welcome to talk and tires the podcast that delves deep into the world of tires join us as we explore everything from the science behind the manufacturing to the latest Innovations in the tire recycling our aim is to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of tires including how they work how to maintain them and how to dispose of them responsibly whether you’re a seasoned mechanic curious car Enthusiast or an avid recycler talking tires is the perfect podcast for anyone who wants to learn about the essential component of the modern vehicle and heavy equipment so buckle up and join us for an informative and engaging journey in the world of tires all right welcome everybody to the first episode of talking tires I’m here with Tom Parker from All American tire recyclers and they are a sponsor company for talking tires and we’re excited to have them as our first guest and uh Tom welcome I appreciate you being here I know it takes time out of your day and if I had to pay your hourly wage I probably would not want to do that so why don’t you go ahead and uh introduce yourself

and and tell us about all American Tires hey hey Craig uh happy to be on your first podcast this is awesome we’re to be here uh we didn’t get snow last night and I can’t see behind me but there’s no snow out there it’s fun and Sun here we’re out collecting tires and and starting uh the beginning of summer so it’s it’s uh the reason you’re saying no snow is because I told you we had woke up to snow today April 13th I don’t look up this no snow in 30 degrees I couldn’t believe it myself just so you know it’s not normal do you guys even have a groundhog oh right and you’re in Texas I I guess I should say that so in Idaho yeah we we did you guys we have groundhogs yeah there’s no groundhogs there because it’s winter all year right right well we call them Whistle Pigs all right man sorry to interrupt you but yeah no snow in Texas that’s good no snow um so uh a little bit about us we’ve been doing this for about eight years um my wife and I started this company

you know obviously eight years ago but it was kind of one of those things where uh I was doing medical sales and she was a nurse and um I I was laid off and out looking for a job and was getting towards the six month eight month unemployment thing I was trying to pound out and get back into medical sales but at that time it just you know it just come out of the mortgage bus and and it just was still a hard time to kind of get you know into that industry and um I was out visiting one of my buddies Shops and and trying to help him with his business at the time and ended up kind of falling into this so uh I never thought we’d be here where we’re at today at this stage of the game and and just making such an impact that we are right now uh can you give us a quick sort of synopsis of what it is All-American Tire does in a day so you pick up tires right yeah so we’re doing uh quite a few few loads of tires I mean

we’re doing 18 000 tires a day seven days a week um or more uh but we we we do everything from semi tires to car tires to AG tires we make a product called tdf which stands for tire derived fuel um and that’s used in like cement Kilns and and I think paper plants also use them for us it’s a cement plant that burns it it’s fuel um and then we just recently just had our grand opening about a month ago and we started doing Chrome rubber so people are not familiar with the tire industry Chrome rubbers more or less in our business it’s like going to the Super Bowl uh it’s very difficult to make um in terms of the size uh and there’s customers a lot of customers out there that are getting more and more picky these days and and are wanting better Chrome and different sides from really small from a majority of that product will go into either asphalt or uh uh football fields you know we’ve all seen NFL football college football and you see their feet when they do a close-up and you see the rubber

come out of the ground that’s pretty much what we make so a little black rooster tail yes sir uh and that’s where we’re at right now we’ve got a lot of projects in the works but um eight years ago I thought this was going to be like a summer job until I could tell I could find some study employment so here we are uh cranking it out today we’re one of the largest uh plants uh volume wise in in north Texas so it’s been a fun that’s fantastic so you talked about getting started and um you know it’s kind of a ticking clock if you will to go out and and earn a living and it turned out to be something quite a bit more than you expected um and I know your story a little bit about actually getting out on the streets and driving and picking up tires uh can you talk about that a little bit when you got started yeah and I want to just touch on I’m going to kind of ramble through it quickly just because I don’t want to bore the people out there listening but I

