welcome to a scrap life a podcast solely focus 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 eart we’re back everybody another episode of a scrap life and this one’s uh not very often do I get the two for one special so I’m I’m kind of excited today it’s usually a one-on-one Endeavor but this one just couldn’t be done with a one-on-one because it’s the two guys um two cousins as a matter of fact that started Ruby recycling a great story it’s super interesting I’m super excited to put this one on just because um I think everybody that’s it’s in in the scrap World um knows individuals like this that have kind of went out and found their own path and started something pretty cool and in this one Ruby recycling I’m going to let um Jeff and Jay tell the story but of all the names the come up with on why would you name your your company Ruby recycling like

let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth where did the name come from so as uh as Brad mentioned Jeff and I are first cousins and our grandfather is name is Ruben sunny and as we uh started to put together a plan to eventually Chase the Dream of Entrepreneurship and opening up our own yard uh you know the name mattered and uh it rolls off the tongue and you know our grandpa was a very important part of our life uh taught usue and um it stucks with it stuck with us forever so we wanted to name the company after him to honor him uh every day you know and he was a man of honor and virtue and it forces us to always put that at the top of our brains every day we work wasn’t there wasn’t a question it wasn’t a question of what the name would be when we decided to do our yeah so it’s cousins I was asking this earlier about cousins um what’s the relation between yeah Jeff’s dad and my mom are siblings and um that’s why uh my middle name’s Sunny so I still have it I

still have the name in in my name somewhere that’s so is your grandmother still is she still alive so she passed away in May of 19 I want to say she was 95 years old and she lived a long life she got to see all of her grandkids become parents that’s awesome and um so yeah no she’s uh she’s no longer with us so what do your brothers sisters think about you guys having the name Ruby recycling they got think that’s pretty cool I would assume they love it my my I think our parents you know my dad and his mom my dad always makes comments about oh papa is smiling papa is upstairs smiling right now but the they love it they uh um they I think my dad was brought to tears when I told him that uh we were calling it Ruby would be recycling we got love like I said I was thinking about that earlier like you know I told you I thought about the name and I was like you know where does that come from but then when you then when you hear the story you’re like

oh yeah I like makes sense it’s it’s was your was your grandfather in the scrap business or was it just no it’s just you guys so if you if he wasn’t in the scrap business then how do you two uh gentlemen find your way into this uh crazy industry some days I consider bad luck some days I consider good luck I got a phone call from a guy that I grew up with he was looking to expand his electronics recycling uh business at the time his name is Nathan Zach and um he offered me an opportunity to help grow his electronic business so he hired me in 2007 and then eventually um I moved back home to Detroit to help open G scrap metal in Detroit so that was my original experience and then um I got into the business from with them in Ferris and non feris and I was with them until 2013 so that’s how I got my so I got my start yeah and mine mine started in December of 13 so Jay after GLE Jay moved to uh to a company called glr and uh I was in The

Collection business actually at the time I was uh running the legal department of a collection agency collecting money and um and so Jay was glr was a small company at the time they had one Peddler yard in in a city called rosille Michigan and Jay and the owner um who I also knew from my childhood wanted to expand it grow it and they needed some young like-minded people and so they uh they made me an offer to come on board as uh as I started as a Trader just uh knowing nothing about scrap no experience in scrap no experience knowing I didn’t know what non-fair is from fairness anything uh so I started as a Trader in January of 14 at glr and started working my way up and then eventually we started uh decided to start buying cars and that’s when I got into the uh into the car side and recycl I feel like if you’re in the collections business then you’re always making deals right so there is like a uh I feel like there is there’s something there like you know because on the scrap side it’s people

you know we talk about it all the time is you know we even talk about on the expansion side when I was at scrap Expo I kind of included my discussion was like you don’t necessarily have to have a ton of capital you just got to be good at structuring deals any kind of a way with any type of person to get to where you’re trying to get to right and I feel like that’s collection there’s nothing there’s nothing harder than than getting somebody to answer your call and then give you their money to pay off an old bill that they don’t want to pay trust me there’s nothing harder in this world than doing that told want to give an opportunity to work for a company we’ offer people money he couldn’t wait to get on they’re like oh I get to I get to give people money instead of trying to take it yeah let’s go let’s do it I can see I can see the advantage of I can see the advantage of that for sure so um in 2013 is kind of when you guys actually went to work together

