foreign 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 eckhart on this podcast i sit down with a guy that was basically adopted by my dad as another son and a man i consider my brother naturally like all brothers we don’t agree on everything but like brothers we both have a similar vision and passion for where we want to take the transportation and scrap businesses in the future enjoy the podcast as barry prescott and i discuss his roots in our company and why transportation plays such a vital role in what we do every day take a listen all right let’s do this barry prescott cheers we finally found a time to sit down we’ve been talking about doing it for a while um i always like to get people in here to do this podcast that are pretty heavily like knee-deep in the scrap business and while we have a lot of people in our company

that are knee-deep in the scrap business i like to get people from outside companies in here and just discuss their history and everything else but i almost felt like i wouldn’t even be doing i’ll be doing us an injustice not to get you in here talk about scrap because you’ve been involved since i mean i i say day one of at least day one for me um and but 1999 right this is when you started um so give us a little history about um how you came to find yourself in this uh exciting in united yeah let’s hear it well honestly to come to work for united i don’t know what drew me to this company i was working for franklin building supply and uh united was always bringing beams in dress choice beams in for him and i just got drawn to want to work for this company and uh i’d met a couple of their drivers pat higgins being one of them he’s one that helped me help me get on you know in one of his multiple times here but bug you bug your dad and bug your dad and

bug your dad i think until the point where he just gave me a job because he was tired of me calling him yeah so at that time were you you weren’t driving truck not over the road because you’re like local driving for franklin building supply yeah yeah well at that time i was i was dispatching for franklin building supply okay had been driving for him and had started um started dispatching for him at that time but uh you know i was a young kid didn’t have any over-the-road experience but i wanted to that’s what i wanted to do and whatever that is that got stuck in my brain you know that’s what i was after i was gonna was gonna drive for united freaking i was going over the road and uh i actually worked the first week without a paycheck because i teamed with pat hagen and just to prove that i could handle it you could do the job yeah yeah so so at that time in 1999 you started talking to my dad came to work how many trucks did we have in the fleet at that time so

that time we had two full-time scrap trucks we had one that would run california during the summer time and come on haul and scrap for us in the winter time and we had bob smith who was just california and i want to say four or five owner operators that pretty much just ran california okay so so not a lot of like northwest back like we do today no it’s always i might you know i mean i was talking i did this podcast with my dad and we talked about the scrap business and whatever else and we kind of got into the trucking side of the business and i was asking you know just kind of going into the difference of the truck the trucking side of our business and and the scrap side of their business and my dad made it like a pretty strong point that trucking is our business you know right and i tell people this all the time like what separates us from maybe some of our competition or from some other businesses is that we handle most of our own freight i mean a good jack of it

we do run some outside trucks but generally speaking if we can handle it and if it’s in our lane then we try and we try and take care of it but i know like my dad’s passion has always been trucks and i know enough about trucks to be dangerous and that’s it not an ounce more and i understand what they do for our business though and the actual truck and the nuances of it and and all that is it’s a whole different conversation but so let’s so 99 you come to work team drive first week pat hagan um how does it progress from there like what’s the you know ultimately from there you know i i started running i just fell in love with it you know freaking enjoy the business enjoyed people i get to meet all the time and just just continue to to grow and to chase um what’s now become you know our dream yep the uh you know equipment’s changed the trailers have changed the commodity hasn’t it’s always amazed me you know how it just keeps coming how scrap just keeps coming yeah it adds and flows but

and it still shows up at the door yeah or we go get it yeah right you know as as this valley’s grown it’s it’s of course allowed our business to grow and uh you know there was times you know especially through the winter months where what we hold to portland depending on what tomorrow is what depending on what we bought today yeah you know our old mac crusher that had the the handles on it you got to run you know sometimes you’d be out there helping run freaking handles to crush a load so i could go port yeah yeah yeah you know that there’s i mean there’s a lot of things that have changed but i don’t think like the hustle’s changed like we may have more equipment more guys more facilities but i think like one thing we’ve always had is a ton of hustle yeah and i’ve always you know like i’ve taken a lot of pride in that i mean as far as in our team and just because that’s the guys we’ve looked for people that have that hustle right and um so i i so i’m sitting there thinking

