May 5, 2023 • 45 mins
In this first episode of Talkin' Tires, Craig Hunter of Tire Reclaim sits down with Thomas Parker of All American Tire Recycling to discuss the start of his business, where it is now, and the ins and outs of tire recycling.
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(00:03):
Welcome to Talking Tires, the podcastthe delves deep into the world of tires.
Join us as we explore everything fromthe 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 howthey work, how to maintain them,
and how to dispose of them responsively. Whether you're a season mechanic, curious
(00:26):
car enthusiast, or an avid recycler, Talking Tires is the perfect podcast for
anyone who wants to learn about theessential component of the modern vehicle and heavy
equipment. So buckle up and joinus for an informative and engaging journey in
the world of tires. All right, welcome everybody to the first episode of
(00:46):
Talking Tires. I'm here with TomParker from All American Tire Recyclers and they
are a sponsor company for Talking Tiresand we're excited to have them as our
first guest. And Tom, welcome. I appreciate you being here. I
know it takes time out of yourday and if I had to pay your
hourly wage, I probably would notwant to do that. So why don't
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you go ahead and introduce yourself andtell us about all American tires. Hey,
Craig, happy to be on yourfirst podcast to stop them. We're
furthers to be here. We didn'tget snow last night and I can't see
behind me, but there's no snowout there. Fun and sun here we're
out collecting tires and and starting thebeginning of summer. So it's it's the
(01:30):
real reason you're saying no snows becauseI told you we had woke up to
snow today April thirteenth. I don'tgo up to snow, snow in thirty
degrees. I couldn't believe it myself. Just so you know, it's not
normal. You guys even have agroundhog. So we're in Idaho, right
and you're in Texas. I guessI should say that. So in Idaho,
yeah, we did. You guyswe have groundhogs. Yeah, there's
(01:53):
no groundhogs there because it's winter allyear right right while we call them whistle
pigs, all right, man,But yeah, no snow in Texas.
That's good snow. Um. Soa little bit about us. We've we've
been doing this for about eighty years. My wife and I started this company,
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you know, obviously eight years ago, but it was kind of one
of those things where I was doingmedical sales and she was a nurse,
and I was laid off and outlooking for a job and was getting towards
the six months eight month unemployment thing. I was trying to pound out and
get back into medical sales, butat that time that just, you know,
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we'd just come out of the mortgagebus and and it just was still
a hard time to kind of get, you know, into that industry.
And I was out visiting one ofmy buddy's shops and and trying to help
him with his business at the time, and it ended up kind of falling
into this. So I never thoughtwe'd be here where we're at today,
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at this stage of the game andjust making such an impact that we are
right now. Can you give usa quick synopsis of what it is all
American Tire does in a day.So you pick up tires, right,
Yeah, So we're doing quite afew few loads of tires. I mean,
we're doing eighteen thousand tires a day, seven days a week are more.
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But we we do everything from semitires to car tires, agg tires.
We make a product called TDF,which stands for tire derived fuel and
that's used in like seament films,and I think paper plants also use them
for us at the cement plants thatburns it its fuel. And then we
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just recently just had our grand openingabout a month ago, and we started
doing chrome rubber. So people arenot familiar with the tire industry. Chrome
rubbers more or less. In ourbusiness, it's like going to the super
Bowl. It's very difficult to makein terms of the size, and there's
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customers a lot of customers out therethat are getting more more pick of these
days and are wanting better chrome andand different sizes chrome really small from a
majority of that product will go intoeither asphalt or football fields. You know,
we've all seen NFL football, collegefootball, and you see their feet
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when they do it close up andyou see the rubber come out of the
ground. That's pretty much what wemake. So a little black rooster tail,
yes, sir, then that's wherewe're at right now. We've got
a lot of projects in the works. But eight years ago, I thought
this was going to be like asummer job until I could felt I could
find some stet employment. So herewe are franking it out today. We're
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one of the largest plants volume wiseand in North Texas. So it's fun.
That's fantastic. So you talked aboutgetting started, and you know,
it's kind of a ticking clock ifyou will, to go out and earn
a living. And it turned outto be something quite a bit more than
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you expected. And I know yourstory a little bit about actually getting out
on the streets and driving and pickingup tires. Can you talk about that
a little bit when you got started. Yeah, And I want to just
touch on it. I'm gonna kindof ramble through it quickly just because I
don't want to bore the people outthere listening. But I think it's important
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to know that, you know,my wife and I started this with thirty
five hundred dollars and uh, andyou know, the American dream is alive
and real. You got to putthe hard work in. But I mean,
I get the chill. I didtoo. At the exact same time.