right and at glr and I was reading through my notes and I was going through and it was talking about you know glr when you guys started in 2013 to 2020 is when you guys exited had a tremendous like growth curve right I mean it went from said one one yard to when you guys exited was what was two broker divisions okay and what drove that growth I mean I’m sure the market I remember those years you know going from 133 to to 20 and there was that kind of a blip in the 145 that there was a and I say blip like rough a tough one which is actually what created the opportunity for us to buy out Schnitzer out of our business um in that right around that time period but uh what what really drove that that growth um from 13 to 20 for glr as a company and your guys’ careers as a whole yeah I think up management I was you know Jeff touched on like-minded people you know we were young and um aggressive yeah there you go said at the same time must be true and

uh you know we were I mean we were aggressive we were battling against big boy when we came in we were battling against big boys like Ferris processing and Fritz and and at the time you know and you had to be really aggressive to kind of break into that right okay parts yards in Detroit auto parts yards are everywhere and there’s some really big names like us Auto and Ryan’s Auto Parts that are big names in Detroit that have been around forever um that kind of had a strangle it was like a good old boys club right that had a strangle hold on the cars and the only way we could kind of break through it was to be super aggressive um which we were yeah we aggressive we also had you know different business models you know we had our growth you know a couple yards were just pedal yards some were mainly cars some were feris and non-is mixed with cars or mixed with pedr when you have more than one business model it also allows you to grow uh quick if you so choose to and you know the ownership

team was not afraid to uh to spend some money on growth and and believing in us and um so you know it really starts with upper management having the um the stomach for it and ownership team having the belief in the upper management to support that so was it was the an active ownership I mean were people that people that that were owners were they involved in the day-to-day business just as heavily as the as the ort management nope the majority owners are not um okay so it was it was a lot of trust and I learned a lot from them and uh definitely grateful for my experience there so was there a willingness to like deploy Capital like you said I mean there’s a lot of trust there because obviously you don’t go from say one yard to seven and you know really that type of expansion was there and you say the owners weren’t active um was there a was there a willingness to deploy excess amounts of capital to achieve growth plus just having a group of young Hustlers for lack of a better term to get it done

tell you when when I um when I left GLE to for an opportunity at glr you know the majority owner said to to myself and a couple other guys there you know if you guys can if you guys can support me spending the money I’ll spend it and I can tell you we tested that theory time and time again and he I’ll give him some credit the man always came through on it he did that’s awesome that’s awesome so how many so at that age I’m how old were you guys at that time just trying to play put the are you guys similar in age or are you about the same 4 we’re both 42 so yeah so I was about 32 yeah I was about 32 years old when we started there 31 32 and then uh by the time we really started growing it in our in our mid-30s really kind of getting aggressive yeah people around you you guys are similar age doing the same thing together the main the so the the owner like like Jay touched on the the the main owners were older but the the the

minority owner that was running it was the same age as us we grew up with him uh he was also Uber aggressive uh so the three of us were kind of like the uh the driving force of of the growth that’s so people ask me all the time like why I’m able to do what I do and I have the same concept right I have a bunch of uh guys that are the same age as me like within a year or two and we’re all very similar minded and we just get up every day just go at it right and it’s like it’s a the funnest thing and I don’t I think people that aren’t in our you know that don’t do what we do with their friends or their cousins or whatever like that they don’t understand like you can actually have a good time and and there don’t get me wrong like there’s some stressful like there’s some moments that kind of come up every day or once a month or a year or whatever and you’re like oh here we go you know but it’s like when you’re at least in

the trenches with all your friends you don’t feel like you’re just kind of alone and you’re like yeah like whatever throw gets thrown at us good or bad you there’s there’s something that you’re going to get out of it you know I always say we’re gonna end up roses on the other side even if we have toh swim through to get there absolutely yeah through some I mean that’s just what it is but you know I take a lot of pride in uh in the downtimes you know and how you get through it and that’s how we judge ourselves you don’t judge yourself on on the good like in the good markets in the good times when when everything’s easy like you judge yourself on how well you do when times are tough when markets are down when when when you’re grinding every single day to try and to to just figure out a way to squeeze every inch of profit you can out of that month uh that’s how we always judged ourselves and that’s when we felt like we were at our best that’s what gave us an advantage over other people