99 was my senior year in high school i went to college and i came back in 2004 full-time and that’s in 2004 you were still driving trump time so what year did you make the the transition from truck driver to dispatcher you know i want to say it was 0.5 but don’t quote me on that entirely but it was it was right in there in that range in that range yeah and that my dad was doing the dispatching up to that point no he’d brought he had stepped between um we’d opened up our brokerage and we had mary in there it was our dispatcher i remember that yeah because we had the brokerage at that time and then i i do remember that kind of there was a it wasn’t very long that she was dispatching yeah it was i don’t know she probably dispatched me for i want to say two years yeah and before that it was my dad yeah so do that used to do some outlaw yeah i know that i do know that and i’m not afraid to talk about it because it is what it is

but and that so in that time from let’s say 99 to 03 was probably when you kind of formed the strongest bond with my dad obviously him being your dispatcher and you know i’ve had this conversation a lot but you’re basically like my brother i don’t have brothers all my brothers work here i mean that’s the way it is and that’s the way i built it i’ve built it purposefully that way some people ask me as a family business i’m like it’s family as they come yeah you know for sure i mean as soon as we bought schnitzer out in 16 it truly became a family business i mean so you know i know my dad and and you have a have a big bond around the trucking side of the business and so when you be when you came in and started dispatching trucks how did the outlook change for you between being a truck driver and the dispatcher of our small but building fleet at that time you know it was rough you know making it making the change from from just the freedom of being out on the road to to

being stuck in a corner yeah and freaking talking on the phone all day and freaking you know it it definitely a different swing you know i enjoyed it it was a new challenge new new learning hustle for me and uh and worked their way through it it uh i think it definitely helps um that i’d done it right that you know the guys had appreciation you know when i was trying to trying to talk to them about what needed to be done and and just knowing that that i understood what they were what they were up against and i can’t say that like enough like one of my biggest like it was almost a up but it wasn’t like i got talked out of it was when we were going to replace you dispatching and we’ve had you and i have had this conversation but i think it’s like super worthy of this podcast is we were trying to decide who was going to replace um todd i believe at the time stradley and we were kind of going back and forth who would who could do a good job do we need to

go hire somebody or whatever whatever the you know the conversation was back and forth at that time and you’re the one that told me i think jim combs can do this job and i was like dude jim’s getting old like he’s not you know like i don’t know if that he can and you know but and you’re like no no he can do the job and i was like i kind of i felt like at the time i felt like i had a lot of pushback and i pushed back pretty hard on it but man that’s probably like the best decision that we’ve made as a team right like he’s he’s solid that fat guy and and the reason i bring that up is a i don’t see everything i do screw a lot of stuff up but b um jim had that in common with you jim done the job yeah and i think when people deal with dispatchers or brokers or whatever out there like on the transportation side it’s people that have actually done the job i feel like stan a lot better of a chance to a do a good

job but at the dispatch side but b they’re like more relatable i mean so i think that’s probably helped your cause on the dispatching side oh yeah from the sounds of it yeah it’s easy to special needs right special needs with customers easy to explain to them you know how it’s not going to work or what we need to make it work instead of trying to dispatch the driver to do it to wind up with just a big mess or having the driver try to educate the dispatcher to get back to the freaking it just it bakes things around a lot a lot smoother so from a dispatching side so when you were dispatching trucks how many trucks were you dispatching at that time you know we had i believe with kenny on there we had 12 trucks going yeah so and so when we were talking trucks we were talking like over the road trucks basically northwest a little bit of montana a little bit of washington portland portland-ish oregon and idaho so but also at that time we had a couple trucks running california reefer for eight for the brokerage which

weren’t your you weren’t your responsibility but yeah when we shut down the brokerage jim became my responsibility yeah and as a reefer exactly that was interesting and it was cool about that that time was we bought jim that uh curtain van trailer which i still wish i had i kicked myself maybe now from selling it but it is what it is uh hindsight 2020. but we bought the wire chop in line not that we were running he was running chops for a while to all over all over the place yeah we sent that everywhere whoever was buying coffee we sent it to them and ubc’s and yeah but but people were afraid of that trailer we’d get out of the northwest and it was a big fight i got to where i’d have to i’d call the guy that was unloading or loading that trailer and totally explained to him what it was that was coming at him yeah because they didn’t they didn’t know and the trailer scared him do you think that’s still the case yeah i do yeah remember we had that load we were clearing kentucky with a load of

