um you were talking about people asking questions i’ve only looked around on here a little bit i’m not exactly sure how it works but i know when you’re in the bottom you can like raise your hand or something yeah we’ll ask at the end but i i think us three we’ll get it fired fired up but we’ll get into it okay so you guys ready oh there’s drake okay all right guys it’s friday i’m sitting here with our esteemed panel of experts throughout the country about scrap metal and we’re gonna dive into some new topics today um i like doing this i’m an expert in case you didn’t know i am an expert in scrap metal that’s what yep that’s what i said a phd in scrap i love it so i think we have to discuss it wasn’t i i picked a topic for this one i don’t know if you guys read that i kind of wanted to dive into culture not ju not just culture within the business like just like the culture of a scrapper you know i don’t want to just dive into that i’ve always found that

interesting but i think we gotta address how crazy copper’s been this week it’s not but i gotta talk about it like we’re north of four bucks and it just feels feels insane i had a small wager with a buddy of mine that it would go above four dollars so i won that bet this is a bet that i made in the way beginning of january oh wow that was a i just i just had a hunch what do you win dinner but i didn’t win any extra money on my scrap metal because we’ve sold it all at 360 370 380 whatever so i’m trying to sell a brass load myself and brett are trying to sell a brass load right now um and we’re kind of finding that like a lot of the see like the pricing is the same as it was when it was 380. and now it’s you know 406. you know what happens is or at least what i’ve noticed is when the market flies up so quickly the consumers are not ready to consider it solidified at that number yeah so they i’m using air quotes widen their spreads

so that until they feel comfortable that the market is sticking that high and that’s how i understand it too there’s building some safety in there and you know and i get that i get that they think you know it goes up that quick you know there’s quick tomorrow it could drop as quick there’s typically like you know you see an adjustment almost always like you see it go up 10 and the next day you always see it go you know dip three cents you know something of that nature you know but this week this this year has been just like real good non-ferrous you know the markets on all non-ferrous have been real strong so yes definitely well let’s dive in like to culture like cultures you know it’s a it’s a worthy thrown around a lot i think people are always trying to make a good culture with their own employees in a place of work and i i like to think we have a great culture here and it takes time it takes effort but what another thing i’d like to get into in culture is just the culture of

a the customer like i think the scrapper the funniest thing whenever i describe it to anybody yeah it’s hard to explain like scrappers are their own breed you know and i consider all of us on the panels like scrappers as well you know um we’re our own breed and then you got like the the guys that are bringing in like the peddler scrap there’s a lot of different words for it you know obviously there’s the commercial in where we’re handling as a business as a company and i just kind of wanted to pick your guys’s brain how culture is in your area and if it’s if it’s kind of the same throughout the country on those two levels on your your culture as a business and your culture as a customer base so so i i mean we deal with the whole gamut so like our scale man who is like basically the face of our company he’s the one that you know basically is the cashier at a you know a restaurant or whatever yeah he’s dealing he’s dealing with the lowest of the scum of the earth yeah all the way up

to a business owner that you know could be a multi-millionaire yep that guy wants to bring in his own scrap which happens from time to time so he needs to be trained on how and i i keep you know like pounding kill him with kindness yep so i really try to keep that kind of you know culture of just everybody being super nice to each other to everybody these people pay our bills we don’t make money without them now granted some of the time we’re we’re not in the super customer satisfaction business where the customer’s always right because i’m sure all of you know we try to get scammed and taken every single day yep yep i think you gotta i put a 90. it’s a very fine line absolutely i like going back to that i i want to keep 90 of the customers happy you know because i know there’s that 10 percent that are trying to do things the wrong way or trying to scam you so like you can’t keep them all happy and that’s true in any business you can’t keep them all happy you gotta you gotta

have your own procedures your own methods that you have to stand by you know uh if it’s regardless of safety or if they’re trying to hide you know we’ve had it all like we’ve had copper pipe and they pinch the ends off and fill it with sand you know i’m not that guy’s not going to be happy because i’m going to empty that sand and i’m going to lower his price you know um so that’s that guy falls in the 10 percent but i’m not gonna buy sand for three bucks a pound you know no of course not and then you know going further on the culture you know i want everybody to be the team the crew to all be happy and working together and want to help each other including that’s including me so like for instance i’m going through a bit of a struggle right now with one of our seemingly bigger better plants that we service and have multiple dumpsters at the driver is continuing to tell me you know this is in a bad position here this is causing me you know extra time at the plant and the