did you feel was there an underdog like feeling when you guys were battling 100% I’m going to tell you a quick little story okay so so it was probably about 2014 so we in 2014 g artist had we wanted to get into the car game and it was the previous the owner of glr Michael who’s our age Jay and myself sitting at a table and we brought in the higher ups from feris processor um it was uh you know one of their main Traders one of their operations guys one of their vice president the hups and we said we’re going to start buying cars um we want you guys to buy our crush cars Let’s Make a Deal we’re gonna buy a hundred a month that’s all we said 100 a month not very many yeah and um they laughed at us they literally laughed at us and said how do you guys think you’re going to just roll in and start buying cars in in this Mar in Detroit Detro is the most competitive scrap Market in the country yeah um it’s a fact we’ve been told you know by by other uh

so it’s the most competitive scrap Market in the country for scrap cars they said how do you expect to just roll in and and we took it personal and we still to this day Jay and I even now that we’re here in Ruby we remember that moment when they laughed at us and they walked out and we said all right and we ended up we by the time we left glr we were buying 880,000 cars a year um and so um there there was absolutely the underdog chip on the every day we woke up with the chip on our shoulder like let’s go to war let’s go let’s go battle these big boys who think that they’re better than us just because uh their their business C is as feris but the thing is that what’s different is those guys who have that business card didn’t build it they don’t own it they don’t wake they don’t need it right they just they go they wake up they go to work they make a few phone calls they hang up at five o’clock they check out they go home we needed it like

it was like we had to and so there was no comp they couldn’t compete with us even though they were bigger and we were small it’s the old saying the old saying goes and and I’ve always said this to be you know to be true is um it’s hard to be hungry when you’re fed right and sometimes the bigger the bigger they get then they they’ll feel fed and and and when you’re fed like you’re not hungry like you are when you’re you know like when when when when we started here and I started recruiting guys my age and like we were just hungry right and just like we are today we’re hungry to do more we’re hungry to build but it’s just a it’s just cuz we came from a one two yard system right where we’re like competing against you know our main competitor’s got 44 yards you know like and here we are like all right let’s go you know let’s battle and D we loved it man and I think to this day that’s what gets us up every day so I knew like just by talking to you guys

I was like I bet there’s going to be some crossover here that Underdog like mentality when you’re just so hungry you’re willing to work the hours you’re willing to do what whatever it takes and I think that’s the uh that’s the game and I think um I I could see that in you so it obviously you guys work together now give me the story from inception um to to today like when you started when you guys left kind of what’s the What’s that the transition look like you know you guys are go from you know one yard to eight seven yards and you guys are you’re battling through it to what makes you guys kind of like say okay we’re done we’re going to go do our own thing you know I can’t speak for Jeff but I can speak for me you know um August of 2020 was a big uh a big month and year for me it was the uh 10th anniversary of my Dad’s passing and also would have been his 70th birthday and my dad started his own business from scratch and um built it with my mom and

I just there’s certain things he told me throughout my life that I just kept hearing on repeat and it just kept hearing on repeat you know and you know one of them was you know he said if you’re going to work like you own the place and act like you own the place and stress like you own the place might as well own the place you know yeah and um and I remember I asked him one time as well in high school I still remember I asked him you know what made him want to start his own company and without thinking you know he said every boss I ever had I always thought I was better then and I wasn’t afraid to test the theory um not saying that’s how I feel about the bosses I’ve had but um at some point you know I was 39 at the time uh August 2020 and I was just like you know what if I don’t jump Chase the Dream now I might never do it so it was really that simple you know I mean it wasn’t not everybody has that awareness like yeah component

right where it’s like my window of time where I’m going to have a level of comfort to to do this right is right now and so I mean good that you were able to step back I was the same age I was 39 I had two kids and a mortgage now I have three kids but I had two little kids at the time and um and and we just you know there comes a time where you just feel like um like there’s more right like like you you can do more you can handle more like you’re doing everything but um you’re tired of seeing everything everything work out for everybody else based on your hard work let’s go do it for ourselves and so um you know it’s it’s it was just time it was time to make the leap and and bet on ourselves and you know similar to Jay my dad you know he he was a dentist but he owned his own practice when he was 31 years old similar age to I was and he had kids he made the leap to leave the dental office he was at and

