welcome to recycled Idaho for to recycling industry veterans bread Eckart Nick Snyder’s for 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 making things happen in the great state of Idaho in this podcast make and I sit down with Dale hope the owner of diamond street recycling talk about being on the forefront of recycling the things Dale and his company are doing with everything from composting blends to asphalt recycling is awesome not to mention the economics behind it a real class act business go ahead take a listen alright guys we’re here with another episode episode of recycled Idaho sit here with Dale help how you doing Dale oh great thanks hey just sitting down with us day I appreciate it for those of you that don’t know Dale is our neighbor here the owner of diamond street recycling so we’re cycling this in the name just like us but they do a different form of recycling so if you want to give us a little bit of background and be

awesome sure probably around 2006 we bought the site that’s right behind your facility of some 32 acre site was a gravel pit that had been all mined out and we bought it as a home for our other business which is Magnum demolition at the time nothing was being taken out of the pit and so we started looking at ways to use it and so we developed a sister company from which we called that mystery recycling which is what we’re here to talk about today so we started that in onine thinking that we start which is a few basic products like asphalt or crushed concrete soil that type of stuff and then as we get farther into it then we started taking more and more products organic products branches grass leaves lumber was always your intention to take all those products or was it just kind of organic growth I mean as you started taking some things you saw the need or kind of what drove the bus as far as that were you always intend on taking those products well no it kind of had happened almost by accident because when we started when

we moved into the pit you know six we were getting a lot of people through our gate looking for another recycle tree recycle company I won’t give their name but they were behind us on gallon Road and people would come into our day thinking that they were there at that place and so we actually made up a map and a phone number and a piece of paper we tell people how to get over there and after doing that for a couple years we started to scratch our heads thinking maybe we should get ya side of business and so we started out small with Grass Valley some branches because we have the equipment to be able to process it or at least move it and all that if we had to and then from Rhode Island we just started getting further into the recycle with tug grinders and screeners and it just kind of evolved so in the beginning with all that yard waste what is the protocol to to move that because I know it’s a little different now with the new equipment you have over there yeah originally we were thinking we’re mostly

act like a transfer station so that instead of turning people away because I have the capacity with our walking floor trailers to take a hundred yards at a time so instead of turning people away to go around through basically our I guess you consider mark competitor now he’s not there anymore he’s since moved but we’re thinking well least we could provide a service and then have people come in and and take some of the other products which we have which was liver screening topsoil and making crushed concrete and that type of stuff that we could get customers still come in and plus our pet we were using as a dump site so people could drop concrete or asphalt or Rock order to help fill the hole after that I know so I just kind of evolved and more we got down the road we invested in the shippers we got a couple smaller shippers to start that we have bigger more screening plants more loaders and from there we just kept growing so you work always you’re not like a second or third generation recycled guy I mean what is your in your background

before you got into the recycling business well I started as managing for the guy that I bought the business from was a local guy bought the magnet emulation from him and I started as basically his office manager or production manager I have a degree in finance and I also have a master’s in business administration so I was an office guy and he was really retired so he sold us the demo company and he trained us and mentored us on how to run that and we took over loaded down he stayed on for a year and helped us and then a few years after that is when we bought the pit which he also owned and we’ve got a joke because every time he wanted to sell us something I think I’d buy it but it turned out because then he talked us into it times it was a natural transition to move our demo company out of a pit over a cold road over here to where we’re at now behind you guys and so we I know a lot about that pit nice you know so my background is on the administration side

but really demolition and recycling is just a lot about math but the recent senator was kind of we learned as we go and that’s not as kind of you know we’ve had a previous conversation with David for my deal demo and essentially it was similar to Houston it is about the math and kind of what you can make work and what how that how to work the number so I would assume having here ability to ever pit but getting away from the pit side on the back to the recycle side what is kind of your big movers like what are your you know the big products that you’re seeing you know people more of a want more of a need for out in the market that you guys are producing over there well our our fastest moving products are our screen topsoil and our color demotius so it was about two years into the beginning of the business we started looking at coloring what we call our find right natural so once it goes through the chipper we screen it and we invested in a coloring equipment to color up so we make three

colors brown black and red so those have just steadily increased in sales so our topsoil and our colored mulch is early odd at least start to take it off so that’s what we really started targeting because people were bringing the raw materials in yeah and then we process them and to about you that by coloring or changing over screening them and that’s all it is product so a lot of the large landscaping companies around Boise Nampa Murray and Evil Eva’s far away as when Falls they come in and buy our finished products yes yeah there’s the musty of customers they come to you or do you go out and deliver luckily all you ninety percent of our sales happen in our yard we do deliver we have three smaller delivery trucks that will take out a small one yard or they can take eight to ten yards and then we have larger trucks we use we borrow from our demo company so we have hundreds are blocking for Turner’s we take large volumes like cattle Betty and that kind of stuff so is there any products that you’re looking at in the future I’m