plant is not willing to work with me whatsoever when there is plenty of room to put the dumpsters in a different spot so on one hand we’re in the service industry and you want to keep your customers happy you want to do what you can for them but on the other hand how how much do you want to continue to push a driver to do something that is causing him harder work and more time and pushing you behind and potential catastrophe to your equipment so it’s a very tough situation when you’re trying to create a culture of where you know you want to keep everyone happy even the customer and uh and your driver yeah like what do you do that’s a tough one we run into that too you know you said that your scale house operator is like the face of your business so is your driver you know that driver is going to your most important accounts but he’s saying you know he’s complaining to me he’s not complaining to the plant and i it’s not falling on deaf ears yeah but like you know it’s a very tough situation because

on one hand you know it’s a really good customer but you don’t want to lose any customer but at some point you know you have to pick and choose hopefully you’re in a situation where you can pick and choose and be like you know what i know we make good money off this guy but it’s not worth the hassle of the driver it’s not worth the potential catastrophe on your equipment because that guy is hurting hurting your he’s hurting your culture too like that goes back to culture he’s he’s hurting your employee culture you know your your driver sounds like this driver you you trust you trust his opinion um and if he’s been there a long time i’ve also you know like i said i’m handling it i’ve been there i can tell that it’s not a good situation and that there’s legitimately no reason for it to be this way i can’t comprehend why they’re being so stubborn about it maybe they’re making it impossible for us because they want us to mess up or which which is which is just you know my me going down a terrible rabbit hole but

i can’t comprehend why they won’t help us help them like their garbage dumpster why would their garbage dumpsters be an easier spot than the scrap guy we pay them wouldn’t they want to make our life easier because we’re paying them well and anyways that’s a little off topic you know the culture no i like it like i’m kind of stuck in between a hard place where you want to do customer service very well but you also want to continue to make life better for your people yeah you got to find that balance because we’ll run into situations and i’ll say this a lot to to potential customers i’ll say i want to meet you to make sure we’re the right fit for each other and i believe that 100 percent i want to make sure we’re the right fit on our culture on you know make sure they have the material make sure we can take care of them i don’t want to just blindly send like a container over there and then you know it’s the wrong size or or just not something we would do or maybe they need something another service

so sometimes there’s customers that i’ve had to tell you know no like this just isn’t going to work you know unfortunately but i always try to provide a different solution you know if it’s a different type of company if it’s someone else that might be willing to do that you know and then absolutely get that and i do want to go back real quick before i forget i love how you brought up the scale house culture how they deal with the lowest of low and business owners and one thing from training different people over here into that job because that could be a tough job to teach people they’re doing a lot of things they’re answering the phones they’re punching the scale they’re paying customers they’re pricing material they’re dealing with you know complaints or arguments and so i got a a quick story we had a guy that was kind of new in the scale house he was learning he called me like hey man this guy’s just being an to me it’s like one of the drivers for this trucking company and i know this customer it’s a good customer of ours

he he hauls a lot of scrap for demo companies so he hauls a lot of scrap for really good customers and he comes across his own scrap from time to time i’ve been dealing with him for years so i told our scale house operator like well explain the driver to me and he explained him and he explained the owner to me but he’s a guy you’d look at and you just if you didn’t know who he was you might not know he’s the owner and i told him i’m like hey man like just so you’re aware like that’s the owner like so i think it’s important to never assume something and i’m not saying bend over backwards just because he’s the owner and really what it was is our guy was assuming he was just a driver and he wasn’t listening to his direction but i was like hey that guy actually knows what he’s doing and he probably was just trying to get like a scale ticket from you and get out of your hair so we always kind of joke about that and now now they’re like they’re now they’re good you