go start his own practice and build it from scratch and he told me you know you can never put a price on Independence you can never put a price on happiness and I knew that I wasn’t going to be happy just working at this at this company I was making a good living but working at this company for the next 20 30 years like you know the only way to truly go to do something is go do it for yourself and so we have skin you have to have skin in the game right in one fashion or another and that’s something that I pushed for here is um you know we have a kind of a core group of individuals that have helped us build this right and I basically said like you guys now officially you have skin in the game right it’s now as much as part of your business as it is mine and so when we when we’re able to do that then I’m like okay like now you know that they everybody’s in it to to win it but I think that if you’re not in a position in

a in a company that’s not willing to give you skin in the game then you have to go create and put skin the game somewhere right I think that’s the you know like not everybody’s built like that though right and I understand that but the people that are like they’re just not GNA be happy until they actually you know have they either have it yeah exactly so like we we got tired you know I I should say we I I got tired of of making other people really wealthy off my hard work you know that’s you know it’s it’s it’s time for us to go do something do something for ourselves and and be sink or swin pass or fail whatever it might be at least we know that we gave it our shot and and and and and then go was our it was our time yeah the other two say is uh real quick just to wrap up that answer you know I knew me well enough to know if I never gave it a shot later in my life I would have thought of myself as a fraud to be honest

with you like Jeff said pass or fail if we fail I’ll know and you know that works I don’t want to also touch on our wives right I mean they supported us 100% you know I came home and I told my wife I said listen I’m I’m leaving and I don’t have a plan and I will figure it out I promise and she honestly said good and I know and that was it there was no debate there’s no push back I was like I love your parents and we ain’t moving in with them so I’m going to figure out question my conversation with my wife went a little different not quite that you not quite as cut and dry as that one but uh at the same thing she knew like she knew I wasn’t going to be happy there um and she knew that that that one way or another we would figure it out and and um and she believed in us and she believed in me and she she knew that I I had you know I had the drive to get it done I think for the for the people

out there listening um Jeff and I have something in common both of our wives are um special education teachers which I think goes to a their willingness and their patience is important like that you develop a ton of patience with that profession so I always feel like my wife looked at me as a good project um so I would assume your yours was was similar still does she still she still and I she I know that I am too but I I was talking to Matt from Milbridge I don’t know if you guys are familiar with him at all but you know he has a very similar story and the fact that like you know he had couple 100 thousand in his 401k and and that’s all he had him and his wife and he’s like if I don’t go now like I gotta I got to make the leap right and I think as guys we we take on a lot of bravado and we say you know but we have a lot of support behind us that gives us that ability to take the leap and we feel like all right well

someone to stand behind us and say okay go figure it out but the sooner the the better you know right so speaking of the sooner the better you guys sat out a year with a non-compete right and then we we were just saying that from that non-compete year and it took you what was it another just little for eight months to to actually get your first yard in another 14 months to open yeah so we CL on the property in August of 22 the property that we’re at now and we we left in December of 2020 so it took us until August of 22 to find the property and then we opened in February of 23 so then it took us another number of months to get to get the property up to to Specs for how we needed it so was it an existing scrapyard an existing Auto Salvage an existing commercial piece like what was the layout before you guys made the purchase it was an existing Auto Parts uh company they’ve been opened since 1937 um family just didn’t have anyone to pass it to and they were looking

to get out okay so you guys then what tried to kind you probably had to reconfigure it if it was just an auto kind of part you guys kind probably you change things around there was a lot of TLC the yard needed they you know J we always say they they were open since 1937 it looked like they stopped carrying in 1957 yeah and so there was uh there was a lot of TLC that we had to do to get that yard up and ready and and we had to work with the city to to uh to get it up and running and so it took it took every every day from the moment we close to the moment we open to get the yard where we needed it to be gotcha gotcha so from that point on so you guys get the yard bought you figure out your location which is for anybody that wants to know like I said it’s you say 12 miles or 10 minutes outside Detroit proper right Southwest Southwest of Detroit yeah Down River Lincoln Park so um you guys get it you guys get it bought you