ubc’s yeah and they can’t they rejected the load and now they wouldn’t drive a forklift on the trailer yeah they’ll drive a forklift inside a box van but they won’t drive it in a curtain van it’s crazy i mean it’s the same same deck with same everything yeah luckily you know like 50 or 60 miles away you’re able to make another sale and not lose much money on it i know but yeah so after after that after we did that then we finally hooked jim up to a flatbed for he ran flatbed for like a couple years though yeah and then then eventually moved him into the to the dispatch and doing what you’re doing so kind of one of the coolest things that we’ve done recently with our company is and i don’t want to skip too many steps in the process but um so i won’t i won’t go there yet i’ll change my mind oh wait but so after dispatching then when we got jim in there basically to give you some help because we started getting more trucks and things we started you know we our local fleet was building

and we had eight damn things going eight ways sideways um then kind of what did your role become well like so jim was our first guy that i was actually able to not have to worry about right yeah you know we we pulled some guys in there and they did a good job but i still had to keep an eye on it jim i got to where i don’t know i don’t worry about it yeah jim took care of it and was able to actually start rolling you know more towards the equipment side of things more towards our repairs our maintenance and and uh start putting a better eye on that and the better better plan together for what we were doing there so as we built yards and we built facilities like anybody in the scrap business knows that you got a shitload of equipment and obviously we have a jag of trucks now and we run a lot of local trucks over the road trucks and plus you know you start adding incentivogens and you start adding shears and excavators and loaders and it becomes a pretty big task just to manage

level there’s the maintenance let alone like all the repairs and you’re dealing with in the big heavy iron shit’s breaking you’re putting a lot of pressure a lot of stress on stuff yeah so have you always been like pretty mechanically sound i mean your whole life or just something you’ve just kind of you know picked up now my whole life of i’ve always been you know had the mechanic side of things being able to look at something and understand how it works and how to try to make it better and i’ve always been a you know always been a hot rod i mean look at her truck yeah you can see it oh i know so anybody wants to know why our trucks look the way they do there’s two people in my life that have enabled me or not enabled me to buy a boat not that i want a boat because i really don’t give two shits but um it’s you and my dad and and and it took me a while like i’m the first to admit like it took me a while to understand and i’m still probably a little

more on the conservative side there’s no doubt in my mind i mean my desk is next to the accountant so i kind of have to be but like when it comes to putting money into our trucks but i remember my dad was the biggest one that preached to me like if you have nice equipment if you roll around in nice equipment through the scale house to your customer whether your customer on the the freight end or your customer you’re picking up scrap in the scrap band whoever they see that you take care of your you run nice gear you know you got which means you’re able to recruit a better driver so then you got a better quality brain behind the steering wheel he’s like that will pay dividends and it and i’m not sure that the math still all the way like adds up 100 but it’s a pride thing and i will say like that’s one of the things i’m probably the most prideful of now and it’s probably as much just because it’s kind of like a legacy for me with my dad and everything else that goes into our business

is you know if we’re going to show up to a job site and we’re going to come crush all the cars we’re going to roll in 20 nice trucks and load it all out you know or we’re gonna go to down the highway and go pick up with 20 loads of lumber it’s going to be 20 nice trucks that pull it all out you know and i think that you’ve carried on that tradition so i don’t have to write the check i just have to sign the check and now brian signs a check but i mean it’s it’s one of those like i’m i i allow it in my opinion because it’s like what we do and i think that the reason we we do it and the reason that i’m willing to do it is because you know what needs to happen and is that something that you from the truck side did you pick that up from my dad or is that just something you’ve always kind of had in the back of your mind on the truck side or once you started driving over the road it just kind of got

in your blood or like where did that come from you know really a multitude you know always being drawn to trucks um having your dad that was in the trucks and just people i met on the road you know that were that were in the trucks and and uh and then in the same regard being being that guy first hand you know with with the customers and and seeing their reaction to things i was changing on my truck and trying to trying to do things differently and yeah so it just it just drove that it sparked it so one of the things i wanted to bring up we were just talking about a few minutes ago was if you look at our setup and that we only we don’t have any other than on the on the local side we don’t have any three axle tractors anymore right no everything everything over the roads four axle tractors oh yeah our last one’s in the shop now too to become a four axle so people ask me well how much weight can you haul like how do you how’s everything set up and i’m like