know after going through that like anything their relationship’s stronger but i always like use that as an example like treat the janitor just like you would treat the owner that’s going to get you far in life you know like treat them the same like treat everyone with that mutual respect and you just never know where one person’s gonna lead you to like you never know who that person knows like and that’s where like this service like i tell everyone at all our yards like i want the customers to leave happier than they came is that going to happen like to all of them no it’s not like you got that 10 in there that that might not happen to you know but 90 of people they should be happier like hey give them a good experience pay them well they’re leaving with money like usually when people get cash or check they’re happier you know and um and the culture is also important to keep strong to keep your good employees around because we know how hard it is to find good employees you know virtually i haven’t found anybody new in a while

so you’re you’re like how long how many people do you have over there mikey that have worked there for more than a year um i think pretty much everybody except for no i shouldn’t say that there’s one two so we just hired a new scale steel scale uh the uh truck scale guy just a couple weeks ago so there’s one two three i think three okay that’s good and then i mean those guys everybody else has been here for multiple like several years oh gotcha so the so you guys got you to me that tells you you got a good culture you’ve got a good core group yeah you got a core group that wants to stick around and that’s because ownership and management is taking care of them and and that’s important like to listen to your customer like how you listen to your driver you listen to them and you’re also you’re you’re not just taking the customer side because you’re worried about the the dollar you know you’re worried about making a dollar you’re worried about the long term like absolutely like and that’s what we worry about like i want

it to all fit i want everyone to get along i want us to provide the best service possible and do it the most efficient way so we can take care of all our other customers you know but you have to be willing to sit down with your people and really listen to them if you’re not willing to sit down and listen and then once you listen by actually coming up with a plan you know and sometimes hard decisions come by that like you know maybe we’ve had customers in a similar story to yours like where we’ve had a part go separate ways because like us as a business like it just wasn’t working because our other customers were getting ignored or like you know like i can’t wait there two hours to exchange your container when i’ve got four other customers like needing it so their manufacturing line can continue you know right exactly so like that’s exactly right and that’s like mainly what i wanted to get into i wanted to you know you know we’re over up here in the west coast you know pacific northwest in idaho um and you’re over

there in detroit is that correct right that’s right yeah detroit and i just kind of like to you know and that’s my goal is to get more and more people from different areas of the country on here to kind of discuss what they’re seeing what they’re hearing and more of like at the end of the day all my people are just like family i can’t drive the truck work the material handler bail and i can’t do all the same jobs at this i can’t do all the jobs at the same time so without every piece of the puzzle the whole you know the whole thing stops yeah yeah everybody’s important to me yeah absolutely and it’s important for business owners and management to make sure they know they’re important too i think that’s where the heart of a bad culture comes from is not even if you you know they’re important if they don’t know that you know like that’s where that could start where he gets like god they don’t even care about me like i’m just here i’m just i’m just here to clock in clock out move some scrap around load

trucks and go home like you know like what and that’s where like the communication comes in maybe develop a plan for their long-term growth within the company where they could do other things you know and then go from there so i appreciate your insight on that mr foon and you’re welcome and uh how was the scrap flow over there how’s the weather over there so we got pounded with some snow on tuesday or monday night we were closed on tuesday okay um we probably could have just opened a little late but the slow the flow of scrap peddler walking trade into the yard has really fallen off since uh february yeah it was slower in january but really falling off recently so for us to close down was okay um we got a little bit of snow again yesterday but you know nothing so far it’s been a pretty mild winter other than the one day it’s been freezing cold but you know that’s that’s normal over there right yeah that’s that’s bigger but yeah it’s it’s starting to you know the snow has started this week and seeming to be some pockets

here and there that might hinder driving capabilities and and flow of scrap outbound to the mills and hopefully that will you know the east coast getting pounded and texas getting pounded hopefully that helps to uh drive up the price next month yeah i mean everything’s pointing to an up market in march so we’re excited yeah we’re excited to see that i mean i think a lot of people the last episode on here um mikey that we talked about how it kind of went down and like no one really agreed it should go down at least a bunch of scrapyard owners i understand why it went down because we all unloaded as much as we could in january so bill’s the mills got their appetite you know filled but i knew that there would be a lull in february because everybody jammed it out so nobody’s hurting for space and cash because it’s all coming in in february so then the mills are going to be not getting their appetites filled so we’re right back into a little bit of a cycle with them needing scrap again in march yep yep yeah we’ll see i