get it closed I got a picture I think Jay sent with I think it’s of his daughter or your daughter Somebody’s Daughter out there and you could tell like you guys are getting everything kind of tidied up and getting it ready which is awesome um it’s a true Family Affair and so it took you how long did it take you to actually get it open from the date you closed on it we closed in um August 12th was actually my dad’s birthday which is crazy when we think about that um and then we finally opened on Thursday February 8th or 9th whatever that was in 2023 okay nice and did you guys put a truck scale in or how did you guys we put a truck scale we had to put up a new we had to do everything put in a new fence we bought a nonfer Balor bought a truck scale we bought um I mean we bought an RB 6000 before we even had the property uh we were just so geared out like we we had an RB 6000 we had a Bor in in Indiana just waiting for us

to find a property to be delivered um we were just we were just buying up uh equipment buying up everything so that we were we were ready to rock by the time we found the property nice and so you guys get it you guys get it open and uh obviously you guys there’s there’s never two CEOs there’s never like what is the division of Duties between the two of you because I I mean I I I’m curious how you and I’m only speaking from my own um experiences I feel like the reason we’ve had success is we have very clear Lanes right like you do this and you do this and you’re responsible for this and you stay in your lane and I’ll stay in mine and if I need help I’ll ask right type of deal and but at the end of day we’re all going down the same Highway trying to get to the same spot but everybody has a very clear Lane where they need to be Jeff and I have had years of practice at this because I was the COO and vice president of uh glr and Jeff was

the other vice president so we had years of practice of staying in our own pool so we always say you know we don’t dip we don’t dip our toes in each other’s pool yeah and unless it’s ass or unless you know we’re free to give each other our two cents and we do it um but it’s always you know respectfully and you know stuff like that so you know it’s pretty simple it’s the same thing you know I buy everything that’s not a car I sell everything that’s not a cat Jeff buys the cars Jeff sells the cats uh we have our division of um what we do in the company you know I Jeff runs the office staff that does that works on the paperwork um I work with the offer staff that does the you know the AP and the AR and you know it’s and the best part you know so we we we divide it up that way but what made it really easy for us when we opened was finding our operations manager who uh who works with both of us right but um we we thought it was

going to take us 18 months to find the right the right person um we found them before we even opened uh which made it which made the transition in a lot smoother for us okay nice I’ll tell you quick crazy story about him because I think it’s wild so he lived in the middle of the state and uh he moved to the Detroit area when we gave him the opportunity and he has three kids uh two in high school one I think in kindergarten first grade so when they moved to the Detroit area they had to get new doctors and when his youngest child who’s a daughter went to the doctor the doctor found a heart defect that had otherwise gone unnoticed and if it hadn’t been found she would have passed away within a few years and she had to have open heart surgery and I remember when he came to us and he’s like guys by you guys opening were be recycling you saved my daughter’s life and I literally looked at Jeff that day I was like if we fail we succeeded just by chance right we didn’t plan it but

I’m CH I get chills every time I tell the story and it’s absolutely wild that two guys chasing a dream help save a kid’s life unintentionally obviously but it still happened and and that’s and he’s Jeff to get back to Jeff’s point he’s he is perfect for us and he’s he runs the yard he runs the equipment the guys and the team respect him and if you tell him or ask him to do something he does it I mean our team separates us immensely from everybody else and he leads that team and I think that’s how you that’s how you create like a you create success is by you putting the right people in the right spots and obviously you guys dividing up your your duties um accordingly but then also finding people you know as we were discussing earlier the greatest challenge is always is going to be as you grow because the way I know you two you know not super well but having had a couple conversations now you guys are very probably built very similar to me like the what I was I put a quote up the other day

it was like don’t complain about your plate being full because you’re the one that wanted to eat you know like we all want to eat so we’re like fill that up like I’m trying to you know and so that being said then you’re going to grow like you’re just it’s a natural way you’re going to go some aches and pains but you’re going to grow and then but your ability to recruit and maintain and bring new people into the fold that see stuff the way you do and and have a loyalty built into you for whatever reason right I mean whether it’s because you help them save their daughter’s life or because you know they they liked you from your previous you know previous interactions or whatever that is like that’s where the real winners win is I think they they bring good people up and they bring people with and they you know they build accordingly yeah and we’ve built a you know we’ve built a culture where there’s no boss jumping either and I think that’s important to touch on you know we told our yard manager Scott when we hired him