and some of those questions i mean 80 of those questions are over my head but i i did want to bring up that from your standpoint and you could and really you i didn’t even know this you’re the one you’re the one that told me the other day we’re talking about truck 45 was we spec that truck and trailer to be able to do that so can you just walk me through like high level when we talk about our quads four axle tractors four axle trailers just to give anybody watches this kind of a little bit of insight on our setup like you designed that yourself like you put that spec together so what is that you know and how did you come up with it well it got drove because you know hauling scrap pays by the way right so you know more weight we can put on the more more we’re going to get paid so yeah drove drove trying to trying to push that and dealing with with uh you know our main hall is through oregon who can be challenging on bridge laws you know you’d be under under gross

but still over on your bridges and and they’re being more willing to write you a ticket for it yeah and uh so i just started playing with things and started started messing with the geometry of of the equipment and how where we needed to place axles to move weight and uh you know then not only once i kind of figured out i did the trailer first um we i was running truck 37 and moved its tag axle around um the pla the fifth wheel played around trying to figure out how how weight would transfer i built the trailer our trailer setup is still pretty much this the same as we did in 2000 when when we first designed those and i worked with with the engineers at western trailer and built four more four more inches of bridge length into it than um their standard spec um moved all our landings so when you see bridge length like basically from so from the kingpin of the trailer to the center of the tag axle on the on the trailer okay you basically got them to extend that four inches so they have to extend

the frame rails no everything they just pushed everything back you just pushed everything because it has it’s still by length so you just had to push the whole axle set up four inches back yeah i worked really hard to try to convince them to build it 53 foot two inches yeah they would they wouldn’t do it no i’m not not willing to pay the fines from the government yeah he was gonna catch it but but so we’re worked out you know and our you know united spec western trailers are like i said four four inches longer um the landing legs are in a different position because we’ve run so far ahead of trunnion on the trucks that we needed landing legs further back to get them out of the way so we weren’t having a clearance issue there you know we designed um and enter an another um brace on the bottom of the frame rails that time the frame rails of the trailer trailer okay at that time if you looked at at 53-foot trailers right in the landing lake area most of them had an s-band when you were loaded

okay and uh so i went to um in doing this back with western trailer because i want to eliminate that it just looks goofy right yeah and so we came up with with how they thought we could we could eliminate that and it worked and it’s standard on all western trailers now to have that extra did you patent it do they give you uh they give you royalties on that no nothing but like it was a joint effort yeah it was you know it was the engineers that came up with how they were going to do it was me saying you know this is just goofy right i can’t fix this exactly so you know so we got that got that set up how long did it take you to kind of get that dialed in with western trailers who’s that’s all of our flatbeds are all western trailers built right here in boise idaho which is awesome that you can have that relationship and be able to do that but what kind of timeline did it take you to get that done you know we worked we probably worked a good six if

not eight weeks back and forth on the spec um it was before gary harland was our salesman i want to say his name was justin but i don’t remember for sure but uh he was you know he was really good at me bouncing ideas off him and can we do this can we do that yeah what about this um you know we space our our axles out differently than standard as well and our reason for doing that um we did a lot of a lot of partials a lot of lto freight and so it never i wanted to build when we had something funny just be able to throw it wherever on the trailer yeah and so ultimately we built it so it the quad on the on the trailer picks weight up off the nose faster and i can and we can haul more back there um we were able to so that’s the main that was the main purpose was enable the hall more on the actual trailer yeah and be able to suck weight off of the drives yeah on the truck yeah and that was an idea that marty wallace

had come up with he had built a four axle trailer before we did um that wilson built for him and he kind of spaced his axles out like that and i just kind of rolled rolled from his idea yeah and the engineers were still able to design it without having to redesign a frame rail so we use the idaho legal frame rail that western trailer builds and just space the axles differently on it so what is the length what is your bridge length now from on our trucks on on our trucks and trailers for the most part well lengthwise um for like in oregon you know we’re we’re 56 foot on our on our seven axle bridge we’re 91 000 pounds in oregon we’re able to haul there oregon is different than all the other states so everybody else in the northwest going to give us 93 000 pounds on that same grouping okay um utah is going to give us 93 500 pounds on that on that so that’s one of the hitches with oregon um yeah because you’re still only 105 5 000 pounds is what you’re yeah what you’re able to