mean we got about what a week week and a half left before we know that so well andy do you have anything to add he muted where are you at buddy i’m back i’m just i’m taking it all in i was listening to y’all’s work so um one thing um i was thinking about with your driver we’ve got the same situation at a plant we’ve got a container that is not in the ideal spot but one thing i’ve learned dealing with different employees and i’ve been i’ve been frustrated at times and just you know can’t figure out you know why can they not see something the way i see it or not understand exactly how we’re wanting to do something and i’ve i finally figured out with some of them that you have to figure out if you have the right person in the right position i’ve had great people that i thought were i thought would be a good fit hire them and just pound my head against the wall trying to figure out why it’s not working and then it’s as simple as i don’t have them in the right position we

we put them on a different task and it works out great and we’ve got a driver that goes to this plant and every time he goes it’s a big ordeal he calls the office you’ve got to get him to move this container you’ve got to get it moved it’s in a bad spot i can’t get in and out of there well we’ve got two other drivers and when they go they don’t say a word they’re able to get it it’s not a big deal the plant i’ve made multiple requests for them to move it and they just basically don’t even respond most of the time so the simplest fix for me has been i just don’t send that driver back anymore now depending on how busy you are may not have that luxury um but we’ve just decided now we’ve you know that one driver does not go back to that location and it’s not been a problem um so i think a lot of times is just just looking at the individual and figuring out what why is something not working and what fits best for that individual because it’s not um every

situation is different so that’s something that i’ve tried to had to learn over time with the different employees and especially on um positions other than the trucking side the scale operator for instance i mean most of the time when we fill a position here it is very hard to find somebody that has any experience working in a scrapyard do you like do you like the fact they don’t have any experience working in a scrap yard though so you can kind of build them up in into your culture and the way you do things and not break any bad habits i do and i don’t mean it bad but most of the time when people come and they say they have experience they they’ve sold scrap of the scrap yard but they’ve never worked at a scrap yard yeah when they think they know it seems like a lot of times they know a lot of the wrong things so i would much rather them have little to no experience and us be able to train them you know to the way that that we would like to you know have things done you just

have some solid people that can do some really good training i commend you for that well it’s it’s ever changing but we’re we’re lucky i mean we’ve we’ve hired through the last probably two years we have been hiring just for labor positions through attempt service and it’s been a real challenge because we’ve done that because we’ve had such trouble finding people going through the temp service has been a challenge and we may go through you know 10 or 12 people before we get one that’ll even make it a month but as you all probably know a lot of the folks that we hire at a scrap yard either love it or hate it and you’ve got to find that person that loves it and um you know we’ve been lucky we’ve got probably i would say half of our people have been here probably five plus years we’ve got a couple 20-year guys um so it’s just you know you got to find somebody that doesn’t mind to get down and dirty and fight the elements but it seems like when you find that person you know a lot of time it that’s

all they want to do yeah i think that’s great like both your yards both your employee base has been there for five plus years i mean a lot of them five plus years i mean that’s just a testament to a well-built culture well-built workflow and communication between the management all the way down you know and the training procedures that could be that could be difficult in its own right like just to train the new guys i i personally like when we get a new guy that doesn’t have any experience but he likes to ask a lot of questions i like the guys that are willing to ask you a million questions you know what’s this what’s this what’s this and not assume you know that’s what i tell all our new guys like the guys that ask the most questions are the ones that succeed you know i’m the exact opposite i want someone that knows more than me and can teach me what i’m doing wrong yeah no that that’s valuable in its own right absolutely so but i am no genius by any state or stretch of the word and

andy going back to your uh going back to your driver that was uncomfortable with that that customer of yours is that just a comfort level that he didn’t feel safe doing that job because it was kind of in a tight spot is that what it was to you you know i think that’s part of it but he’s just got he’s just a different personality type he’s a super nice guy very dependable but i think the only um freight he had ever hauled before he came to work with us was driving freight over the road you know in and out of docks not real real tough um deliveries so you know it’s been a little bit of an adjustment for him to you know go on different job sites and go to plants and get in dumpsters that aren’t you know in a dock it’s uh you you’ve got to be a little more open-minded and um you know it just seems like some of these uh we’ve got a couple older guys that have been flatbed haulers and the equipment and it just seems like they do a little better um or a