I think, oh, we sortof with thirty five hundred dollars,
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and I'll tell you just a littlebit around the business model when we started,
but basically the tire shop, Iwasn't a tire shop of a mechanic
shop. He had tires everywhere.He did a little bit of tire work
here and there. But I pulledthe tires out to get his shot cleaned
up so he could work on hisbusiness. And I've always been a salesman.
I'm driving to get him disposed ofabout thirty miles away, and I
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only had like thirty tires in thetruck and it would maybe hold a hundred,
and I'm like, what the hell, I'm already going over there.
Let me stopped at a couple oftire shops, and my first tire shop.
I walked in there and I said, hey, you know, you
got any old tires you want disposedof? And he asked me how much
to you know, throw him away? And told him a dollar. The
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guy got extremely excited. So rightaway I'm thinking, oh man, this
is I must be way too lowright And reminder, I don't know anything
about anything in terms of tires.So I pick up a few tires there
and the story goes. I stoppedabout four places by the time I got
to the play where you could dumpthose tires. Uh, my price was
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at a you know, a dollarfifty already so, um, I got
excited. You know. So I'mdriving back and all this stuff is running
through my head. Every place Iwent 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 wenthome and immediately I was so excited.
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I told my wife, I said, you're not gonna believe this, and
and uh, there's tires everywhere.Yeah, they're throwing them at me.
Literally. I just put a pencilto the paper and I started, you
know, trying to work the numbersand come up with some type of rough
business plan. And that's where that'swhere the that's where it started. Um.
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As I looked into it a littlemore, I figured out they needed
a little bit bigger truck. Andand basically where we're at now, we've
learned through the hard knock price.It has been a journey. I don't
know what it's like in the scrapbusiness this or other businesses out there.
This is our very first business,and but nobody wants to help you.
(08:07):
Nobody goes out of their way totell you the secret. So I'll tell
you that you need the biggest truckpossible. Or you won't make any money
if you pick up one hundred tiresat a time. But that's where it
started. And I'm gonna interrupt youright there because I want to give you
kudos because Bret and I reached outto you and you're company, and you
(08:30):
were more than helpful to give uslots of information that you know, even
just in something as simple as howI bonus our route drivers, you know,
and it's like, well, ifyou do peace count, you kind
of encourage them to fudge the numbersa little bit, which affects your customer
and you. And then you know, you got to get weights on those
trucks, so you know that it'sfull of rubber. I'll tell you what,
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you know, how long it mighthave taken me to figure that out,
and how many customers might have beenburned when you know, the guy
that I hire as much as Itry, but things happen, you know,
guys getting desperate and they do crazythings. And if you set up
your structures to that there could besome fudging going on, it's going to
happen eventually. So that you know, just having that little snippet has probably
(09:13):
saved me so much time and yeah, and having someone to reach out to
kind of like your your mom ordad or whatever. You know. Of
course, when we're kids, wedon't listen to them because we know everything.
But in business, if if youcan, you know, find someone
that can mentor you. And andironically, um, uh Brett will hopefully
he's now listening to this. Butwill Brett Eckart from United Medals Recycling,
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Oh yeah, um so. Andactually I saw him on LinkedIn and he
had mentioned something about tires and Iactually called him first and I said,
hey, be careful. It's likethis business can be like dealing with the
moms. You know, you gotlots of great shady people. But um,
that being said, you know,it's it's nice. You guys have
(10:01):
been in business for a long time, uh United Medals, so I know
this is a spin off for anothercompany that he's He's always looking to grow
and be the best at what hedoes, so at that particular time I
wanted to help him, and youknow, um, it's it's kind of
worked the opposite. I haven't reallyhad a mentor, so it's been great
to like reach out to him andtalk to him and have him give me
(10:24):
some advice. On business stuff andand just helped me along the path.
So, uh, I'm very blessedto be able to help you guys in
return the favor and and and dothat. So so after we ended up,
Uh, I did that. Weended up my wife and I.