yeah you’re pretty happy with your sales mix as far as what you are providing now is there something else you guys looked at they’re just trying to run the numbers on yeah actually my you put my son-in-law Brett Wells he he started early on we were having a quandary were getting so much grass and leaves and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do it originally were selling the grass off his horse feed we’re trying to figure out what to do and then he came over the idea of starting composting and so he did the research and figured out how to make our compost and so that product is one of our fast movers now with every yard or compost that we can make we sell yeah it’s a great product so that has led to the new products if your question is soil blanks or bio soils that’s the new kind of offer coming trend were it’s basically being requested or through the pipeline the supply line from the county governments city governments or they work with the engineers to come up with a specific soil blend

which would be like what would it would somebody use like what those doctors use a soil blends for well they use it in landscaping berms they use it in the government around the government buildings downtown of the city Boise they redid the sidewalks and drainage system down there so they had a special blend for their tree planting all around downtown Boise the one we’re working on now is over on the road it’s a swale by the the wet lamps so there’s going to be some mixed soil plans over there so what what happened was our compost was so pristine I feel like it’s the best in the valley and when you mix that with a screen top soil and a mixture of sand depending on what kind of gradation of sand you use you can really fine-tune and have a really nice pile soil to tell you what you’re trying to do whether it’s a niche or growing or you know fruits and vegetables or flowers or whatever so so it’s over by that sand or you just source it out of your paper if you have to happen because I know Santa’s

on it I wouldn’t think that people would just be bringing in sand right and they say yeah that’d probably be the only product you guys would have to actually go purchase to make your blend right we do import the sand from the pits just south of a cereal Pleasant Valley Road so there’s different as there again another learn across different types of sands different coarseness of sands if it’s a wash stand or not so it really depends so a lot of the engineers the soil engineers are are starting to come up with these mixes and then luckily we have the soap the topsoil in the compost and all we’re gonna do some in the sand in and then they grit they grade it that he they tested four different levels of pH and carbon and that kind of stuff and it’s probably going to be one of our better sellers over the next your compost lines is so impressive and we got a chance to look at it on our boots on the ground portion and you’ve told me during that that you can’t you sell every every part of it you make you

know and aren’t you looking to expand that yeah what happened is I’ll mention here the DEQ oversees our site from the standpoint of how much compost we can produce so while we were small we could produce up to six hundred yards at a time and have on site at a time and of course once we started selling six hundred yards was gone really quick so as fast as we could make it it’s about a 12-week process to compost grass and leaves and screen and so once we have that portion made so then we worked with the DEQ their code for what they call it tier 2 which gives us unlimited and what you saw under the boots on the ground was more item or more rows and we’ve been dedicating a larger portion of the south part of our pit so if it’s 32 acres right now we have about five acres dedicated to compost and that’s probably going to go up to about and you compost like he said that quality of it is just I’ve never seen it because I bought some from like Home Depot years past right and you

know yours it doesn’t look like compost it’s that clean right now well I would say anybody’s ever been to your facility whether your customer or government agent whatever like your guys were on a tight ship it’s clean its tidy it’s organized you do it the right way you know cut corners and I think from my standpoint in the describe recycling and and having you guys as a neighbor that’s one thing I’ve always appreciate about like you know when we moved in having the kind of a corner of recycling you know you guys handle different products and what we handle but we like to think that we do it the right way but then we could you know go to your facility like how you guys are doing it so that’s one thing but you guys are not only just back there just do what you do but you’re doing it the right way which is a good I mean that’s a good thing we can appreciate that on our end yeah I appreciate that that’s a very nice compliment so when we started the recycle business we all kind of came together as a

group and decided that whatever we needed to do to make sure when the customer left our site that they’re as happy or happier than when our yeah and that philosophies work really well for us so if somebody says well that doesn’t look like your yard so we just throw another half a bucket how’s that yeah and we do whatever we can to make sure the customers are happy and and along that lines the quality of the products are important I mean we’ve had people say well why don’t we go out and get you know manure based compost we can use that a lot of our customers kind of dictated to us early especially their one operas adentro guy that’s really serious about his garden he doesn’t want manure and he would tell us don’t change your mix you know yeah and we aren’t gouging my price but give him a fair price and we give them a superior product and that’s what’s really driving and that’s probably what led you guys into the bio soils was just probably a your reputation of making a good compost I would assume that’s probably the ultimate like

