that kind of was done went back the next year graduated started working at a uh his brother’s facility out in Phoenix Arizona he owned a small little retail operation okay and I started buying on the scale breaking
scrap down breaking wire down uh like you’re like a real scrap guy I dove into it like well you but you’ve like you’ve kind of seen it from a ton of angles right yeah yeah man I have that’s awesome and I started buying and I started like uh you know brokering scrap travel so this is why like I did this podcast right I want to talk to like real like you know people in our industry like around our industry that are involved that like have a they have a sense of like what it’s about I tried to get out of the industry but it just dude it’s like a I mean I did I thought I was gonna you know when I sold my interest in my company in Atlanta in 2019 uh I thought I was going to do something else I thought I was gonna just continue with with uptime but the scrap that I mean just the the daily the thing we love to hate hate to love whatever you want to call it yeah the scrap business I mean you just it’s hard to it’s like a Vortex dude it
just sucks you in and you’re like oh okay I’m still here yeah but I don’t know for me like I’ve always loved it so it is what it is but I mean when I talk to people so many times like well I thought I was gonna do something different and then I got a call because somebody once you know the industry and you know the ins and outs and you know the material and you know the processes and whatever else there’s a there’s some people know that you know it and they’re like hey what are you doing hey hey you know and I get a lot of calls like hey will you just come just check this out and let me give me your two cents right and I was I was talking to me I flew to Pittsburgh uh about a month ago a guy was looking at doing a big demo project he’s like we just come and just help me estimate the the volume of scrap that I think you think is there and I was like all right yeah and and him and I’ve done lots of done some business
together and we’re still doing business this day and uh I’m like yeah okay I’ll I’ll go like because they know you know right yeah and it gives them another like it’s it’s kind of an interesting tool it’s like one of those weird Tools in your toolbox that most people are like you have that tool like yeah you know I could use the uh the scrap business has kind of helped you because you’re obviously in all these other Ventures it’s like it has has your has your scrap life kind of helped you with all these other businesses that you’ve kind of that you guys are doing it I think they feed off of each other right like the only like say like I’m I’m in the the scrap the recycling industry right so I’m always looking for what’s that next step I can do that will like provide a better customer service opportunity right so for me like the tire side I already had a built-in customer base people I was doing business already so like I’m like so let’s say like a landfill they have tires that they take they receive and they’re
trying to get rid of them and whatever else I’m like how can I alleviate that problem at the same time I still want a bail your I want to make I want to log your scrap send it to shredders I need to create competitive advantages right and basically it’s where the competitive Advantage is it’s hard to replace me because I’m gonna give you a good price on your scrap at the same time I’m going to help you take care of another issue that you have right there’s I’m just looking I’ve seen your projects I mean you you clean it up it’s it’s brand new yeah I’m gonna tighten everything up and make it like do it right and I’d rather do it right than do like 20 different things I’d rather just do eight nine things just really good that’s what you have man so talk about I mean I’m gonna we’re gonna take off but yeah just give everybody like a little bit of run down like what up time like really is like I really want you to to talk about it yeah uptime uptime PM is a completely digitized process of
your entire maintenance system uh from the daily inspections your operators produce um we’re very flexible uh in uh doing this for any type of equipment not just yellow iron but we have trucks you can do this for for stationary assets shredders balers anything like anything like that any facilities inspections you can you can run your entire maintenance division off this platform uh digital notifications you know email blasts work order processes and flows uh complete cost tracking and accountability that’s it that’s what it’s about man I love it man and for anybody out there I’m telling you like in our industry it’s been a long a lot of long time so people really like went on the tech side and really like kind of put something put their thoughts together and really built something cool and we’re gonna have this another conversation outside the podcast trying to figure out what we can do to see if we can even keep our updated and running tight awesome man well thank you thank you so much I appreciate it absolutely man thanks for coming and sitting down and uh enjoy the rest of the show you too
man all right buddy take care