welcome to recycled idaho where two recycling industry veterans brett eckhart nick snyder explore idaho businesses and organizations that are putting in the work to keep idaho environmentally and economically viable at the same time take a listen to how these entrepreneurs business owners and operators are making things happen in the great state of idaho in this episode of recycled id help i get a chance to sit down with ken raglan from concrete construction supply ken has more than 40 years of experience in the rebar mystery take a listen welcome everybody we’re here with another episode of recycled idaho i’m really excited to sit down and do this one because this isn’t a is not an industry we’ve touched on yet i’m sitting here with ken ragland from concrete construction supply how you doing ken good good so just to kind of start us out man just give us a your quick background how you got into the this industry and what do you guys call your industry that you’re in the reinforcing steel industry okay yeah it’s uh i’ve been in this i’ve been i started this industry back in illinois with a company
that’s pretty familiar to this area too was gate city steel okay uh there was a company that uh eventually that pacific bought out and then late 80s early 90s i can’t remember exactly when but anyway yeah i started to rebar business back in illinois uh in 1974. okay so it’s been a long journey so you’ve been in the industry for a long time doesn’t change that’s why when i went down to your plant they’re like i know who you need to talk to yeah you know they’re like you need to talk to ken uh yeah i’ve been around came out to idaho in 1988 with far west steel okay and things have just progressed over the years so what were you doing with far west i came out as their rebar manager okay eventually became the branch manager then moved on from there and uh started a company in 1990 called apco okay which was the predecessor to harris being here so you started that company i didn’t start milo alliston was the owner okay and i was just sort of his right hand left hand yeah we yeah we we had a we
had a good relationship okay and uh well i could i was i like to tell people yeah i didn’t didn’t have any interest but i was well taken care of okay good good good yeah and that turned into harrison then harris then harris bought epco in uh 2006. okay and then new court bought it at harris or bat excuse me but yeah i bought all the harris uh branches which at that time i think there was 34 rebar branches uh are they nationwide harris in international they’re international canadian okay oh wow they’re started in canada okay and they’re based out of harris is based out of toronto canada okay and uh and then came the states i’m not sure when they came to states i think their first operation was either a boston area and then they migrated to seattle and then these stores expanded from there uh over the last i don’t know how many years but they’ve been around in canada for since the early 50s if i find it have you been in idaho since the 80s then 81 yeah since 81 yeah yeah so you’re with harris and then what
what brought you over to concrete construction well harris i i you know it’s it’s like i lasted with harris about eight years and and uh things didn’t uh roll as what what they’d like to see or gotcha uh and so i i i i opt out and and ended up over in uh oregon for a year and a half okay before i came back over here with ccs okay yeah i’ve been dealing with a lot of the ccs guys for a long time now yeah you know we handle the scrap so this is kind of cool to see the whole process full circle so one part of our businesses is united hauling and we kind of got into this before we hit record yeah but our hauling trucks have been hauling you guys and you in particular rebar for how long well when when we started appco in 1990 one of our major suppliers with cascade steel rolling mills out of mcminnville yeah and united hauling was our primary source of material coming in and uh so we had i’ve had a long relationship with united hauling since probably 93.94 uh and then
like you say then you guys hauled scrap out of our yard yeah we haul it out at that you bring it in take it out and uh and i don’t know if you’re hauling scrap back to schnitzer or all goes the new core but uh you know one time you guys took scrap to schnitzer’s yeah yeah i put a cat up up there to mcminnoville yeah yeah we still still do we still have a really good relationship with them so so that’s just kind of cool how it’s full circle how we haul it back like your cut ends yeah are what we get at least that’s what i assume and that’s what’s going to be kind of cool is when victor has time i’m i’m going to tour the yard we’ll film that so we can show everyone how you build your capsules yeah so so those um so waka’s kind of through like what you guys do over there at ccs well that when we as far as taking the initial i guess if you want to go we get the drawings or the projects from the general con general contractor and then
we got to go through a process of bidding the job then when we get the job we got to detail it draw it up to get the drawings and laid out for the rebar for the fabrication once it’s once the it’s approved by the engineers then we we bar listed and sent into the shop for fabrication the fabrication is done uh straight lengths of course and then we bend it to the job site specifications uh we uh we cut we cut and bend uh rebar five days a week for everything that’s going on building-wise and and get you never see it because it gets covered up with concrete yeah it’s it’s sort of like uh i always it’s a scrap item and it gets buried yeah concrete so nobody ever sees it yeah that’s sort of that’s and i’ve said it over and over again on this show like that’s what i love about my job i get to see all these different industries and how how it’s all connected it’s just kind of awesome how everything is connected so do you guys mainly do commercial i assume well we do we do