that you know unless someone’s doing something completely unsafe we’re going to tell him to stop other than that we’re just going to say hi how you doing you know he’s the general of the army right Jeff and I go out there and try to prove you know by beating our chest that we’re going to tell you to do something he didn’t we’re not we will never do that and even our office manager like listen if some employee comes to us and they say I have an issue with Scott or have an issue with our office manager you know we’re going to say listen it sounds like you have an issue with them you yeah if we need to jump in and fix it we will but you better exhaust every option because I’ve seen it happen up front and close where you cut out your manager’s legs from underneath them by feeling the need to prove that you’re the boss and it’s just so ass backwards and detrimental that we will we’ve never done it we’ll never do it whether to ourselves or anybody else and some people need that coaching like not everybody

understands it or has been in that situation we had this meeting I had this conversation just a couple days ago or two days ago in our uh voicey production meeting was like trying to have give people help them understand the importance of working through other people right so that they can they can communicate with their team and that they they bring the problems then to them and not to you because as soon as you as soon as you create a path around then you’re you’re basically taking you’re basically you’re eliminating then there’s really no reason for you to have that person in that position right so you have to work through them and make people work back through them so that we we’ve seen too many times where where uh employees have the owner’s ear where they can go right up to the owner’s door anytime they want and it like to Jay’s point it totally Cuts your legs out it it minimizes what you’re able to do uh we we just don’t have that we don’t do that here literally I have never told anyone in the yard to do anything different than

what Scott tells him to do if I if I have an opinion I’ll tell Scott and Scott and I will talk or Jay and Scott are talk or the three of us will talk and then Scott will go give that message to the yard but you know too many times I’ve I’ve seen that happen where happens creates confusion it creates um animosity it just doesn’t there’s no good that comes from it so my next my next thing is so moving on to how your guys’ yard setup so you guys have an interesting setup you guys were were talking about this in the fact that you guys don’t don’t do um retail business right I mean everything you guys do is businessto business transaction for the most part um like I said I think you said other than on the car side right so explain to me the purpose the reasoning your guys’ thought process because that’s unique in our industry I think there’s not there’s a very small percentage of of recycling facilities unless you’re like a mill or whatever like they they don’t do business with retail so kind of explain to me

that concept and why you guys went that route yeah I mean we we initially wanted a yard that was 8 to 10 acres right to be able to do everything but um we found a yard that was just under five acres so you know when you’re faced with the reality of having just under five acres you have to decide what your core business is because trying to do everything in less than five acres was only going to create confusion so we so we decided what’s going to make us different you know and part of what makes us different since we’re not open to the public is the um trucks the tow truck drivers they get in and out so much faster and they’re able to turn their purchases over faster so maybe if they go to another yard they can only do six cars a day but off they can do eight and that that was really it it was kind of that simple you know we told every truck driver you’re going to want you’re going to have truck drivers are going to say I want to go to rubies I don’t want

to go to x I want to go there because I’m in and out I’m not behind any um you know 12 trucks or whatever of pedalers which is like I said earlier it’s fine if that’s your business model uh just is an ARs and it’s been working I mean it’s it’s really working and there’s just less moving Parts it’s cliche but less is more and um 100% did it are working it just we we ran we ran we’re driven by everything by numbers right we ran numbers was it worth it to have X amount more people coming in dumping you know just clogging up Lanes convoluting everything it just it wasn’t worth it for us in this yard not to say we won’t have a pedal yard in the future but for this yard here it did make sense well I think every yard every yard is built a little bit different right I mean especially you go across the country but even even in every different geography you know you go to some people’s yards and they got 50 acres right and like I we like our biggest yard I think goes maybe