lead-in to oh well you guys if you guys make such a good compost and you guys can probably make a damn good bio something yep and then I mean stop knowing the story I would as soon as probably that’s exactly right I mean we’ve we’ve got the two quality products the screen topsoil and the compost and so it’s a natural transition so we actually we didn’t go out looking to put files photos together we mean we didn’t even know really what they it wasn’t beginning yeah my customers would come to us like the county or the city or some of these bigger companies like you know Sun rock or some of the guys that are doing some of the big road networks and need certain types of soil they would come to us it’s kind of like okay that all goes back to you’re listening to your customer just the service of providing you listen to them you’re providing that service yeah I think one of the big themes like that we’ve kind of touched base on and recycled Idaho and I think it I mean it goes to you guys as well

is you know the whole recycling game is important it’s important to you know it’s important to be green and recycling is important but also recycling isn’t free I mean I think that’s starting to catch up people are starting trying to I understand like recycling isn’t free cost money to do it the right way it cost money to make a good topsoil cost money to make a good mulch or a good ship or a colored ship it’s not necessarily free but it’s the right way to go about things and I mean you guys I have I’ve never checked a price so I have no idea but I mean just by the way you guys type of facility around the quality of your product you know I know you guys are putting good money and putting money back into porting back into your facility is that because you believe in the growth of that business that because you believe in the growth of you know the industry or kind of what’s motivating you to keep driving to the next line of business well I think the customer is what’s really pushing us because I I kind

of joke about how after the first few years this thing just outgrew us and we’ve been trying to catch up ever since so once we think we’ve made enough topsail than somebody you know we was to get excited if somebody wanted five yards or 10 yards and now people want 500 yards or a thousand yards hidden and so they’re dragonis into so and that’s a good thing that the demand is you know we’re behind the curve work we’re trying to catch up to demand and so as with the phone keep ringing off the hook and the orders get larger and more frequent and you know we we’ve been blessed we’re getting a lot of the major landscaping & construction companies house customers and their dedicated customers obviously our location has a lot to do with it right out for freeway access yeah dedicated customers so when they say hey I’m putting in a bid for I need five thousand yards next June I mean that really makes us stand up pay attention so along the way even early on when the orders would go over five to fifty and then from fifty to five hundred

that really I hate to use the word forced but gave us the benefit of going out and shopping for better equipment more production we’d get more production of our equipment what can we do to speed things up we get more volume and so we invested heavily and luckily we haven’t had to borrow money to combine our equipment we reinvest the money the profits from the company a lot of the profits early on came from the dump piece and now our pit is full those dumb piece of kind of slimmed down a little bit I mean we still get quite a quite a bit of income from dumpees but on the fill side yeah so we really utilize that cash flow to buy so the business has really evolved but it’s the businesses on almost coming full circle as well yes you know from filling in the pit and getting it back to usable ground level ground level my hands and now you’re taking that ground on the land and that’s kind of always been my thing when people see these these big gravel pits or whatever like oh just a gravel pit in a

hole we grab my big ass understand like the roadways have to be built somehow sometimes and if you do it right like what you guys have done when you came in and being able to fill that back in with my old asphalt concrete subject that’s where it came from fill back in do it right compact it right it can now be a use usable piece of land and a revenue generator ain’t part of the you know the larger like recycling ecosystem yeah in the beginning we’ve had those pretty big side of 32 acres and now we’re using almost every square foot yeah sometimes our group will come to us and say well I don’t have room for this or do you have any so I know you talked about your bio soil do you have any other goals besides that coming up any of changes you guys are making or anything trying to push your your name out there more well yeah we just we’ve had a crusher for about 15 years we used in our demo company and it had been kind of retired over the last five or six years and we

just fired it up again this year and so we’re excited where the market again kind of came to us and started requesting the recycled asphalt and we make it in a 1 inch – crushed asphalt really a nice product so we fired our question up again and started crushing and within a few days it was already out and the public people started calling so that’s pretty cool to see a machine that had been sitting on a very expensive machine for almost six years and then we have rights on that material that fluctuates again the other commodity material it’s a nice fluctuated one way and that’s more expensive and that’s kind of a way as you’re going to the Boise Valley he’s you know everything from labor to houses to everything else but yeah we’re with the price of it now we’re selling for $20 per cubic yard which is pretty comparable to a couple of other pits that are selling it the quantity supply has been kind of sporadic over the last 10 years I mean I used to make a pretty regular and I sold it 67 years ago from a $9 er we