residential i mean concrete construction supply started out basically as a with the commercial or the residential chemistry so you started on the residential yeah and then it and ccs has been around for uh 30 plus years okay and has grown to this this business what we’re at today and done done real well uh over the 30 plus years uh about i’m seven eight years ago uh actually ccs jumped into the commercial margin market and reinforcing steel when far west left the valley okay and i’m my years uh i’m thinking that was right around 2010 2012 i think that’s when far west the rebar division at least left left the valley where where was that located in the far west the far west was on on broadway that the rebar that was in division yeah okay yeah and then where their other planet is still yeah or the other staff yeah okay that built the original building there was a rebar and i was there and implemented that structure there in six i didn’t know that yeah 86. okay that was put up and uh because the rebar business is starting to grow and at
that time uh we were the only rebar fabricator in the valley mm-hmm in eight in the late 80s and then there was another one that came in lasted a couple years and and then actually uh they started up in far west absorbed them too but uh then then when uh apco started uh we started in like i say 1990 and so it was just far west and apco supply and rebar and then when harris came into the valley it was still harrison far west but far west decided they wanted to they built a brand new uh shop over in vancouver and uh houston still keep the business and run everything out there but that doesn’t you can’t you gotta be local for rebar you don’t have to but it helps to be local especially in a valley like this or the the growth here is just the growth crazy and to take care of your customers you gotta uh people you know don’t think of rebar being uh they think more of it being a weekly monthly takes that much time but you got to be able to produce some stuff overnight and
get it out oh i bet you probably got a special order special orders and stuff or like something you know someone forgets to put the order in but they need it they got someone important i mean just like just like this morning had take care of hawaii high school and get some some yeah corner bars out to them and you probably had to like just shuffle things around right just shuffle you just you just work through it because you’re building are your relationships with the builders then yeah my relationships are with the the concrete contractors and the general contractors okay that’s who’s buying our product okay and that’s and you probably have a lot of like repeat everything everything’s basically repeat so okay yeah everything’s i mean i mean there’s there’s only the two fabricators harrison yeah and ccs in the valley and so all our customers we got the same customers yeah and so we’re just competing for that one project whatever it is so we’ve been lucky here for a little while it’s been the building sector has been just off off the hook man it’s just insane like everywhere you look
they’re building a new neighborhood i drive down a road they’re building a huge building you know you got like the amazon projects there’s huge factories going in yeah and it’s just it’s just going to keep going just going to keep going growing yeah the uh the industry uh since well since i came i came back in 2015 to the rebar market and it was just starting to explode when i left in 14 and they come back 18 months later and see what it’s what’s happened the last five years it’s just crazy uh tell me a turn there you go um it it the it’s good for us well yeah no it’s it’s good for us too the growth’s good like a lot one big misconception with the recyclers the scrap yards is like people think like oh on a downturn when people are like out there rummaging and you know picking through stuff that we have to do better we want a good economy you know we like a good economy yeah right now you’re in this this is the scrap market right now is it’s more volume than you’ve got to have volume
yeah it isn’t like it was 15 years ago when when scrap prices were rising and it wasn’t on volume it was on pricing yeah and now it’s just reverse in your market with scrapping with scrap and ours is sort of same thing prices prices are leveled off and i don’t i haven’t i didn’t check before i came to see where the scrap market is but i know it’s it’s down and it’s it’s sort of leveled off too at the bottom of the market yeah yeah we’ve had a you know we the projections for this year were really good for the scrap like the ferris side you know it hasn’t been as good a lot of that has to do with what’s going on in the world you know but there’s just so many variables that affect it um but it’s nice to see especially in our value like everyone’s still out there hustling everyone’s out there working you know and i i love like we do you guys at least once a week yeah right you know yeah you guys are just busy and i know this is kind of a busy time of
year for you at least i think it is it is it is we haven’t really uh we started the year off with a bang and it still is still going we’ve hit a little some little valleys but nothing to get excited about that business is dropping or anything still coming in do you do you see a lot of do you see much panic in your industry on some from maybe some of the guys that are newer to it so you’ve been around since 70. so you’ve seen a lot of ups and downs ups and downs yeah yeah you get the panic comes from the owners okay you know don’t make it if the guy’s building a building or the ownership of a company they panic when they see that downturn they or you don’t see that or i just sit it’s coming it’s just it’s it’ll be back and it will work in cycles it works in cycle never stay this is probably the longest cycle that i’ve seen well we’ve been i mean when was the last like like oh wait was it like oh eight we saw that huge housing crash 08