Um, getting a loan is incrediblyhard. So we pulled money out of
a four owing k. Uh madeup some crazy name. My brother has
(10:48):
a sign business called All American Signs. That's right, what's that the loan
on your four oh one k that'swhere the balls come in. Yeah,
So we thirty five So it wasn'tthat big of a deal. But we
have three kids, and you know, it was tight. I was unemployed,
so it's not like we had alot of money laying around. And
so we took that thirty five hundredand we got a box truck and we
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started and it was just me andthen my wife was working. She works
as a nurse, and she wasworking weekends, so she would work Friday,
Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. She would
get in the box trup with meand we would still pick up tires.
Oh great, and that's a greatAnd so we did that for a while,
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and I'm just gonna touch on acouple of highlights and some I guess
we'll call me epiphanies. Where thelight bulb went off. And so so
we're picking up and we'll fast forwardto where I got enough business by when
she wasn't working with me on Friday, I would go do sales calls.
So it didn't take long, maybefour months, and we had two full
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time employees in the box truck.So now I'm running a business and I
just happened to be sitting out oftramps, you know where I dumped the
tires at a dump station and um, and I saw semi truck come through.
So my wheel start turning. Thelight bulb goes off, and I
said, hey, what's that guydoing here? Oh, well, big
customers, we just have a semidriver. We drop off a big trailer
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and we go pick it up.So, like I told you earlier,
I run home, Hey, Bay, check this out. We don't even
have to load the tires. Thinkof that and they'll do is the same
as as two box trucks. Sowhat do you think we did? Next?
We went and got our CDL andI give them my credit. She
got our CDL license first YEP,and we borrowed money. I gave up
(12:41):
a little percentage of my company atthis time to a close friend, and
we were able to get some moneyfor our first semi truck, 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 buyanother trailer. We have over one hundred
twenty trailers now. But that butthat's kind of what we've how we've grown
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this business and such a short amountof time, we've lived on what we
need to to pay the bills andlive pretty tight. I would say comfortably.
We're not starving. Up until thelast three years, we've been able
to buy like our first new car. I mean we would. We put
in a good five or six years, and I'm talking I personally worked in
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between seventy and eighty hours a week. It was a lot of work and
we would have probably gotten out ofit had we not taken a loan on
the box truck. I'm not arisk taker. I was I did want
to find the job. This wasjust I got to feed my family,
get me to the next death.And then it continued to grow and grow,
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and it came to a point wheremy wife is like, I'm stick
and nursing. You know, I'mgetting tired of, you know, dealing
with all the politics and and justthe headache. And at that time we
were we were actually parking my boxtruck in front of my house. The
neighbors are called the police, andyou know, just so we actually started
parking our trucks or semi truck andour box truck behind the loads front down
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the street. And so it tookabout a year and a half where the
police suburb caught on and started settingus. But it was free parking for
a year or half. Yeah,you're way out of statut limitations. Better,
you're good, exactly. So umfast forward. So we're just to
glorify transporters. So there's different stepsin the tire recycling business, right,
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and this is if you're new tothis, that's probably you know, all
kind of go over a couple ofthings. So we're transporter. We just
pick up tires. That's it.We make the money we paid the disposal
feed and whatever. The difference iswhat we charge our customers. That's what
we make and now we're doing semiloads, so we're doing bigger loads,
bigger customers. My wife's name isJody. Jody and I got our CDL.
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We have box truck drivers and Jodyand I are running around doing swaps.
And the summertime we got we gota truck with a cat, so
we would we would load the kidsup in the back and sleeper cab.
Yep, we've we've hit the roadand and and go do these runs.
We do about two a day.And that's kind of where we went up
until another turning point happened where thebig guy, the big boys in town.
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There's only one one major player.They 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 andso I had one I had one option.
Really some people would say too,I guess option number two would be
to just throw in the towel.They say, my price so high that
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I was, it was more thanwhat I was charging my customers. So
there was no more middle ground there. So I took option one, which
was the only option for me andmy family, and that was to uh
to somehow start shredding tires. Now, I would have never wanted to do
that because I didn't know picking uptires is easy. Now I got to
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shredum and maintain a machine. Anddid you know this is all a whole
other business, right, Um,So I found a ten thousand dollars aluminium
can pressure and I found that youcould least say, what are those indum
trailers? You said, same thingyou guys use in the scraps, and
I see you uses in the steelbusiness. Um, And basically I think
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you've seen the pictures. But weelevated this this I learned how to well,
we elevated this aluminum can. Wedid one tire at a time.
At that time, we were doingtwo thousand tires a day, Monday through
Friday. And that's that's where westarted in the in the actual shredding business.