think it’s important to know that you know my wife and I started this with 3 500 and uh in you know the American dream is alive and real you got to put the hard work in but uh I mean I get to chill I did too at the exact same time I think oh uh uh we started with 3 500 and I’ll tell you just a little bit around the business model uh when we started but basically the tire shop that I wasn’t a tire shop a mechanic shop you had tires everywhere he did a little bit of Tire Works here and there but I I pulled the tires out to get a shot cleaned up so we could work on his business and I’ve always been a Salesman I’m driving to get them disposed of about 30 miles away and only had like 30 tires in the truck and it would maybe hold a hundred and I’m like what the hell I’m already going over there let me stop at a couple tire shops first tire shop I walked in there and I said hey you know you got any old tires you

want disposed of and you asked me how much to you know throw them away and sold them a dollar the guy got extremely excited so right away I’m thinking oh man this is I’m underpriced I must be way too low right and remind you I don’t know anything about anything uh in terms of tires so I pick up a few tires there and The Story Goes I stopped about four places by the time I got to the place where you could dump those tires uh my price was at a you know a dollar fifty already so um I I got excited you know so I’m driving back and all this stuff is running through my head every place I went to they looked like they’d never seen anybody come by and ask for tires so right away I knew there was an opportunity um I went home and immediately I was so excited I told my wife I said you’re not going to believe this and and uh there’s tires everywhere yeah they’re throwing them at me literally yeah I just put a pencil to the paper and I started you know trying to

work the numbers and come up with some type of rough business plan and that’s where that’s where the that’s where it started um as I looked into it a little more I figured out I needed a little bit bigger truck and and basically where we’re at now we’ve learned through the Hard Knock Life it has been a journey I don’t know what it’s like in the scrap business for um other businesses out there this is our very first business and uh but nobody wants to help you nobody goes out of their way to tell you the secrets or tell you that you need the biggest truck possible or you won’t make any money if you pick up 100 tires at a time um but that that’s where it started and um I’m gonna interrupt you right there because I want to give you Kudos because uh Brett and I reached out to you and your company and you were more than helpful to give us lots of information that you know even just in something as simple as how I bonus our route drivers you know and it’s like well if you do peace

count you kind of encourage them to fudge the numbers a little bit which affects your customer and you um and then you know you got to get weights on those trucks so you know that it’s full of rubber I’ll tell you what you know how long it might have taken me to figure that out and and how many customers might have been burned when you know the guy that I hired as much as I trust but things happen you know guys getting desperate and they do crazy things and if you set up your structures to that there could be some fudging going on it’s going to happen eventually so that you know just having that little snippet has probably saved me so much time and yeah and having someone to reach out to kind of like your your mom or dad or whatever you know of course when we’re kids we don’t listen to because we know everything but in business if if you can you know find someone that can mentor you and and ironically um uh Brett will hopefully he’s not listening to this but oh no problem he will Brett Eckhart

from United Metals Recycling oh yeah um so I and and actually I saw him on LinkedIn and he had mentioned something about tires and I actually called him first and I said hey be careful it’s like this business can be like dealing with the mob you know he’s got to be careful great Shady people but um that being said you know it’s nice I you guys have been in business for a long time uh uh United medals so I know this is a spin-off another company that he’s he’s always looking to grow and and be the best at what he does so at that particular time I wanted to help him and you know um it’s it’s kind of worked the opposite I haven’t really had a mentor so it’s been great to like reach out to him and talk to him and have him give me some advice on business stuff and and just help me along the path so uh I’m very blessed to be able to help you guys and return the favor and and do that so so after we ended up uh I did that we ended up

my wife and I um getting a loan is incredibly hard so we pulled money out of our 401K uh made up some crazy name my brother has a a signed business called All-American signs that’s where the balls come in right what’s that the loan on your 401k that’s where the balls come in yeah so that’s 3 500 so it wasn’t that big of a deal but oh okay I’m sorry we have three kids and you know it was tight I was unemployed so it’s not like we had a lot of money laying around and so we took that 3 500 and we got a box truck and we started and it was just me and and then my wife uh was working she worked as a nurse and she was working weekends so she would work Friday Saturday Sunday and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday she would get in the box truck with me and we would go pick up tires so great that’s a great story and so we did that for a while and um I’m just going to touch on a couple highlights and some I guess we’ll call them epiphanies