10 to 10. yeah it was it was it was it was low so how was like business for you guys like through through that because that was one of the worst well the worst i’ve ever seen yes it was it was it was the best it was the worst i mean i can go back to fall of 81 was not good for this area and then we had 91.92 okay was a little slow but that 2008 to 2010 was a disaster that was a rough one that was a rough one for every people a lot of people a lot of industries the downturn uh industries business was slow there was very few large a lot of little projects but no major projects and uh but you’re able to find enough business to stay in business yeah so yeah you you just gotta search yeah is that kind of what you’re out doing are you out searching right now with the the cole bed no i haven’t been outside but in a normal normal time i’ll be out i’ll be out more more out than in forming new relationships just checking on new projects
on new projects with current relationships my my my thing is i want to keep the older the older the older customers happy yeah because they’re the ones that that have made our business my business good so i want to make sure they’re happy and they’ll and in turn i’ve it’s they they’re they’re good the repeat business is good yeah and that’s what you look for absolutely it’s got to be the same same same for us we’re we’re always we’re customer driven yeah customer service driven like that’s always been what we stand on you talk to any of our customers like we’re all about trying to do what’s right and taking care of people for 30 years not for one year you yeah i mean we got we got a project downtown now a third murder with the uh the only out of state contractor to my mind that’s in the valley that’s opus out of minnesota okay and uh the general contractors doing the concrete mcelveen sort of led us into that one so but that’s the only out of state a non-local customer that i have worked with in years yeah uh
so you’re still open to that but i mean obviously your bread and butter is kind of your local the local your local jesus contractors yeah you’ve got and and that’s that’s your bread and butter like you say that’s your bread and butters your local people one thing i wondered um before you came i was kind of trying to think of some questions to ask you um one thing i was wondering about like that 08 to 2010 crash were you guys able to see that coming before it happened did you get can you can you see it or did it just kind of like it it just it was just there okay it was just there because our markets and i didn’t get into the recycling industry until 2010 so i like came in like right in the comments you were at the bottom the bottom end of it and right at that time like so many of the prices were like so like inflated and then they kind of crashed again you know back in like 12. yeah i’m just i’m trying to see six and seven prices were good yeah too good to
be honest oh yeah oh yeah like you mean like the price was up here yeah prices yeah the prices are up here yeah and and so and then all of a sudden it i mean you talk about the bottom it i mean it it just it was not not a gradual slide it was a drop yeah and i’ve seen the charts like i said i wasn’t around for it but i’ve seen you get your charts yeah and i’ve seen it and i’ve heard stories about it yeah probably it’s quick but then the recovery them on it was quick too it was quick too like too quick you know well it came up and and i i even from from 10 started swinging back up and then 15 and even now we’d start if i go back to just 15 through 2020 now it’s up and now we’re starting to level off again okay yeah feels like we’re leveling off yeah we’re off we’re leveling off right now yeah but the boise valley is odd and you talk to different people this boise valley is going to be strong it’s going to stay that way
too maybe not strong it’s probably too too strong a word to use it’s going to stay constant we’re going to get some bumps yeah but it ain’t going to be no swales yeah i don’t think we’ll see another i mean at least soon i don’t think we’ll see another 08 to 10. especially in our valley there’s too many projects that i that are on the table that we’ve quoted and budgeted um for the fall right now or the the thing that i think a lot of owners are waiting for us to see what happens with this uh virus covet yeah and the pandemic where this is going to how long it’s going to last because things are are slow to me is sort of slowed down and i’m not saying to start the job starts like we i think everyone like i think this whole year has been people have just been waiting for that to get you know settled and figured out which could still be some time well time will tell on that but i think once that happens i i truly do think things are gonna just kind of come like
kind of come back you know um and i don’t think it’s gonna i think kind of come back to where it should be you know some of the pricing and some of the economy yeah and that’s what at least i hope for that might be yeah it’s gonna the pricing yeah it’s gonna be interesting to see what uh steel prices do yeah over the next year oh yeah right now i think they’re because the pandemic they’re staying level but i think once this is over with that we’ll see what happens with that that steel prices and the economy oil prices steel price i always looked at oil and steel as being ones up ones down and sort of they kind of follow follow each other oh yeah and so we’ll see what happens in this market in six months see where we’re at yeah yeah you know i always hope the best you know well i do too i i don’t think i don’t i don’t see a bottom falling out and i don’t see a big rise either neither do i i see i i would be happy if we just saw little