little more comfortable i shouldn’t say better but a little more comfortable around some of these different sites that we run into gotcha gotcha i want to ask you guys about general managers or operational managers do they do a lot of work outside along with the laborers or are they strictly just managing and coordinating i think it’s gotta be a combo i think you gotta first you gotta earn your stripes with those guys you gotta be able to um you know go do the the dirty work with them and you got to be able to newton you also have to be able to know how to do the job and show that you’ve done it so it’s a you got to find that sweet spot where you can go do it show them but you do also have to you know do some of the management level stuff where you’re also checking on other things because if you spend all day you know torching radiators or doing something like that i mean and then neglecting going to the other spots you’re going to be able to see that so in my experience the ones that

succeed in the supervisor level management level are the ones that are willing to go out there and unload you know unload that back of a pickup with a cut for the customer too while that guy’s on his break you know now there’s no job that’s too yeah there’s no job that’s too it should never it should never be looked at like that job’s too low for me because that when you start thinking that way you’re going to lose all your respect and then it just is a it’s just bad for the employees like when they see you out there willing to do what they’re being asked to do you’re just going to gain that respect that’s my stance on it at least so i i agree andy what do you think yeah i agree and we’re not um we’re not a huge yard i mean it’s my dad my brother and myself that run the business and we are the general managers we’re out you sound like you sound like me you sound like us over here i think we’re probably very similar and i mean we’re i’m out there i’m on the forklift

every day i’m in the material handler every day the three of us are always very active now we may not be out there with them all day long but our our presence is known on the yard you know at all times and they know that we’re willing to get out there and do the same things that we’re asking them to do and i think it does go a long way well and and you mikey i after we did the clubhouse last week i jumped on a facetime call with you and i think you were working the skull house right i thought you were working i was working the non-ferrous scale yeah non-ferrous scale yeah you were because my guy was out with uh whatever and i was you know by i have a i have a skill a non-fair skill supervisor and then he has a um an assistant well when when one guy’s out and one guy has to use the bathroom lunch or something like that only me or my brother are the only other two that can run it yeah i can have a question for you um

does your yard take shifts for lunch or do you all shut down very funny we do not shut down we try to have everybody take shifts but it’s not always done in the manner that we like to do it and it’s very unfortunate but you know sometimes we’re scrambling during lunch like my my non-ferrous scale supervisor and assistant will go in shifts and a couple other guys outside will like i have two guys in the material handlers one guy they’re supposed to go on ships and you know so on and so forth it’s not a perfect science if that’s what you’re asking yeah i was just curious for a long time a lot of years we did that and it just got to where it was a constant somebody was upset because they didn’t get a long enough lunch and right it just seemed like it was really hard to navigate so we we tossed around the idea and finally we just shut the yard down for watch time and we thought that it was gonna be we didn’t know how the customers were gonna respond and it took about a week of

everybody getting used to it and it has been it has been really really good for uh how long have you been doing this now just recently uh we’ve been doing it a few years probably three or four years how long do you shut down for an hour we shut down for 45 minutes okay now if somebody needs longer you know we’ll work it in and we’ll let them play our our lunch is 45 minutes but we’ll you know we work with them on it but it it’s been good um it’s been it solved a lot of problems for us well that’s good do your customers like kind of form a line like at the gate waiting for you or oh when it’s when it’s nice out we’ll have the after lunch rush that everybody looks forward to because we’ll have a line and the only people that probably don’t like it will be somebody that’s not a regular that has not been here often if they maybe don’t know don’t see it posted you know we’ll have somebody like that every once in a while be a little disappointed about it but the and

another reason we did it is there’s another scrap yard in town not far from us and they do the same thing so it’s kind of like you know if a customer doesn’t like it and they leave they go across town while he’s closed too that makes it that makes it easier to do that yeah it does it does that’s good though i mean you’d listen to your employees and you you made it you made a decision that worked out better for everybody it sounds like a fix that prom made him happier so yeah and i don’t know if there’s a if there’s a perfect answer to it because when we shut down we run into the customers that come in right before lunch and they you know when we’ve got a set lunch everybody wants to take it right then so you get a little bit of a situation you have to work with but it’s been good i think do you guys run saturdays i love it i think it’s a great idea yeah do you guys are you guys open on saturdays both of you we are yes you are andy we