where the light bulb went off and so so we’re picking up and we’ll fast forward to where I got enough business by uh when she wasn’t working with me on Friday I would go do sales calls so it didn’t take long maybe four months and we had two full-time employees in the box truck so now I’m running a bit and uh I just happened to be sitting at a trans you know where I dumped the tires at a dump station and um and I saw a semi truck come through so my wheels start turning the light bulb goes off and I said hey what’s that guy doing here oh well big customers we just have a semi driver we drop off a big trailer and we go pick it up so like I told you earlier I run home hey babe check this out we don’t even have to load the tires think of that and they’ll do it it’s the same it’s it’s two box trucks so what do you think we did next we went and got our CDL and we’ll give all my credit she got her CDL license first

yep and we borrowed money I gave up a little percentage of my company at this time to a close friend and we were able to get some money for our first semi truck and and we were able to buy two trailers and every trailer we swapped we took that money put them together and we every time we had enough money from Trailer swaps we would buy another trailer we have over 120 trailers now awesome but that but that’s kind of what we’ve how we’ve grown this business in such a short amount of time we’ve lived on what we need to to pay the bills and live pretty tight I would say comfortably we’re not starving um up until the last three years we’ve been able to buy like our first new car I mean we put in a good five or six years and I’m talking I personally worked in between 70 and 80 hours a week it was a lot of work and we would have probably gotten out of it had we not taken a loan on the box truck I’m not a risk taker I was I did want to find

a job this was just I gotta feed my family get me to the next step um and then it continued to grow and grow and it came to a point where my wife is like I’m sick of nursing you know I’m getting tired of you know dealing with all the politics and and just the headache um and at that time we were we were actually parking my box truck in front of my house the neighbors would call the police and you know just so we actually started parking our trucks our semi trucks and our box truck behind the Lowe’s uh it’s right down the street and so it took about a year and a half before the police department caught on and started seeing something else but it was free parking for a year and a half yeah you’re way out of statute of limitations better you’re good exactly so um fast forward uh so we’re just a glorified transporter so there’s different steps in the entire uh Recycling business right and and this is if you’re new to this that’s probably all you know I’ll kind of go over a couple things so

we’re transporter we just pick up tires that’s it we make the money we pay the disposal fee and whatever the difference is when we charge our customer that’s what we made and now we’re doing semi-load so we’re doing bigger loads bigger customers uh my wife’s name is Jody Jody and I got our CDL we have box truck drivers and Jody and I are running around doing swaps in the summertime we got we got a truck with a cab so we would we would load the kids up in the back and oh sleeper cab yep we’d hit the road and and go to these runs we’d do about two a day and and that’s kind of where we went uh up until the another Turning Point happened where the big guy the big boys in town uh there’s only one one major player that came in and those places where I would take my tires for disposal they bought them out now there’s one game in town and there and so I have one I have one option really some people would say two uh uh I guess option number two would be to

just throw in the towel my price so high that I I was it was more than what I was charging my customers so there was no more Middle Ground there squeezing you out they’re squeezing yeah so so I took option one which was the only option for me and my family and that was to uh so somehow start shredding tires now I would have never wanted to do that because I didn’t know I bear picking up tires is easy now I gotta shred them and maintain a machine and get you know this is all a whole nother business right um so I found the ten thousand dollar aluminum can pressure and I found that you could lease a uh what are those in-dump trailers you the same thing you guys use in the scrap medicine I see you guys users in this in the steel business um and basically I think you’ve seen the pictures but we elevated this this I learned how to weld we elevated this aluminum can we did one tire at a time at that time we were doing 2 000 tires a day Monday through Friday and that’s