So um, as soon as wedid that, we cut out the
middleman. Now we're just sending stuffto the landfill, and now we're making
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more money. So you reduced thesize right from a whole tire, and
you shred it yourself. So nowyou don't need those guys to take your
whole tire because it's legal to disposeof tires that they're shredded. Is that?
Hey? And guess what? Guesswhat now? Now there's the big
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big boy in town, the Nationwideguy and a little old Tom Parker all
American tires. That's it, rightand h and so well, and you're
the guys I call T shirt anda pickup. You have those that flare
up, I'm sure right, theguys that just want to go and and
pick them up. Sometimes they'll doit for free and try to sell use
tires out of it. Yeah,there's still there's two people that are trying
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to get great and great for usas good tires that they turn around themselves.
Those guys are picking it up forfree. Um, the guy's T
shirt and a pickup. We lovethose guys, we we you know,
they were a transporter like us.They actually get a very very almost at
costs. We take their tires sothe mom and pops can still make the
money. We're not going anywhere.We welcome them. Hey, you can
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pick up your tires, you makeyour money. I won't touch your customers.
We started where you're at. I'mnot just because I'm the big dog.
I'm not going to run around andcoach your customers. If they call
me, I'll call you and say, hey, you're not picking up.
They need to pick up. Butwe're not going to go undercut someone and
and and go take take business.So we welcome those guys. UM.
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You remember, you remember what itwas like to that. I can ever
forget where you came from when youdo and a pickup. Yes sir,
yes sir, we still are thet shirt in the pickup. We still
have that mentality. We still goout there and do what we can.
Um. So that's where we gotinto the business. Um. And then
from there it went back to thenumbers thing. I'm using an aluminum can
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a shredder. Uh. It's thesize of smaller than my desk that I'm
sitting at right now. Not designedfor shredding tires. No, I just
the guy that sold it too manygoes. We only use it. It
kind of set it aside. Isaid, well, crush the tire.
I think so now it takes fifteenminutes to do a semi tire, but
for the most part it'll do Wedidn't really have some of my customers,
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but for the most part, it'lldo car tires pretty easy. So that's
kind of where we started there.From there, what do you think I
did? I went home in ransomnumbers? Well, what if we got
a shredder that could do you know, ten tons an hour instead of instead
of one? So excuse me.Ever since then we kind of scaled up
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and just kind of been running thenumbers. Okay, now we've cut off
the landfill. What's the next step? Where do we go? You know,
how can we keep these out ofthe landsill? Well? How it's
two million dollar investments. So there'slots of stories. I've worked deals out
where major companies as they you know, bought me a piece of equipment and
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we signed an agreement. And I'vejust really put my time in and worked
my way through the system in orderto be able to achieve some of the
goals to get to where we arenow. You could send me the picture
of you when you're standing over thator I don't know if it was you
or somebody was standing over that shredder, the tin can shredder, that one
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that's in your office, and justoh, yes, yes, via the
original one, and we could showa compare and contrast to your factory now,
which is is awesome. I lovewatching absolutely and just so people know,
I want you to if you're drivingin your car to picture. Then
it's aluminum can shredder that I've raisedthirteen feet in the air with scrap metal
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that I could find laying around ajust use metal at the scrap yard that
they would sell me for, youknow, as cheap as possible. Everything
looks incredibly unsafe, it looks crazy, and I don't even know how to
welds. I borrowed the welder andthen I found some old post office conveyors
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that they would roll around and movepackages in the trucks and stuff. They
were sitting in the back of someoneback y are one of my customers for
I think ten years, fifteen years, pulled them out, you know,
looped up the motors well died twobelts together and set it on top of
the things that's thirteen feet in theair, and to run the tires up
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into the top of it. So, I mean it's it wasn't pretty,
but I mean here we are,right, and yeah, it has been
probably the hardest thing I've ever donein my life, but yet the most
fulfilling. You know, we all, I think we all wonder where we're
going to end up in life.And it's frustrating when you're working for someone
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and and you put the effort intoa company and maybe you don't get what
you want out of it from thecompany. And and this experience has been
you know, obviously it's life changing, you can see from the pictures from
the plants. But but I willsay that there's a certain amount of stress
that goes with it, you know, just like I care about those transporters
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that bring us tires and making surethey're feeding their families. Now we have
fifty eight employees, so when Igo to bed at night, you know,
it's a lot to carry, youknow, And I don't I don't
know how. I don't know howhow Brett does it owning multiple companies.