are not we are not um we will come in and work some saturdays when the weather’s nice but just in general we’ve several years ago we quit opening on saturdays we used to be just for half a day but we’re not any longer that’s what we do we do nine to two um over here on saturdays and in our in our main non-ferrous yard our boise yard not so all our other yards are closed on saturday but we have an option for the customer if they need to scrap or if they can’t make it in through that monday through friday uh time slot you know they got a few hours on saturday they can come in and then and then our employees that want the hours they they can have them you know so that’s nice but that’s what we do well let’s um if you guys have anything else to add go ahead but i had one more thing i wanted to ask about you know what what uh point-of-sale systems do you guys use and and how deep do you go with them do you use them for dispatching

do you use them for your inventory like printing you know the tags that go on your bails or boxes uh do you do you do a bill of ladings and packing lists and you know so on and so forth we use scrap ware and we use that for dispatch or purchases or sells our inventory we just use uh we hand write our inventory slips and put them on the material on this net you hand your slips we do on our on our production scale and then they’re manually entered into scrap ware so we can track it on what you know finished product we have uh don’t use like a printed one that can be you know water like weather water resistant no so that we do run into problems when we tag something and it sits somewhere and then the tag gets old um so we do run into that every once in a while uh we have been looking at drake’s drake and wyatt’s new one the rematter and i think you’re on that one right i have been with them since i don’t know the middle of last year and i use

it for dispatching and i like it a lot it’s really helped me streamline and make my life and training a dispatcher much easier were you using a program before that i was not we were using google sheets oh yeah that’d be tough yeah well believe it or not it worked pretty well it’s just not it’s just not a good enough program for tracking and it’s just not a program it was just you know made up yeah yeah but i mean you made you made it work but correct yeah mikey’s mikey’s been one of uh our earliest and uh and best customers we’ve had but we you know all those inventory management point of sales modules and whatnot we’re we’re close to being done um and going into beta soon on those because the end system is ultimately the end goal of remattering what we’re building yeah i love seeing your updates drake on what you guys are building over there i think what you guys are on to is is going to be cool when it’s all said and done so yeah i appreciate it it’s it’s crazy how good of a tool linkedin

is for reaching folks in the scrap industry you know just those little gifs that we send over in the emails or throw on linkedin get really strong engagement with it so you know i think you guys do a great job with it as well so trying to emulate that in our in our own work and outreach oh yeah the amount of people i’ve met through not just linkedin and i mean instagram facebook all the different platforms has been been awesome and like and if you willing to take the time and do it like i think you could really find things that your business will benefit from or you know taking the time to do it is the key phrase there oh absolutely no no doubt how about you andy are you using any of those systems so we’re using a scrap dragon and we’re on the old uh scrap dragon classic and we just have the buy side we do not have the sell side modules so that’s something that i’ve been looking at um we cannot print or track inventory um by tags barcodes any of that so we’re old school sounds like

you’re using scrap dragon the same exact way we are i think so and we’re old school handwritten tickets i think mikey i’ve asked you in the past about your tickets i saw pictures of them on your instagram story um but we we tag them and keep a little spreadsheet it’s by far not the best system so looking forward to finding something else in the future so what about you’ve never looked into scrap dragon for using it all the other they offer a bunch of features yeah i have but um you’re talking about taking the time i would like to take the time to look at some other systems before i make that much of a commitment because the i mean i think the last time i had talked with them about it it was 10 grand to upgrade to that side they’re no longer you cannot update it with the classic like we have you would have to go to the extreme yep and then um what are your monthly costs is it like around 175 i have no clue what they are sorry see i think i think we’re paying around 175 a

month just for the support on the classic but we would have to upgrade to the extreme and then i think the monthly was up to like you have to buy the module and then pay like 500 a month which i’m not against but i would like to take the time to see what else is out there that may even be better um i’m just not really sure at this point have you and you haven’t demoed anything else i haven’t yet no i did you double the snapdragon one or no so we’ve had that for years and my dad actually went to an injury show and bought it out there um i don’t know 15 years ago and i i was not involved with that at all so you didn’t demo the new scrap dragon extreme oh i’m sorry no i’ve not demoed that yet so you you haven’t really demoed anything yet you’re just you’re you’re so we’ve my brother elliot well i don’t even know if he’s listening anymore my partner uh hi al um i’m not looking at the screen so i don’t know sorry um he’s been demoing a bunch right