that’s where we started in the in the actual shredding business so um as soon as we did that we cut out the middlemen now we’re just sending stuff to the landfill now we’re making more money so you reduce the size right uh from a whole tire and you shred it yourself so now you don’t need those guys to take your whole tires because it’s illegal to dispose of tires if they’re shredded is that yeah hey and guess what guess what uh now now there’s the big big boy in town the Nationwide guy in a little old Tom Parker All-American tire that’s it right and uh and so well and you’re the guys I call t-shirt and a pickup you have those that flare up I’m sure right the guys that just want to go and and pick them up sometimes they’ll do it for free and try to sell used tires out of it yeah there’s so there’s two people that are trying to get great and great for us it’s good times that they turn around those guys are picking it up for free um the guys t-shirt and a

pickup we love those guys we we you know they were a transporter like us they actually get a very very almost at Cost we take their tires so the Mom and Pops can still make the money uh we’re not going anywhere we we welcome them hey you go pick up your tires you make your money I won’t touch your customers we started where you’re at I’m not just because I’m the big dog I’m not going to run around and vote your customers if they call me I’ll call you and say hey you’re not picking up they need to pick up but we’re not going to go undercut someone and and go take take business so we we welcome those guys um do you remember you remember what it was like to be that guy you never forget where you came from when you wear the t-shirt and a pickup yes sir yes sir we still are the t-shirt in the pickup um so that’s where we got into the business um and then from there it went back to the numbers thing where I’m using an aluminum uh can a shredder uh

it’s a size of smaller than my desk but I’m sitting at right now not designed for shredding tires no I just the guy that sold it to me goes ah we only use it it kind of set it aside I said well crush the tire I think so now it takes 15 minutes to do a semi tire but for the most part it’ll do we didn’t really have semi customers but for the most part it’ll do car tires pretty easily so um that’s kind of where we started there from there what do you think I did I went home and uh ran some numbers well what if we got a shredder that could do you know 10 tons an hour instead of instead of one so excuse me ever since then we kind of scaled up and and just kind of been running the numbers okay now we’ve cut out the landfill what’s the next step where do we go uh you know how can we keep these out of the landfill well how it’s a two million dollar investment so there’s lots of stories I I’ve worked deals out where major companies as

they you know bought me a piece of equipment we signed an agreement uh and I’ve just really put my time in and worked my way through the system in order to to be able to achieve some of the goals uh uh to get to where we are now if you could send me the picture of you when you’re standing over that or I don’t know if it was you or somebody was standing over that Shredder the tin can Shredder that one that’s in your office and just because oh yeah yeah the the original one and we could show a compare and contrast to your factory now which is is awesome I love watching absolutely and just so people know I want you to if you’re driving in your car to picture them it’s aluminum can Shredder that I’ve raised 13 feet in the air with scrap metal that I could find laying around just use metal at the scrap yard that they would sell me for you know as cheap as possible everything looks incredibly unsafe it looks crazy and and I don’t even know how to weld I borrowed the welder and then

I found some old uh post office uh uh conveyors that they would roll around and move packages in the trucks and stuff they were sitting in the back of someone’s backyard one of my customers for I think 10 years 15 years I pulled them out you know lubed up the motors welded two belts together and and set it on top of this thing so that’s 13 feet in the air to run the tires up into the top of it so I mean it it’s it wasn’t pretty but I mean here we are right yeah um it is it has been probably the the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life but yet the most fulfilling you know we all I think we all wonder where we’re gonna end up in life and it’s frustrating when you’re working for someone and and you put the effort into a company and maybe you don’t get what you want out of it from the company and it and this experience has been you know obviously it’s life-changing you can see from the pictures from the plants but but I I will say there’s there’s a

certain amount of stress that goes with it you know just like I care about those Transporters that bring us tires and making sure they’re feeding their families now we have 58 employees so when I go to bed at night you know it’s a lot to carry you know and I don’t I don’t know how I don’t know how how Brett does it owning multiple companies I guess when he has someone like you that can take the pressure off when I find that someone then I’ll definitely be pretty blessed at that point but I still carry a lot of stress with me and and it’s very difficult but it is it’s an amazing thing knowing that uh for the most part you know I I control my own destiny so uh it’s just been a an amazing uh journey and and we’ve been talking so now you’ve got uh crumb crumb rubber facilities online and uh you and I were talking a little bit about um you know I posed some questions too just to kind of get the juices flowing and one of them was like what did you expect what didn’t you expect