I guess when you have someone likeyou that can take the pressure off.
When I find that someone, andI'll definitely be pretty blessed at that point,
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But I still carry a lot ofstress with me, and it's very
difficult, but it is. It'san amazing thing knowing that for the most
part, you know, I controlmy own destiny. So uh, it's
it's just been an amazing journey.And we've been so so now you've got
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crumb crumb rubber facilities online and youand I were talking a little bit about
um. You know, I postedsome questions too, just to kind of
get the juices Boeing, and oneof 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 youthink? You know? Positives or negatives,
whatever, you're whatever you're feeling rightnow. So in any business,
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from the very beginning, I guesseverybody always has an expectation and and I
don't think it seldomly ever comes tofruition. I think we've achieved the goals.
I didn't really know we were goingto go this far. I didn't
really know what it would look like. But it's just all that. So
(23:26):
the best piece of advice is toset the bar high and just know that
there's going to be hurdles to getthere. I'm sure there is with any
business. But it's definitely been alot harder than what I've expected in terms
of the just a broad statement,in the last eight years that I've been
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doing this, the tire market isit's completely different. Nobody wanted to get
in this business, you would shredtires and you would land till the margins
were almost nothing. Um. Andand you have to do an incredible amount
of volume to even you know,validate the equipment and the maintenance on it.
(24:10):
Tires just tear stuff up. Um. Yeah. And in the last
three in the last three years,I've seen an evolution coming. And you
know there's uh, some manufacturers aroundhere. I know they have ten or
more crumb lines on order right now. Uh. And that's just one manufacturer
(24:32):
that I know of. The market'schanging, 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'sum. You know, you can put
it in turf, right, butthey want you to test for metal.
(24:52):
They want to make sure there's nolead or any you know, tires that
come from China or in these othercountries where they don't really have PA controls
on stuff. So you know,it's our responsibility. You know, you've
seen our laugh We have a laughsetup. You know. We test for
for metals, we test for themoisture, that the size of the particles.
(25:12):
You know, that's that next levelstuff. You know you talked about
super Bowl. You don't go tothe super Bowl unless you're ready to put
some work in and do some thingsthat you didn't do before. You're absolutely
right, and you know this whenyou talk about and these are professional athletes
are playing on this so so theyhave to hold the far higher. And
(25:33):
ironically, I talk about us beingthe super Bowl and one day our crumb
will be on a super Bowl field. I'm sure so into that, but
but I don't know if you putit on Dallas field, I'm not gonna
go there. You have to comeback to Texas soon, So be careful
next next year. This year's ouryear. That isn't that what everybody says.
(25:56):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna comedown. We're gonna have to go
to a game, absolutely absolutely,Hopefully it'll be one they win. There
you go. But so the market'schanging. I think you guys are getting
in at the perfect time. Ithink I'm a little bit ahead of the
curve on where we're at. Soreal quick, I just want to say
you when he says you guys.So this podcast obviously is always sponsored by
(26:19):
tire Reclaim because I'm the president andthe host of this podcast, Craig Hunter.
I don't even think I introduced myself, but that's all right, first
podcast, there you are. ButTire Reclaim we've been doing it, you
know, maybe fourteen months now orsomething like that, so we are still
baby. So for the listener whenhe'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
(26:41):
very helpful for us to get started. And now we're learning about this crumb
because our crumb facility comes online,you know, later this year, and
we're excited, but we're worried aboutthe pitfalls, which if you helped us
another they're all there. You can'tavoid him. But 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 I think what's going to set you
(27:04):
apart and us apart from the majorityof the people out there. And I
feel very comfortable saying this because nowthat I'm dealing with some of the stuff.
One of our customers as an asphaltcustomer, and you know, we're
talking about the moisture that I've kindof explained. It's like when you take
your chicken and you drop it inthe fryer, and if there's too much
(27:26):
water on it, it goes crazy. It boils over, it splashes on
you. When you talk about puttingwet rubber into a reactor, you know
at six hundred degrees, and youtalk about fluff and sand and contaminate that
are now going into a finished product, we're in a new error. You
know, when a recycling plant hasto have a laboratory to make sure that
(27:48):
the quality control going out the door. I mean there's there's untapped stuff out
there, and that's what sets usapart. You know, the our customer
shut down for two and a halfweeks because they had some contaminated stuff.