register at gross wise but you know at 91 000 pound bridge you know you’re not putting you know that much weight on your steering no yeah you’re pretty light yeah yep so i’m working working back and forth um you know after we’d had the trailer and i was messing around with her with truck 37 kind of had an idea and i started working with the engineers with peterbilt and uh going back and forth on on the tractor spec you know because ultimately your steering is your free weight um to get away from the bridge lies it’s it’s got to go on the nose so whatever you can shove forward onto your steers is basically gravy right like you can get like you said free weight that you can pack yeah yeah yep you know so you got to uh that’s why we run so far ahead of trunnion you know why we um why the tags are stretched out away from our drivers like they are you know to try to make it all make it all work and it does you know we’re we’re packing and it depends on the load how the

trucks loaded but but our four axle tractors will pack 12 12 800 pounds to 13.2 on the nose which is pretty crazy it’s not common yeah so i tell people all the time you know that i can put that much weight on their nose and and they want to call it’s good it it is i can show you overload tickets where guys got a ticket for having too much weight on their steering yeah you know so so what is the i mean so i just last question on that but what is the overload weight on the steering if it’s technically free weight what is that number well you can still you can still only have there any have it there so 13 200 pounds is as much as we can put on our tires okay and that’s because of the tire load limit yeah but we’re not if we were to put a a heavier front axle on it and a heavier a heavier steer tire i think all we’re going to do is is you’re trying to add a bunch of weight yeah not actually hauling anymore yeah you’re just trading right

you’re just trading weight so truck 37 right what you’re what what what truck is that that’s a 90 that’s a 2 000. 99 2000 peterbilt yep okay so all these trucks that we run for the most part have always been peterbilt and here recently uh i say you bought you bought a kenworth i did you know kenworth is freaking funny because you know i mean we’ve built a lot of computer builds over the years and we’re starting to kind of have that what if we were to build a can where they have spec and we’re sort of years right but we never bought one and uh and my buddy troy told me he was building this one he said i’m gonna get it done get it to your open house i’m gonna sell it at your show i’m like okay yeah well then he rolls in with it i’m like yeah and then we had a driver that liked it yeah and so which is a huge part of the battle you know i got a driver that just was begging to be able to free control and here’s the thing with me i

i don’t i don’t know just the average person to understand it wasn’t in the transportation trucking business but when a driver likes their truck like or they ask you to be able to drive x y z truck and it works for you as a company it works in your system you’re better off by far as long as the driver is good at their job like jeff is to give him the truck like because you know he’s going to take care of it you know he’s going to treat it good he’s not if he likes the truck that much i i assume i mean i guess he’s been in it for about a couple weeks now maybe a month does he still like it as much as he did i asked him last night he was at the shop and and he do you like it oh yeah i love it okay you know after his first run it’s all totally different than what he’s used to right totally different and uh he got home i said what do you think he’s like i’m a nervous freaking wreck i’m like what’s the matter he’s like

it’s just all so different it’s like i gotta go home go to bed i could hardly i i’m just too stressed out yeah yeah so i worked on from there and i i was talking to jim the next day and he had talked to him and he said yeah i kind of got that a little bit from him he was telling me he came out of washington and it was foggy and he was trying to hit his windshield wipers well we’re not in the same spot he’s used to right and uh took was taking him a bit to find where his windshield wipers was and he was just uncomfortable and jim said well didn’t you sit down and figure where all your switches were before you left he’s like no i wasn’t that smart no no no no yeah just a good guy and like we said i mean i i i wholeheartedly you know and my a lot of that’s for my dad and now you like you guys are the truck guys um i love trucks i love looking at them i love what they do for our business but you guys

are the guys that understand that side of the business as far as the actual truck and kind of what make what drives it and what makes it go so i’m trying to go back through like go back through the history and because of the trucks we drive and because of you know the you know the pride we take on the on the transportation side of our business it gave us the opportunity to um build a truck shop right and i think i nothing in our business ever like just does it doesn’t just all appear you know from where we started even in 99 to where it’s at today is like a ton of hard work it’s a ton of like investment back in the business and it’s a ton of uh just chipping away at something and the the only reason in my in my opinion that we even have a truck shop is is because we’ve of all the work we’ve done over since west 1974 right on our trucks and put it back into what we what we were doing because we built a reputation for having nice trucks and running good

equipment yeah and that’s because of my dad and because of you so here we just did our grand opening it’s been like a month now it feels like in that range um we just built a new truck shop so and the reason i bring this up is so you’ve done you went from driving truck to dispatch from dispatch to managing and and still do like all of our maintenance and some of our big like equipment capital purchases i mean i don’t buy anything without a motor with a motor that i don’t say hey barry what do you think i did buy a forklift the other day but that’s pretty basic yeah but other than that like that’s where my like i’m like i stopped there before i’m like all right what do you think like we need this excavator we need this piece of equipment like we do sit down and have those conversations you know we’re not i’ve listened to podcasts and and and listen to other people talk about you know and it’s different industries whatever they talk about you know renting equipment leasing equipment and that’s not really our style we