you know what what what’s coming about with the crumb that that you think you know positives or negatives whatever you whatever you’re feeling right now um so in any business from the very beginning I guess uh everybody always has an expectation and uh and I don’t think it it seldomly ever comes to fruition I I think we’ve achieved the goals I didn’t really know we were going to go this far I didn’t really know what it would look like but uh it’s just all of it so the best piece of advice is to uh set the bar high and and just know that there’s going to be hurdles to get there I’m sure there is with any business but it’s definitely been a lot harder than what I’ve expected um in terms of the of the uh uh just a broad statement in the last eight years that that that I’ve been doing this um the entire Market it’s completely different uh nobody wanted to get in this business you would shred tires and you would land till the margins were almost nothing um and and you have to do an incredible amount of

volume to even you know validate the equipment and the maintenance on it tires just tear stuff up um uh Amen to that yeah in the last three in the last three years I’ve seen an evolution coming and you know I there is uh some manufacturers around here I know they have 10 or more from lines on order right now uh and that’s just one manufacturer that I know of the Market’s changing you know this green initiative everybody wants to do something with tires you’ve got guys that are trying to make tires back into oil you have uh you know in regards to the crumb line there’s there’s um you know you can put it in Turf right but they want you to test for metal they want to make sure there’s no lead or any you know tires that come from China or any of these other countries where they don’t really have EPA controls on stuff so you know it’s our responsibility you know we you’ve seen our lab we have a lab set up you know we test for for Metals we test for uh uh the moisture the size of the

particles you know that’s that next level stuff you know you talked about Super Bowl you don’t go to the Super Bowl unless you’re ready to put some work in and and do some things that you didn’t do before you’re absolutely right and and you know this when you talk about uh and these are professional athletes are playing on this so so they have to hold the bar High ironically I’m talking about us being the Super Bowl and one day our crumb will be on a Super Bowl field I’m sure so I’m into that but I don’t know if you put it on Dallas field I’m not going to go there hey you have to come back to Texas soon next year this year is our year that isn’t that what everybody says yeah yeah I’m gonna come down we’re gonna have to go to a game absolutely absolutely hopefully it’ll be one they win there you go but but so the Market’s changing I I think um you guys are getting in at the perfect time uh I think I’m a little bit ahead of the curve on where we’re at so real quick

I just want to say you when he says you guys so this uh podcast obviously is always sponsored by Tire reclaim because I’m the president and the host of this podcast um Craig Hunter I don’t think I introduced myself but that’s all right first podcast but uh Tire reclaim we’ve been doing it you know maybe 14 months now or something like that so we are still babies so uh for the listener when he’s referencing us that’s what he’s saying is that we’re up and comers he’s been here and established he’s been very helpful for us to get started and now we’re learning about this crumb because our Chrome facility comes online you know later this year and we’re excited but we’re worried about the pitfalls which if you helped us and other people they’re all there you can’t avoid them yeah if we can step over a couple of them and I’ll help you with what I can I’m still learning myself but uh I I think what’s going to set you apart and us apart from majority of the people out there and I feel very comfortable saying this because now that I’m

dealing with some of this stuff one of our customers is an asphalt customer and you know we’re talking about uh the moisture that I’ve kind of explained it’s like when you take your chicken and you drop it in the fryer and if there’s too much water on it it goes crazy it boils over it splashes on you when you talk about putting wet rubber into a reactor you know at 600 Degrees and you talk about a Fluff in in sand and contaminants that are now going into a finished product I mean we’re in a new era right you know when a recycling plant has to have a laboratory to make sure that the quality control is going out the door I mean there’s there’s untapped stuff out there and and that’s what sets us apart you know the the our customer shut down for two and a half weeks because they had some contaminated stuff it’s custom I don’t know the exact number they threw 200 000 out and that was for four days just on cleaning I don’t know what volume they have so that being said you know I’m excited I’m excited