now because we really want to upgrade to being able to print our inventory tickets for you know like a nice label maker and we’re not 100 certain if we want to do scrap dragon with that so you know going further is trying scrap right or century 21 or i i can’t even remember all the names he’s told me but you know we’re trying to incorporate it better because right now we’re running rematter for our dispatch scrap dragon for our buying uh we have an excel program that we’ve developed many years ago for our inventory and then we have another excel sheet that we run that tracks our value of inventory and our you know another excel sheet for our receivables and then we use quickbooks you know we have we have a bunch of different things and i don’t hate them all i don’t hate having everything separate you know i i almost would buy another computer and just buy a label maker do that i don’t you know i don’t necessarily think that’s a terrible idea but anyways we’re checking into some of these other ones and i’m surprised that you guys nick

are not using something a little more i was hoping you were i guess so that i could understand it better from you guys we’ve been happy with with scrap ware i mean there’s some things on it that we wish were better um i wish it i wish it worked on like an ipad for instance you know what i mean like things like that but overall like we’ve made it work and we do most most everything in there we focus our resources smart smart i like it but we’ve been we’ve been looking at what drake and wyatt are building over there you know we’ve been watching so yeah i mean i i really like their dispatching software it’s it’s really i did a lot of research and and they caught me at a really good time because i was gonna sign up with crow i think is the one that i was gonna go with i can’t remember exactly i think it was them um but you know when they when they caught me i was literally about to figure something out and i was like oh wow these guys are developing something well maybe

i can help tailor it to the way i want it to be and we worked together i i well they worked i gave them all of my annoying input of what i wanted it to be yeah they took a lot of it and and you know it’s it’s really good i like it a lot obviously they’ve done way above and beyond and are way smarter tech savvy and made it work but you know with me being on the ground here i think i really helped them tailor it with you know my driver’s input and me actually i’m i’m the dispatcher so you know i’ve i’ve i like what they’ve built because i’ve been able to use it pretty easily how do your drivers get their dispatch their dispatches is it on like their phone or do you have a printed copy you hand them so they get it on their phone there’s an app that they download and we commit them runs and they pop up on the app and then they they click on buttons you know confirm uh what is it um i can’t remember the exact words that they use but

drake could tell you better than i can but you know they they click through like okay they they picked up the dumpster they arrived at the plant they switched out the dumpster they’re in route and then they complete it you know all that sort of thing so it’s real time so it updates in real time i love that it’s fantastic that’s exactly what i wanted to see so that i don’t have to annoy them with calls all the time because we’ll look through our dispatch system and that’s something we have to close manually with the paperwork the driver hands in at the end of the day so if i’m going in there wondering if the no so-and-so customer got taken care of you know i have to call her dispatcher thought to call the driver but i’ve always i’ve seen systems like that i’ve seen drake’s demo on his and i think that feature right there is so valuable to just have it close out in real time and you and that if your driver closes out with the bin numbers i think that’s there’s value in that too because then you

don’t got a another person closing it all out you know so oh yeah absolutely you know which bin is at which site for how long what’s an inventory what they and you can pick for them which bins you want them to grab yeah you know like in our area we’ve got i mean i’m sure you do too but we have so many different size bins and then we’ve got sealed bins and and you know it’s just you know it’s a lifesaver because i you know we were still doing it semi electronically you could say before this where i would text them the run list the night before yeah like i when a driver is doing three or four runs a day you kind of want to you know make sure you’re on schedule so without me having to see them completing the jobs i would have to check in every so often i still check in when a job is running longer than i project it would have taken but this is just it’s so much smoother and so much easier to train somebody because the information is there got you yeah no no

that that makes sense one thing that they i will add i know drake and wyatt are on here is and this is just my two cents on this as far as the software whether the dispatch component the purchase component um inventory i would think about obviously cost of implementation also your whatever that bill is going to be to add nodules or add components to it but i think like one thing i really appreciate about like say sean um dave’s over at the davis index shawn davidson is he’s really taken like more of a low cost high volume approach and really tried to pick up the small medium sized operators and i would really take a hard look at a guy like sean davidson or a company like that trying to team up with them and say all right do can we is there a way that we can approach this and where we can help each other out especially where you’re trying to build up that side of the you know you’re trying to build up that business and get awareness i think sean’s done a really good job and i don’t know sean