buy everything um that we run um and we just a lot of times you have to wait till we can afford it or wait until it fits in the budget but we don’t really rent anything um so all those decisions really are decisions that made primarily between you and me um so i’m i’m super lucky to have that i’m super lucky to have that ability to bounce that off of you somebody that understands motors and understands equipment we gotta throw brian in there too because he’s the one being like you can’t do that yeah well dude brian keeps me from buying 10 trucks he’s like brett 82. i’m like oh and maybe it keeps you from buying 10 and me buying five and he whittles us down to two right yeah and yeah he who’s a big part of because that guy knows what we can afford and what we can sometimes my eyes get bigger than my uh wallet but i so we built a truck shop so we’ve been working on it for about eight months now as far as we from when we bought the building all the way to when

we got it open and you know what what’s going to be the what’s the difference maker between our truck shop and somebody else’s truck shop pride pride in right in the in the in the job that we’re doing pride in getting you in and out of there you know we’re not we’re not a shop that that is going to band-aid things you know we’re going to we’re going to fix it we’re gonna fix it right and you’re gonna be impressed with it yeah and i tell and i i could answer that like and it wouldn’t have been the same exact answer but same along the same lines because we and i have had this conversation before but i think the biggest thing about i mean us like from a truck shop standpoint is we run our own trucks we work on our own trucks we know what what it needs what it takes to get it down the road or get it up and running right now or this is what you’re going to fix today but if you don’t fix x y and z today then you’re going to have a big

problem come down the road so you guys are going to make that decision um but i think that’s a big thing with our truck shop and it’s just the pride and they’ll be taking our trucks yeah and then and the understanding of you know what what the customer’s up against to get that truck back on their own we you know we’re we’ll do the same thing i mean we’ve you know we’ve overhauled the motor in freaking two days before was a lot of hands on deck and a ton of hours put in those two days but yeah you know when things gotta go things gotta go and i mean so how i guess my question is is i mean from a staffing standpoint how how many guys do you see down the road in that shop and you’re in nicely your new shop because to me once we got it built like i told you that like here’s the keys like let’s go if you figure it out i mean where do you like what’s your vision with the truck shop down the road i mean what do you see you know we’re not

guys but just in general yeah so you know i mean we we open the shop up with seven guys um we totally get finished moved in and start chasing work and and the word gets out that we’re in there you know i’m i’m really optimistic you know that we’re going to double that you know by christmas 2021 okay so that’s a lot of outside trucks hopefully we’re not it’s not we’re all ours yeah yeah what’s the nice thing i was walking through it earlier today and we have i think four of our trucks in there right now give or take i mean not all four under you know what your your truck sparked in the corner but um and we got one that’s i said they saw they had the motor in it they feel like they’re just tightening everything down like we’re about to have one back here soon and a couple more down the road so it’s it’s a space it was a space issue for us you know in 2004 when we built that building we built those two big bays and that was a lot of space yeah but it

was built as a warehouse right yeah so yeah it wasn’t even built as a truck shop because we had the old shop at that time over kind of where the recycling center used to be and that was kind of the shop for what it is now it’s a storage storage bay yeah so give me some give me some give me a good story about my dad i think he’ll appreciate that i think i know i’ll appreciate it about you said we used to do some outlaw i’m like i like it right like what’s give me something that he would get a good chuckle out of or that makes you laugh when you when you think about oh man you know i mean so probably like his his biggest maybe biggest challenge to me you know um we ran five loads of scrap and brought lumber home in in a week once before you know um i went to left on sunday i was sitting over in portland monday and i think i think he got the phone call the prices of iron was coming down and he freaking got a hold of me and

he says hey bet you can’t make four more loads to portland this week really yeah i’m like do you want me to bring stuff back dude he’s like yeah yeah okay and off and off and running we went right um we had a job going um we’re in the payette area somewhere i forget exactly where so we had we i’d gotten a couple loads there i was hauling lumber into fruitland kicking lumber off um getting loaded and you know we’re overnighting it right back right back to portland to be there the next morning to freaking unload again so one of those nights i was hauling gonna haul iron out of the caldwell yard and got unloaded fruit lynn around ran over to to uh the culver yard and called kenny and big johnny were going to come down and load me yeah and uh they came down freaking drunk and but they had they loaded me in like freaking six minutes i’m like you guys can let me drunk every time oh the good old days yeah it took off again right uh-huh but uh end of the end of the end of