12 something like that and then we have a yard like say down the road that’s two and a half right so it’s a very compressed but we have a rail spur on that one so it’s like every yard is set up buil functionally different so if we have big Iron big we go okay take it down the road we’re going to go to the to the 12 acre yard because we can lay it down we can cut it we can you know we’ve got space and then on the small one you know it’s like it’s throughput like we got a Spur like we got trucks let’s get it in let’s get a prodct let’s get it out as soon as we can because it’s just a much tighter footprint you can’t you know you can’t sit on the material there so I think you know and you guys not knowing what you were going to end up with you guys kind of had to pick a lane and it’s important in this industry to figure out a way to differentiate yourself especially in a competitive market I had to feel like that had to

weigh into your um into your decision we knew we knew walking in that that cars were going to be a big you know the big driving force of this yard right and we were we’re GNA buy and sell nonfer and and it’s it’s a major part of this business but the most space we were going to need was going to be for the Auto Division and we knew there was going to be x amount of cars coming in here every day and you just when when you space out where the cars are going to be in the yard it didn’t leave that much you know if we’re going to do that and we’re going to do industrial and we’re gonna bring in demo job you know it didn’t it just didn’t leave any space for for 75 Peddlers to come in you know every day it just didn’t make sense so for our for our business model you know we we mapped it out and that’s what we needed and we ma the yard out hundreds of times right and it was funny the day before we laid the concrete Jeff and I were

like we did this wrong you know and like it was kind of like when you’re pregnant and you have a name pick for eight and a half months and all a sudden your wife decides she hates the name so you have like that was also our yard and we hit it right like the way we did it is perfect but the way we were going to do it like the day before we laid the concrete oh yeah but what’s funny is like we so how did you change it like how did it so you guys the day before you did did you we we put in big tops right we put in Big Top sh to process our cars under it’s like you know the big the big hoop houses on concrete pads with concrete walls we had them in one spot approved by the city on drawings and then literally he came to pour the pads and we’re like that’s it’s not going to make sense he’s like well the concrete’s are we’re like all right just put it over there and we’ll we’ll talk to the city about it after you know

better to ask for forgiveness than permission right so we’re like just pour it over there and and we poured it just spaced things out a bit made way more sense and then you know then I went to the city and uh I do the graveling for the city and uh I went to the city started graveling hey we know we we got to redo the plans and it all worked out but uh yeah literally he was there for the concrete and we’re like this is not this is not gonna work divide and conquer Jeff deals with all the city paperwork is I would lose every single document you could ever need in life and Jeff knows where everything is at all times so we’re that’s another thing to De another uh Lane to you stay in for each other’s yin and yang I have the I have the the sunny Jee of can be a little temperament and Jeff doesn’t he’s always calm so right so there’s you know we run you know we always say like when we talk to our employees like I’m here right I just stay very even and Jay

go you know Jay goes like this and we end up at the same place but uh so uh so I always you know when it’s time to deal with the city when it’s time to deal with people that you can’t like push around to get what you want like when Jay gets hot you know he’ll he’ll call the trucking agent I want I want this I that you got to deal with people that you just got to like kind of stay even with send me and when when it’s time to get hot Jay goes in and you know we divide and conquer go take go collect Jay go you so Jay would you could have been in the collection business I always said if I was a hockey player I would have been like Dino cicerelli like the little guy in front of the net just getting pummeled but loves it missing teeth and everything so now that you guys have kids and you guys have your own your own gig like do you see someday like having your kids in the business is there a vision like I because people ask me that

question all the time and I’m like probably not to be honest be frank no we always say that if our kids work at Ruby then it’s it’s because we miscalculated and we you know we we have a vision to you know to be to be retired and and be out of this business at a certain time and my kids our kids are young enough to where by the time that happens they won’t be old enough to be here you know but gota not to say that plans don’t change but today that’s where the that’s where the the plans lie I like it I like it so how many more yards are you going to have between now and then what’s the what’s the yard count do you go my kids just got home so I apologize if they do that you know the real answer is we don’t know and um you know we don’t we want opportunity to dictate our growth and um she’s gonna be eight years old tomorrow by the way nice so we want OPP to dictate our growth now do I think we’re going to have one yard forever