when we started getting more and more involved in colored mulches top soils and blends the kind of part 2 crusher because the profits were the organic materials but that has changed because now the price of the crushed asphalt especially a good question asphalt an ice cream product has gone up so now we thought well now we can what are people using the crushed asphalt for what you look projects not specific projects but what kind of what types of projects well like temporary drug lasers or paths for RVs we’ve sold it to farmers for like a money road you know spring that cries out they’ll lay the road put the alcohol town get back to their barn of Corral’s we’ve got a guy were delivered to tomorrow equal he’s going to use it to patch holes in a parking lot kinda like a cold mix so if you put it down and water it and roll it it’s it’s more stable than like a gravel but it doesn’t it’s not like a hot mix but it’s a nice real clean it’s got about a 5 percent oil content to it so it does flying together

could you mix that with like some weather or something or and get it to heat here a little bit better I mean is there a way to use that there are companies that buy our material had in the past and they also buy from the pit south of here and they will add a hot oil to it to get it to and act more like a hot medics because I remember when they when we did this this facility it had kind of that what they call like an alligator asphalt you know it was kind of roughed up and it we knew when we started putting big trucks on it and equipment it just wasn’t gonna last so I believe it was not forever but they came in and I know it was my forever they came in and around and on site and then somehow recirculated and basically laid it back down so they had those two pieces of equipment if I recall or I was a grinder and then they were you know through a pug mill so it heats it and puts the oil back in and basically turns it back into

a hot asphalt oh yeah we’ll just deaths was fascinating to me we use it a lot of it in our pit as a death control because we’re required to keep our sweet plan to keep the dust down so that’s another big use for like construction sites or lay down yours better than gravel because it’s not dusty and yeah another benefit is the weeds or they don’t grow as fast food and snacks down nicely good to know you can roll it almost in a packet so temporary parking lots okay yeah yeah look good over there and he showed it to me tor over there I mean you had it laid down yeah clean product our goal is to what’s the balloon the Atlanta the pit completely full we’re gonna put about four to six inches on top of our where do you see your industry going I mean I know you personally are focusing on the bio soil market other than the other but that kind of or you see it here business specifically going that more in that direction do you see anything in the industry that’s intriguing or interesting regulation wise or just

product why coming down the line that and the reason I ask this is because I was talking to somebody that has a similar type facility in Washington where a lot of us mandated that the you know the grinding and with neighboring whatever suite is a demo job they’re required to crush on site and do you know a bunch of that you know before it ever leaves do you see Idaho going or doing anything different and how they approach it well so far a lot of those regulations or policies haven’t hit Idaho yeah I remember in the early years we started at home nine the leaves classifications were requiring through the demo process or any other kind of construction process to use a recycled product so there was a demand for like the crushed concrete because it’s a recycled product and they got points toward their beads certification that’s the kind that died off but I can see you know a lot of people in the Trinity Paulo you don’t even know who we are I mean we’re still super busy and we’re definitely in a growth stage I would guess it’s it’s kind of

an educated guess maybe 10 to 15 percent of the whole valley even though who we are but we cater more to the commercial guys so yeah about a hundred percent of them know who we are the big landscaping companies charging families but we’re getting more and more into the residential offense so looking at our business specifically were we have a lot of upside from the one-off presidential guy we see that basically in our Saturday hours because that’s typically when the the people around their yard they’re planning their gardens they come in and drop off their grass or their branches and they buy our topsoil or compost so that’s what I really see the growth do you ever get any of those those homeowners that are coming to recycle some yard waste and grass or some branches that don’t want to pay you know because I catch people in the recycling world that aren’t really in the recycling world with wanna recycle but they don’t want it like maybe pay when they need to pay you know I haven’t really had that much of a problem with that I think people pretty much understand

though there’s a cost to dispose of their product whether it’s at their curbside with the city crimson or or if they’re going to take it to the landfill I don’t know too many free drop-off sites for unwanted material I guess what they say so I have heard a few conversations where I office management of the phone and people say oh you charged yeah I bought but that’s pretty rare either model that’s good that’s a good thing because now I think then it takes a lot of Education and that’s kind of part of like what we even want to do there hey we want to highlight businesses in our area do I say Terry our state I know they’re doing things the right way but also to help educate people and to let them know recycling isn’t free you know you pay to drop something off versus then into the landfill you may even pay a little bit more than you would at a landfill but it’s going to get you it’s going to the right cost I mean it’s it’s being returned and being reused for something else and I mean those are