the week friday morning and i i uh got my last load off and got my lumber on i think i was bringing lumber back that day anyhow and i was gonna go to bed right i’m like i get it yeah right challenge accepted challenge completed uh and your dad calls me hey bet you hundred dollars she can’t unload that load and still be loaded leave again someday all right and he was i unloaded that night saturday morning i unloaded i reloaded there at the yard and was sitting there in the office i’m still kind of buzzed and he came in and handed me a hundred dollar bill he was like just yeah you know i what i have i tell people this like a lot i mean it wasn’t okay two things first of all it wasn’t that long ago before every load of scrap that delivered was super important to our cash flow i mean that that’s within my lifetime and that’s not that long ago i mean in my lifetime right yeah so anybody that ever says like oh you guys got it good and you’re just not i’m like listen up

like dude we busted our ass to get to this point right and we don’t take anything for granted that’s why we still bust our ass today but it wasn’t that long ago and the reality of it is like the advantage that trucks give you of running your own trucks is if you come you’re coming into a month and the price is going down you have the advantage of being able to turn it on right you still have to play within the boundaries and now more than ever because of the e-logs and all the stuff that’s been implemented over the years but you have the ability when trucking is tight because trust me i mean it’s not a secret anymore when the price of grass going down any available flatbed going west has got scrap on it that’s willing to haul it and everybody’s trying to do the same thing and everybody’s fighting over those trucks to get their out the door or going east depends on where their contracts are and what’s going on so one of our biggest advantages has always been our ability to move scrap when it’s time you know

or go get a big job that takes 20 30 trucks and get the scrap out of there that month and not drag it into the next month and hope the price hangs around or you know whatever it is i mean so this basically the story you just described as my dad knowing the price of scrap is about to go to or at least 10 20 bucks or whatever that number was at that time and trying to squeeze every nickel out of it and i remember my dad telling me stories of when he would run non-ferrous to acme that was when charlie neal was working at acme and basically he had to get a check to take back was like for a portion of the load or wait wait from the way in that day to bring it back to put in the bank well we we used to do it with uh simon and sons in tacoma yeah we’d wait for a check because that we needed it for the cash flow and that’s in the 2000s people like that’s not 1980 like that’s in the 2000s so yeah we were probably i

want to say in the 02 range when we were looking at having our first thousand ton month and we had we had a company meeting as to what it was going to take what the driver’s going to do what the equipment operates we’re going to do what you know the whole circle of united is what we’re going to do if we can be able to make a thousand tons of iron in a month and deliver it yeah it was a big deal for us oh yeah now it’s like yeah exactly it’s significantly more but it but at that time i mean and that’s what i love about business is like i you’ve known me long enough to know like i’m not i don’t the trophy part i don’t really care about like i’m like i love the chase probably more than i love the the win i mean i like the wind but god i just love the the chase and i love like the the grit like the just going after it i mean and trying to find the next the next best thing and not the next best thing in the like

what’s the new shiniest thing but just the next best way to to build to build our business yeah and a lot of that’s because we get to work around all our buddies at least i mean yeah and i think that challenge also you know you learn a lot from that challenge every time you do it you know it’s actually better for the next challenge yeah and you’re able to just keep continuing to to progress well and i’ve learned i mean i wasn’t that long ago for me that i was trying to talk my dad out of buying trucks and now i think he’s laughs at me like now i’m trying to like yeah i think we could get a couple more and he’s just like like he i think he’s just finally like that deal like comes full circle to where he’s like yep yeah you figure it out and it is what it is yeah you know there was there was a time in united life that that people were really sure when it was your ball game you know hauling wasn’t going to exist anymore i’ve had that conversation with joe at

church right pipe too i was like only because like i was such a scrap guy like at that time i was just trying to get everything my mind wrapped around everything but i think as i’ve i’ve got a little older i’ve i i appreciate stuff a lot more like i appreciate like how all of it works together and and i don’t think you just get that like you don’t just show up and you understand like oh everything’s important this is why this is you have to really like live in it for a while and then to understand that that this is why these trucks are important this is why driving nice trucks is important this is wire the pipe fits into our business this is why you know i mean i think it that doesn’t just happen overnight it takes a lot it takes took me time anyways to really get a good grasp on it right but now i mean i mean i think i’m just as in love with them as anybody else but it’s it’s for me it’s it’s a i’d rather i’d rather i’d rather it take a little bit