upticks here and there but stayed consistent yeah like i’d be happy i think most of the customers we deal with would be happy because like things are good the price is there we’re at least getting paid something for some of your scrap um i’ve seen a lot worse you know yeah i could say well the scrap industry has always intrigued me because you talked you said made a comment uh earlier about the scrap market when it’s high and and people clamoring finding scrap bringing it in yeah for that six pack of beer or carton cigarettes or whatever and that’s when you got to watch your job sites people walking off do you have any problem with that no no we don’t but several years ago we did back when it was exactly 200 plus yeah yeah yeah i don’t know anyway so the the uh you don’t see we don’t you don’t have that right now because it takes a lot of scrap to buy to get some get some product yeah well that’s good that’s the last thing yeah i mean that that aspect of it’s good i don’t know how that relates
back to the copper industry right now i don’t think cowboy’s doing good job been on a little tear late last month because that’s i know that was a problem with job sites too and we have a good system in all our yards we have cameras we have a good system on license plates to kind of deter that because that’s the last thing we want we want to buy from the businesses the guys the guys doing the work not the guys well now when the shady stuff when the scrap market was high uh the owner of uh app going around to the you guys and pacific it says if anybody brings any rebar in we want to know about yeah yeah absolutely and we’ll do that if we see some scrap come on we’re like hey i know i’ve seen that scrap i know where that came from yeah i would call like you yeah as a kid that’s what i figured you know um so you’ve been in the industry since the 70s have you seen any real like big innovations big changes in the industry the only thing no uh not really not
there’s been some new equipment new equipment one of the big uh i guess the major equipment deal was is there’s a uh outfit out of uh italy uh cut and straighten cut machine that has sort of revolutionized the rebar market in some areas with doing the fabrication bent bars and stuff streamlined it with when you’ve got a lot of high rises you need a lot steric ties and stuff that like that bent these these new autumn uh machines will cut and bend them just spit them out sorry i didn’t quite catch that could you please repeat it i apologize that’s okay all right try to shut it off anyway the uh that’s been one the benders that that i started out with back in in 74 the only thing that’s changed on them is the heads i mean is the computer they went from just a digital head to a computer head on the machine the sheer opera the shears have been reduced inside the you guys the united hauling hauled off uh this year that apco started out with and in 2005 i think 2004 it was about 6 000 ton or 6
000 pounds sheer okay and you guys hauled it out of the yard because we went and they it was it was huge i mean it’s fit inside this room now the new sheers will sit on this table yeah we’ll show that when we do the walk through yeah with victor because yeah i think that would be cool to kind of show that end of it yeah i wish we had that uh that sheer because it i mean it was huge yeah i’d love to see that old one yeah i got a picture of it oh yeah if you could send it yeah we’ll put it on here and show everybody yeah do you see any have you heard or do you see any changes or you know obstacles that your industry is going to face here in the next 10 20 years no no no it’s going to be you know really it’s just it comes down to rebar has been around for some so you know since way back when there’s nothing out there there’s no competing product there’s well fiberglass rebar uh like to be i say they like to think and
there’s app there’s applications for fiberglass rebars okay mris is anyone in our valley doing that here no no one’s doing that we uh i just supplied some matter of fact got some coming in this week for an mri out at 10 mile okay so you guys can still get it for your customer though yeah we can get a product oh yeah yeah we supply it because one part of your business you guys do supply the the products for your contractors too yeah yeah because you guys have a shop that’s already public yeah we got a store that’s open to public we the concrete additives the concrete accessories additives and stuff like that we sell that in our store so we got a we’re sort of like a fred meyers one stop shopping yeah that we can do that and they can come in and get just anything they want if they can’t we’ll order it and you can order it again for them yeah ship get it yeah on a job right now where uh we got to do a lot of uh farm savers and stuff where the applications that such so they
don’t have to have a lot of bar and to tie the walls into together we do a form saver which is a threaded bar and a and a coupler okay so that uh they don’t the congestion in walls and stuff and plus it saves on the forums so they don’t don’t they drill their forms with the in the bark and then they can reuse them no no they can’t reuse them no they’re they’re in there they’re in there yeah got you well great um i kind of like to end it with just you letting people know how to get ahold of you i’ll get a hold of you guys like what’s the best way for someone watching this who wants to reach us reach out we got you can just give us a call at 208 888 5600 okay ask for myself or anybody in reinforcing we’ll be glad to okay and we’ll put that down here on the bottom for everybody to see well thank you so much thank you thanks for inviting me thanks for taking the time thank you thank you for listening to another episode of recycled idaho and as
we continue the journey across this great state we look forward to bringing you more stories of people and organizations putting in the work to do the right thing