that well and then i just liked his approach when i talk to him on building up that davis index is there i think there could be some synergies there with uh wyatt and drake and how you guys go about building that business yeah definitely yeah we we actually spoke to sean um pretty early in our process and think he’s doing good stuff you know anyway anyone who’s in the space trying to improve the technology and making information more accessible is definitely worth it so yeah definitely you know tech backgrounds i mean sean’s a tech guy i think that you guys there’s something there and i don’t know just by talking to both of you individually i think that you guys should at least think about collaborating somehow where how you guys could help each other yeah most definitely um and and nick going back to what you’re saying earlier too about making life easier on your scale operators and systems being disjointed that’s one of the big things that we have coming in our scale ticket which it ties right into dispatch and you can create tickets straight from it and that from talking

to so many recyclers that sounds like you know one of the the biggest problems with software is they don’t talk to each other so there’s a lot of redundant data and whatnot so trying to cut down on that seems like a great opportunity and like that sean davidson i liked his approach on like brett was saying how he’s just trying to get the cost as low as possible to do it he’s more looking at it like he wants his thing to be like microsoft word because he sees value on just pushing it out to everyone it’s where everyone could get it because i get like what you’re doing drake and wyatt and all that like not a whole lot of people are gonna need that software so you can’t necessarily get it to like the price points as like a microsoft word or something like that but his philosophy on how can i do it this way and get my reach out there farther like i just like that mentality on on that i think that’s a good recipe to for some really good long-term business for him and you guys so definitely

yeah that’s great advice well anyone else want to add anything i’m not sure if any of the the listeners can raise their hand i’ve never tried that um but if anyone has any questions if there’s a button to do that so be it or if any of the speakers want to add anything go for it um we talked about a couple of things that i want to talk about you know i could literally talk about scrap and the intricacies of it yeah well again all night so you probably don’t want to hear much more we got we gonna always add new topics next friday too you know you don’t want me to burn them all out right now okay i get it we’ll text we’ll text about the topics for next week okay you didn’t talk very much say something no no i just appreciate listening to you guys and kind of your guys operations and how what your guys thoughts are i’m a scrap guy i could talk about scrap and listen to people talk about scrap all day so for me it’s kind of like me it is what it is so

you know like i said i i kind of like where this forum is going i really i think that there’s something here and if we just keep kind of plugging away i think we could kind of build something very cool where we’re all communicating with each other and we’re all all communicating how do we help each other how do we how because we’re not that we aren’t competing against each other we’re all we’re all individual operators in our own area in our own region yeah we’re quite far away from each other i really i really feel like we can do each other a lot of you know positive by just talking about equipment talking about software talking about guys talking about i really appreciate you know what how andy talk about moving moving guys around and trying to find their sweet spot you know where can they benefit not only themselves where can they benefit the company the most so i think it’s stuff like that just hearing other people’s trials and tribulations and how they solve problems that we can really benefit each other um a tremendous amount by just you know picking

up the phone once once a week or whatever and then saying hey what are you guys hearing over there what’s going on over there um what’s steel mills trying to put the wood to you today you know type of deal so just i i really appreciate i i like what is going yeah we’ll keep trying to push one out every friday i think that works i i hope that time works for you guys that 130 mountain works for you it’s working right now that’s for sure okay well we’ll try it again next week uh are we able to let any of the people that are listening speak or is that not possible i’m not i was trying to see i don’t know if anyone’s tried it i see a lot of people raise their hand lindsay did let’s see i put her on can you can you oh there you go so you guys can see how it works yeah you’re so tech savvy there you go yeah so we all have an option to raise our hands and then obviously you guys can choose who you can allow up or you could kick

somebody back to the audience if you wanted perfect all right and lindsey you’re over in california yeah great so there you go okay well i don’t know if everyone’s good i think we could wrap it up and we’ll do this again in a week have a good weekend to me thanks nick appreciate it thanks guys have a good weekend bye everybody bye hello what’s up dude i’m gonna take your intro i got everything pretty much up to date so all i need for almost everything is intros the only thing left i need to work through is you and david’s copper thing when do you want that