longer so i can appreciate it more than just the instant gratification part of it i guess so um i one of the things i always liked liked about you one thing is i’ve always appreciated about you and i want to bring this up because this is kind of like a big harping point for me especially in in the scrap business and what we do is there’s always been like this huge emphasis on going to college and you gotta go to college to be successful and you gotta you know you gotta have a degree to to really make it in life and i’ve always my thing is is i’m big on hustle i’m big on like grit and i think if you go to college that’s great and that’s that’s what you want to do and it’s what worked out for you but you can go to college and if you don’t have any hustle and you don’t have any like motivation it doesn’t really matter all you have is a college degree and that’s it so everybody i’ve had on this podcast so far i mean some have went to college some haven’t but

everybody’s been successful just out of straight hustle you never went to college and you’ve been uber successful in my book and i i don’t think it’s an either or but one thing i’ve always appreciated about you is the hustle side of it and there’s to me there’s no never a better time just to say i thank you i appreciate what you do and and you know if you have hustle in life you’ll win you get a lot done whether it’s in trucks or scrap or lumber or whatever your game is like you would have been super successful at freaking franklin building supply if that’s what you wanted to do right i mean in my opinion yeah i mean do you have a take on that as far as i mean people out there that are like this is another reason why i bring this up especially when we talk about transportation is i think the truck truck driving as a career truck mechanicing as a career like sometimes get on and it gets on for all the wrong reasons and there’s a lot of you can you can make good money you have a

good life doing it you can just have to work at it you know trucking trucking is not a job trucking is a lifestyle you know people that people look at that don’t enjoy trucking you know they look at it as a job and and you make good money yeah and you’re just not truly happy but it’s that guy that that’s his lifestyle and that’s his that’s his drive that’s his motivation that’s who he is you know you look at our grandparents right her grandparents used to like define their self-value off of their work yeah and our society’s gotten away from that so but you still have those guys that that’s what that’s what drives them is their work ethic and who they are is to as based on their work and those are the people that doesn’t matter what they’re doing they’re going to be successful yeah because there’s a lack of people willing to work anymore you know when i saw a article this morning amazon fresh is coming out 1500 new jobs i think it was like forget what where it was um they’re posting applications for 1500 new jobs and

i’m like and we’re still stimulating the economy the people are post i mean i talk to small businesses all around the state and everybody’s hiring and we’re stimulating the economy with with more money and like there’s a lot of work out there and i still think in america you can still write your own check if you’re willing to work right and you’re not willing to just take immediate gratification if you don’t have to have all the best as a 25 year old or a 30 year old or you know if you can just find something you like to do and go do it and enjoy it then you don’t need to go buy a bunch of extra because you’re already happy doing whatever you’re doing and you can have a good life and career and actually work your way up through the system doing whatever yeah you know and i might not have made some of the decisions i made over the years if if i had more education than what i have but i still learned it i still figured it out i still yeah drove past it yeah you know it’s uh

and some of the best lessons in life are the most expensive right yeah but yeah that’s a big a big a big push you know you don’t you don’t have to go to college to to be successful you can if you want to right because that’s what you want to do if you want to play sports or you want to you’re academically strong or you have a career that requires it by all means go do it but man you can build a badass career doing something you like without it if you don’t want to do it so and to me that’s what you’ve done and to me and that’s what i’ve done i’ve enjoyed what i what i do and we both we went two different ways but we still end up in the same spot right so you can take either road and still get there for sure you just got to work you just got to work that’s always that’s always going to be the answer yes sir i don’t care how you try to juggle the cards figure out your magic formula the answer is still got to work work you

got to put it in yep you can’t be an eight to five guy freaking you might be at the office eight to five or wherever you’re you know but you still gotta be working on things you can be eight to five and and make fifteen dollars an hour and and if that’s what makes you happy do it if that’s what you want right like if if that’s your game then by all means get her done yeah you know you’re just not gonna build a business off eight to five you’re not gonna build a career off eight to five where i come from right you know it ain’t gonna happen thank you sir yeah thank you appreciate it you