you guys are coming on board uh uh it’s it’s not the same game you can’t just get a shredder and start shredding stuff and taking it to the landfill to be successful there’s lots of avenues and you gotta you gotta run it and no it’s not just you know we’re creating a product we’re we are setting the standards so uh to go from the guy that’s running from place to place trying to figure out how much tire is worth to what we’re doing now uh I I love it and and I’m super excited and um you guys are going to be right there with us we’re going to work together and and do some amazing things but sky’s the limit so so can you talk about each thing that comes off of your um your line there I know you mentioned tdf and you still produce tdf and you along with the Chrome or how does that work absolutely so um to say you’re a recycler uh is in the entire business it it’s extremely important to anything that comes in the front door that has a value you know it it’s like we’re

working on a trash line right where you’re pulling out aluminum cans or you you put the paper in this pile and it’s the same thing we’re doing with tires so yeah so so we are very diverse and we will always stay diverse it’s not necessarily what brings in the most money for us you know Chrome obviously is a big seller obviously um it was uh during covet everybody’s doing their yards it was the rubber mulch you know so there’s different products out there that come and go or or up and down um so in our business we have you know good tires that come in uh that you want to you know turn around if they’re good you know let’s not let them go to lentil if they’re brand new tires so there’s someone out there that that could use those right um a semi Tire we get casings we do retreads on those but why are we going to shred a tire that can has two years old we can put a uh a new a new tread on it send it back out right absolutely and so one of the the things

that we do we separate the steel and we sell it we have another project we’re working on and we’ll talk about that right now but um but we make TDs tdf is Tire derived fuel uh and then now we do the crumb rubber so uh and we don’t just sell to Turf companies we also do asphalt so we sell different sizes of that so it’s incredibly important you know when you’re running this business that you’re very diverse you know it’s very hard to succeed um when you’re just you’re the guy picking up tires for free because you want to sell the good ones but you gotta either you know pay for disposal hopefully they’re paying for a disposal on someone’s property but um it’s important to be diverse and I’ll give you one example you know we have a lot of of primarily car customers car tires but we also have a significant amount of semi tires that come in um during covid car dealerships I mean everybody’s working from home nobody’s buying cars so I mean we took about a 30 drop but I will tell you all through covid we had double-digit

growth so and and the reason we were able to do that is because we’re diverse when the tire the car tires drop semi tires went through the roof medical supplies were out trucking companies were booming running around delivering stuff yeah I think there’s experts in every field and um you know you’re saying we’re testing for moisture we’re doing these different things for you know it’s quality control quality assurance for your end user um what are some of the things that you’ve seen the experts because we’re in an evolving Market you talked about things are changing you know did you have people come and tell you oh you’re going to have to do all of this or all of that and you’re like well maybe but we’ve got this you know your own ideas and your own spin on some of that so yes and uh yes and no um early on I did all the the heartache um I had an employee that were and I’m sure we’ve all had bad employees I don’t want to detract too much or go off topic but um in at the time I he knew a lot

more than me and he was supposed to help me get this piece of equipment and manage this and I remember going into him one day and I said look you’re the expert on this I need you to tell me what I need I said because we’re so new at this I don’t have the money to go buy a huge Chrome line so I mean you need to figure out how to get it clean and what we need and when we separated at that time um one of the things I had told them before that was otherwise I would just take a million dollars or 2 million or whatever the number is and go buy me something from a market leading you know uh equipment manufacturer and make the best product right but I’m I’m paying you the good money so you can you can be that expert um but that being said that’s why a little plug for Jomar and I believe they make one of the best pieces of equipment out there but I mean these guys got it dialed in they own a a plant as well and and if it goes