It's costume. I don't know theexact number. They threw two hundred thousand
out and that was for four daysjust on cleaning. I don't know what
(28:11):
volume they have. So that beingsaid, you know, I'm excited.
I'm excited you guys are coming onboard. It's it's not the same game.
You can't just get a shredder andstart shredding stuff and taking it to
the landfill and be successful. There'slots of avenues and you've got to you
gotta run it. And know it'snot just you know, we're creating a
(28:33):
product. We're we are setting thestandard so to go. From the guy
that's running from place to place tryingto figure out how much tires worth to
what we're doing now. I loveit and I'm super excited. And um,
you guys are gonna be right therewith us. We're gonna work together
and and do some amazing things.The sky's are limited. So so can
(28:57):
you talk about each thing it comesoff of your your line there. I
know you mentioned TDF and you stillproduce TDF and you along with the chrome
or how does that work? Absolutely? So, Um, to say you're
a recycler is in the tire business, it's extremely important to anything that comes
(29:27):
in the front door that has avalue. You know. It's like we're
working on a trash line right whereyou're pulling out luminium cans or you put
the paper in this pile, andit's the same thing we're doing with tires.
So in order to be sporting.Yeah. So, so we are
very diverse and we will always staydiverse. It's not necessarily what brings in
(29:48):
the most money for us. Youknow, chrome obviously is the big seller.
Obviously. Um it was during COVIDeverybody's doing the yards. It was
the rubber molt you know. Sothere'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 thatcome in that you want to you know,
(30:11):
turn around if they're good. Youknow, let's not let them go
to lanthil if they're brand new tires. So there's someone out there that that
could use those, right m Asemi tire, we get casings, We
do retreads on those. Let's whyare we going to shred a tire that
can has two years old? Wecan put a new a new tread on
it sending back out right. Uh. And so one of the things that
(30:34):
we do we separate the steel andwe sell it. And we have another
project we're working on and we'll talkabout that right now. But uh.
We make TDF TDFs tire drive fuel. Uh. And then now we do
the from rubber so uh. Andwe don't just sell to turf companies.
We also do asphalts. So wesell different sizes of that. So it's
(30:56):
incredibly important, you know, whenyou're running this business that you're very diverse.
You know, it's it's very hardto succeed when you're just you're the
guy picking up tires for free becauseyou want to sell the good ones.
But you've got to either you know, pay for disposal. Hopefully they're paying
for a disposal of the back themon someone's property. But um, it's
(31:18):
important to be diverse. And I'llgive you one example. You know,
we have a lot of of primarilycar customers car tires, but we also
have a significant amount of semi tiresthat come in during COVID car dealerships.
I mean, everybody's working from home, nobody's buying cars. So I mean
we took about a thirty percent drop, but I will tell you all through
(31:42):
COVID we had double digit growth.So and the reason we were able to
do that is because we're diverse.When the tire, the car tires dropped,
semi tires went to the route,medical supplies were out. Trucking companies
weren't just booming running around delivering itself. Yeah, I think there's experts in
every field. And you know you'resaying we're testing for moisture. We're doing
(32:06):
these different things for you know,it's quality control, quality assurance for your
end user. What are some ofthe things that you've seen the experts Because
we're in an evolving market you talkedabout things are changing, you know.
Did you have people come and tellyou, oh, you're gonna have to
do all of this or all ofthat, and you're like, well,
maybe, but we've got this.You know, your own ideas and your
(32:27):
own spin on some of that.So yes and yes and no. Um,
early on I did all the heartache. UM. I had an
employee that we're and I'm sure we'veall had bad employees. I don't want
to detract too much or go offtopic, but um, and at the
(32:49):
time, he knew a lot morethan me, and he was supposed to
help me get this piece of equipmentand 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 whatI need. I said, because
we're so new with this, Idon't have the money to go buy a
huge crumb line, so you needto figure out how to get it clean
(33:10):
and what we need and when weseparated at that time. One of the
things I had told them before thatwas otherwise I would just take a million
dollars or two million or whatever thenumber is, and go buy me something
from a market leading you know,equipment manufacturer and make the best product.