no I think we’re going to grow but we’re we don’t have a map we really don’t okay uh but we want we’re big into growing efficiently right and and my big thing you know Jay and I always say when we’re talking about um growing the first question when we’re brought an opportunity for for a new yard or a new opportunities you know who who’s going to run it and and we want to have that answer right too many times we’ve grown at our previous position you know in our previous place we grew just because we wanted to grow because we knew it would add money to the bottom line but in in many times it just adds more stress more headaches on the people in the higher up because you don’t have the right people in place you don’t have the right people on the bench to go move to that spot and it creates more problems than Solutions so if we have the right person that we know is ready to step up and and take the leap to run a yard let’s go get the next yard and let’s and it makes

a much more even seamless transition um so that in our minds that’s growing efficiently when you know we don’t let we don’t let the fact that we’re making money dict that we want to grow we won let the fact that we have the right people in place to dictate efficiency yeah opportunistic you just got to be I tell people the time you just got to be opportunistic when things come along right you have to kind of see see what’s out there see what’s available I mean you might think that the yard you know five minutes to the east is the right one but then the guy 10 minutes to the West calls and he’s in a he’s ready to get out you know and you’re like oh okay well that’s our it’s our time to jump so it’s it’s hard to plan plan for that but knowing that you guys are still you know have full intent and growing I guess that’s probably the biggest you know like this isn’t like hey let’s build it this is where we want to retire we’re good we want to build this thing up and and some

bandwidth in US yeah yeah we have too much band like like we said we came from a spot where we were running nine you know seven to nine yards and yeah um you know we we have we have big visions of growing uh and growing rather quickly but uh when when we’re ready we’re going to let you know we’re going to let that dictate when we’re ready to when we’re ready to grow and the people in place are ready I like it I like it well I think that’s that’s it that’s it for me guys I’m I’m super excited I one of these days I’m gonna work my way out there to Detroit i’ I’ve got a couple people I want to go see you guys being on that that hit list but um I appreciate you guys sitting down taking the time is there anything you guys want to leave with uh anybody that’s listening to the show kind of any words of wisdom for the guys out there that um are in a similar position you guys were that made that made the leap or just anything you want to leave for

anybody in the industry it’s listening want to go Jeff or no go ahead go ahead yeah I don’t know if it’s words of wisdom I don’t know how much I have of that but you know I would say that you I mentioned it earlier um you know I knew at the end of my career if I didn’t take the leap I would have been disappointed looking in the mirror and uh the most important thing think in life is just making the decision that you know your future self wants you to make and I would encourage everybody to watch the Youtube video Jump by Steve harvy it’s six minutes that’ll change your life it change mine it’s one of the things I watched before I made the decision to to jump and uh don’t be scared that’s it that’s all I got is don’t live scared clich my the words that my dad that my dad gave me you cannot put a price on Independence and happiness and um you know we were uh we were ready to make the leap and bet on ourselves and and and we knew that one way or another

um it would work out I just wasn’t I didn’t have the fear of of jumping but you know just you just got to bet on yourself and take the leap and and know that your hard work and your grinding it will will will will come out on the other end yeah to that point find find a spot that you’re you enjoy what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with right and I think that you guys have found that I think that’s that’s one of the things that you know I I commend that I love I get a show up here I get to work with some my best friends in life and we get to grind it out and have our good days together our bad days together but if you can find that you you’re super lucky and I don’t care what anybody says whether in the scrap business or a school teacher or whatever you’re doing like if you can if you have that in your life like you’re you’re doing something right you you should be pretty grateful especially this time of year about to as we Edge towards Thanksgiving

we we built a career where um bad days here are better than good days anywhere else and speaking Thanksgiving I’m grateful for that you know I’m grateful for Jeff you know I wouldn’t be where I’m at if it wasn’t for him you know we uh he’s my brother and we support each other to the end of time and and that that really speaks volumes you know you really need to surround yourself with people that generally want what’s best for you and and that’s the other thing I would say I guess yeah AB I did what Jay said of course and then also you know we always say we walk into the stresses like you say there’s going to be tough times there’s stresses here but the beautiful thing is that it’s our stress right yeah it’s the stress of our business it’s not the stress of somebody else above me putting it on me it’s the stress of ourselves and on our you know that that makes it way more enjoyable like I said don’t complain about a full plate when you’re the one that was so hungry to begin with right all right

have a great have a great one I appreciate you guys taking the time and uh until next time here we go