wrong in their plan they fix it on manufacturing side of the equipment so so you’re referencing Middlebury Indiana’s uh Jomar and Encore right yeah fintech I’m sorry Encore oh that’s reading ahead because I was going to ask you about that too but okay yeah in tech and and Lavon and those guys up there and we did uh we went and visited that plant with you as you know but for the listeners that um that was a really impressive visit man those guys are I don’t know what they’re doing on top of it that was really cool so we are excited to partner with them as well 100 and we we kind of mimic again again you avoid some of those and with them they they are amazing amazing people so um we’re definitely going to continue down that road with them and they they’ll they’ll you know get you the stuff you need but uh back to where the industry is going and stuff you know if if Brett was in the scrap business and when he sold something or or whatever he brought in and he had to make rebar I mean that’s

that’s a whole different you know people are counting on this to hold up the concrete it’s the same same Theory with with where the Chrome is going and and there’s so many applications there there’s new ones every day people are finding new uses for it so like I said earlier I mean this is exciting uh there’s going to be a lot more stuff coming there’s uh many ways to make money in this industry so uh I think moving forward you know if if if you and I are going to be around down the road I think there’s going to be a lot more people in this but but it’s going to be one of those games what what keeps threat better than everybody else what are you guys doing better and and I know that that you and I both our companies are gonna gonna find out what we can do better if it costs more to be better we’re going to spend the money because we’re investing in in our employees in our company and we want to be around when there’s hundreds of people out there and people pick us right so

that’s my job well and I thought it was important you know coming into this podcast I wanted to mention something that that kind of hits home for me um is you’re recycling right and that’s a term that gets thrown around a lot and green initiative and this and that but you’re doing 18 000 tires a day that are coming off of cars coming you know out of people’s backyards things like that that would normally be you know trash that would it would be going in landfills that would be you know filling up the landfills which that’s a new thing now everybody’s like oh we can’t just throw it to a landfill well nobody ever said that a decade or two decades ago you know so now here we are on The Cutting Edge of that where we are actually profitable at recycle or try to be right but actually profitable at recycling without taking a bunch of subsidy money without taking a bunch of Grants and things like that like laying down the cash to make this happen and do the right thing earlier in the podcast I heard you say something well we

didn’t want to just take it to the landfill and so you upgraded right and you improved and you changed systems and you made basically all American tire recycling a a name in the game so when somebody thinks of it and that’s really a big part of this podcast and my passion behind this podcast is to get your name out there to help people understand that you built this from the ground up and you are truly recycling products they are there’s products coming out of the trash that you’re picking up right so to me that’s full circle you’re doing it right I think it’s fantastic um did you have anything else you want to add no I mean I think you kind of summed it up uh the only other thing when it comes to recycling I just want to throw this out there too in the tire business it’s not like the steel business and uh just there’s a misconception that uh you know when people bring Brett uh aluminum cans you know it can packs them and and they he sends aluminum cans out so people will ask me all the time why

don’t you pay for tires because I don’t just take your tire and put it in a Baler and send it out like there’s time and energy and maintenance and blades and it’s a huge manufacturing process so that’s why people pay it to take tires you know right so when you say recycling there’s always something to kind of and maybe one day when we kind of like what I talked about earlier how it’s getting more sophisticated maybe there’ll be a day where we pay for tires then there won’t be any abandoned tires at that point you know right that’d be great but we’re not there yet but we’re going in that direction but absolutely but some people say you hey why don’t you pay me for tires well because it it’s a little different but yes 100 we are recycled yeah and someone pointed out actually I think uh Nick Snyder mentioned it in a recycled Idaho podcast that I featured on and he said I think people are becoming more comfortable with doing the right thing like your blue bins recycling you know you pay for that service to be able to separate your

cardboards and Plastics from the rest of your trash and that’s just part of it right we if we’re gonna do the right thing then let’s say then we’re gonna do the right thing and again I’m in the same boat with you someday maybe we could do that but for right now we’re we’re at where we’re at and that equipment is not cheap no it’s not and I want to say one more thing I promise it will be done this is just this is kind of important to me too I’m not rushing you do you feel rushed no no if you’re listening to this and you own a a company that uh has tires and and someone is coming around and picking them up for free just know there is a cost associated with that whether they’re selling the tires you know uh you have to pay to get rid of them I don’t really know of a place right now maybe there is one but I don’t know of any that take them for free and so if you’re getting it for free just know you you need to have some type of paper