kind of if we had to name the two big things that we are focused on is businesses they’re they investing back in the state economically you know whether it was jobs tax base and guys because their kids are doing it the right way and then educating everybody else said hey it’s not free I mean what we do this the equipment that it cost that you have to run you know your rock you know your crusher what’s that four hundred five hundred thousand dollar piece of equipment yeah try by 1,000 do you push been a little more than that yeah it’s not only I got mind you and that’s one Bernie’s right I mean then you got the loaders and the color machines and the grinders and that mean there’s just so many components that go into to make that product but it’s a lot better than Orlando yeah and people that Boise Valley can appreciate what’s happening with real estate prices you can imagine what 32 acres of commercial land is cost and what it’s worth and yeah and the house be considered in you know receiving the material of charging port for

sure the tax base the taxes that you’re paying just to have that piece of land you know and I I just always want to make that well known as I mean we’re all here to do a good thing I mean the recycling business industry’s been good to us and good to our guys but it but it’s not because we haven’t been willing to put back into it you know equipment land buildings everything that goes along with this maritime yeah so Nick you got anything that just really wants goes up no I think we covered most anything most everything that you do except you didn’t really highlight the dairy you just give a product to the dairy we are none of them where the customer came to us and we had a couple dairies local dairies that wanted us to chip and screen to a specific size for the dairy industry because you can’t have anything to find or to course you gotta have it just right so they gave us the specifications so we do a lot of specific materials just for the dairy industry yeah it’s a really nice product it’s it’s more

coarse with sawdust but you wouldn’t consider it a chip in a dairy industry for those people that are watching that are not frem I know is a big chunk of kind of what drives our economy yeah or just there’s a lot of very very big here yes yeah so we always ask this question but it’s because I it’s always super interesting we get it we’ve got a bunch of various responses but give us one or two people who have been super influential in your career your life or anybody that you know I want to give a shout out to that you know it’s kind of helped up do you long the way well there’s definitely two people first would be my wife Lori she we’ve been married 42 years and we started this little path together when we were pretty young and so she works with us in the business she manages all the office and the financial side of the business even though I have a finance degree she can work circles around me when it comes to that just super good partner really supportive she lets me kid around about what makes

successful partnership and the idea is that I get to make all the major decisions and she makes all the minor decisions and so far there hasn’t been a major decision that great business partner and then of course the gentleman that we bought our demolition company from as well as the pit behind us where we’re sitting now came from literally Gillingham and he’s been a mentor or I call him dad that he’s not my dad but he sure has treated me like a son and he’s been a very good mentor very smart guy he had a ninth grade education and he learned the hard way and he taught both money and I how to deal with customers how to provide a service or a product that you can make money on and one of the things that always sticks to the back of my mind is he said don’t spend your money on luxury items he says if you have to finance a luxury on them and you can’t afford it you know he convinced us that any extra funds we would go out it was just waste we just put it back into the

business and that’s worked out really well and he’s still alive today and he comes around and he’ll give me some pointers whether I asked for it or not yeah good gently right so as a follow-up to that like two things that I really got out of it is I come from a family business so I watched my mom and dad do what you and Loni do so I have a tremendous amount of respect that’s not easy to work all day with your spouse go home with your spouse wake up in the morning go you know I want to say to the minor decision exactly but most most respect and you guys have made it work and you guys have built a hell of a business so that to me is is awesome and then the second to last thing and I this is almost just as important that I want people to understand and whether it’s a recycling industry the demolition industries you know you name the trucking industry you don’t have to have some fancy degree to be successful it sometimes it helps sometimes it doesn’t the path was was right for

me to go to school the path for other people to go to go in even past ninth grade or high school that may not be the right path for them but I want to understand you don’t have to go to college to be a successful entrepreneur a successful manager a successful operator and but you gotta have work ethic and like you guys exemplify that work ethic you got to be willing to take a little bit of risk and work your ass off yeah I tell people it you know don’t don’t fall for these get-rich-quick schemes the quickest way to get rich is going to work every day and wait for another 40 years ya know whether you get rich or not it depends on how you define rich but you know there’s just like you said it’s a work ethic and treating customers and people with respect and giving them a product or give them something more than they expect definitely helps you build a successful business and then wake up again the next day and do it and then they die for that and do it and then do that for

40 years you have not switched jobs eight times and you know I but just stick with something and be willing to see it through I think I mean you exemplified both of those things and I love it and I’m I so much appreciate you sitting down and doing this with us and thank you we will in this one one last thing how do people get a hold the Intel through our office number time mystery be cycling to numbers two oh eight three two two three zero five zero great or our website time is for your cycling comm awesome okay Thank You deal much appreciated taking the time all right thanks thanks yeah 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