trail you got to be responsible to make sure those tires are getting thrown away because if it’s too good to be true it probably is and there’s a lot I get calls from retired people that own land and they on a fixed income and they’re like hey someone has thrown 3 000 tires out on my property right and and this is not a company this is not someone that you know through the retire that they’re tired of having in their garage this is the 3 000 tires that someone that is actively collecting tires so I think it’s important that we all do our part not just me but people that have the opportunity to you know do your research but pay someone to pick their tires up you know make sure that they’re a legitimate company and they’re not just throwing your problem on someone else I just want to get that out there just yeah people just don’t understand I I experienced it early on when we started this company there’s some big trash Tire piles even here in Idaho we don’t have near the population you do but a matter of fact

I checked your county has more more people than our entire State um but the the idea of of people picking up tires for free it and not being responsible with where they’re going is what I think I hear you say because we actually had people that weren’t picking them up for free but they’re picking up really inexpensive but then just did exactly what you said there’s I mean it’s probably the size of like four two four or five two-story houses This Guy’s Tire pile and now the the counties come in and put a chain link fence around it put a sign up says no dumping you know that’s that’s an issue and that’s it’s an eyesore it’s Renault Highway in a beautiful city I’m like wow this is you know this community needs us this this state Needs Us and nobody knows until they see the big pile over there right and and you know there’s a big lawsuit going on down the road uh where a company in the middle of nowhere maybe they had a hard time picking up tires well some guy he’s collecting the feed but he’s he’s found

a vacant piece of land that a huge company owned and he was dumping over eight years well the cart and it was car dealerships it was legit businesses so they were paying him but they weren’t getting any documentation that he was disposing of him like he should and they ended up getting sued and they had to pay 20 times the disposal fees over eight years millions of dollars they’re still in litigation so it’s just you know whether you’re a business owner or just someone trying to get rid of stuff you know as businesses we just got to be responsible and and know that there is a cost associated with this and and kind of do the right thing nobody really thinks about until they see the pile they’re like I can’t believe someone dumped that well I can’t believe so you expect someone to pick them up for free right so yeah that’s it yeah there’s a video rolling around and I won’t spend too much more time on this but rolling around about I think it’s a Kuwait or something like that but you know those huge graveyards of tires and yeah we

probably have something similar like to that across the United States if they were all in one spot like that but if you’re thinking about tires on the ground we probably have that many sitting out in rural areas all over the United States of America so I think it’s time for us to go out and and gather those up one tire at a time and and have a big impact on this this world so Tom I appreciate you man I really really do appreciate more than just this podcast everything you do for our industry um everything you’ve been doing for Brett and I to get Tire reclaim off the ground um again all American tire recycling if you don’t know Tom he’s under Thomas Cloud Parker on LinkedIn and I would say go find that gentleman because he’s got a lot of cool posts if you’re interested in Chrome rubber tdf people you never know who’s listening um Reach Out we’ve got questions and answers that that might fit right into your business model so absolutely and I’ll tell you what there is uh their Chrome isn’t in short supply especially good crumb uh at

least in our Market here in Texas uh there’s only a couple people that do it um but that being said uh some some people don’t understand kind of how it works but you know we have this new machine all our Chrome is not spoken for it will be soon in the next few months so I mean we’re all about building relationships so you know if there’s someone out there that does need a crumb Supply or or something along those lines and they want to build a partnership with us you know we take care of those people first so you know if you hit me up in six or eight months and uh it’s all spoken for I may have something left over but I don’t know that I’ll be able to commit to it so yeah we’re out there looking for those Partnerships that’s a good place to be my friend all right well thanks for coming on we’ll talk to you later good good congratulations on your first podcast thank you