(33:34):
Right. But I'm I'm paying youthe good money so you can you can
be that expert. But that beingsaid, that's why a little plugged for
Joe Mar. I believe they makeone of the best pieces of equipment out
there. But I mean, theseguys got it dialed in. They own
a plant as well, and ifit goes wrong in their plant, they
fix it on the manufacturing side ofthe equipment. So so you're referencing Middlebury,
(33:57):
Indiana's Joe Mar and uh Encore right, yeah, in tech or in
tech I'm sorry, Encore, that'sreading ahead because I was gonna ask you
about that too, But yeah,in Tech and Lavan and those guys up
there, and we did. Wewent and visited that plant with you,
as you know. But for thelisteners that what's a really impressive visit.
(34:20):
Man, those guys are they're doingon top of it. That was really
cool. So we are exciting topartner with them as well, and we
uh we kind of mimic again.I've I've had the hard knocks, so
I'm going to help you avoid someof those and and with them that they
are amazing, amazing people. Soum, we're definitely going to continue down
(34:43):
that road with them. And they'vethey'll they'll, you know, get you
the stuff you need. But uh, back to where the industry's going and
stuff. You know, if Brettwas in the scrap business and when he
sold something or whatever he brought inand 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'sthe same same theory with with where the
(35:06):
chrome is going. And there's somany applications. There's new ones every day.
People are finding new uses for it. So like I said earlier,
I mean, this is exciting.There's gonna be a lot more stuff coming.
There's many ways to make money inthis industry. So I think moving
forward, you know, if ifif you and I are going to be
(35:28):
around down the road, I thinkthere's gonna be a lot more people in
this. But it's gonna be oneof those games. What what keeps Brett
better than everybody else. What areyou guys doing better? And I know
that that you and I, bothour companies are gonna gonna find out what
we can do better. If itcosts more to be better, we're going
(35:50):
to spend the money because we're investingin our employees, in our company,
and we want to be around whenthere's hundreds of people out there and people
pick us, right, that's myjob. Well, and I thought it
was important, you know, cominginto this podcast, I wanted to mention
something that that kind of hits homefor me, is you're recycling, right,
(36:10):
And that's a term that gets thrownaround a lot and green initiative in
this and that. But you're doingeighteen thousand 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 trashthat would it would be going in landfills.
(36:31):
That would be you know, fillingup the landfills, which that's a
new thing now. Everybody's like,oh, we can't just throw it to
a landfill. Well, nobody eversaid that a decade or two decades ago,
you know, So now here weare on the cutting edge of that
where we are actually profitable at recyclor try to be right, but actually
profitable at recycling without taking a bunchof subsidy money, without taking a bunch
(36:52):
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'twant to just take it to the landfill,
and so you upgrade it right,and you improved and you change systems,
and you made basically all American tirerecycling a name in the game,
so when somebody thinks of it,and that's really a big part of this
(37:15):
podcast, and my passion behind thispodcast is to get your name out there,
to help people understand that you builtthis from the ground up and you
are truly recycling products. They arethere's products coming out of the trash that
you're picking up right, So tome, that's full circle. You're doing
it right. I think it's fantastic. Did you have anything else you want
(37:35):
to add? No, No,I mean I think you kind of summed
it up. Only other thing whenit comes to recycling. I just want
to throw this out there too.In the tire business, it's not like
the steal business. And just there'sa misconception that you know, when people
bring Brett aluminum cans, you know, he compacts them and they said,
(38:00):
a luminum cans out. So peoplewill ask me all the time, why
don't you pay for tires, becauseI don't just take your tire and put
it in a bailer and send itout like there's time and energy and maintenance
and blades and you know, water, and yes, there's it's it's a
it's a huge manufacturing process. Sothat's why people pay it to take tires,
(38:20):
you know. So when you sayrecycling, there's always something the kind.
And maybe one day when we kindof let what I talked about earlier,
how it's getting more sophisticated, maybethere'll be a day where we pay
for tires. Then there won't beany abandoned tires at that point, you
know, right, and it'd begreat, but we're not there yet.
But we're going in that direction.But absolutely, But people say, you,
why why don't you pay me fortires? Well, because it's a
(38:44):
little different, but yes, weare recyde yeah, And someone pointed out
actually I think Nick Schneyder mentioned itin a Recycled Idaho podcast that I featured
on, and he said, Ithink people are becoming more comfortable with doing
the right thing. Like your BlueBins recycling. You know, you pay
for that service to be able toseparate your cardboards and plastics from the rest
(39:05):
of your trash. And that's justpart of it. Right, If we're
going to 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 at where
we're at, and that equipment isnot cheap. No, it's not.
And I want to say one morething. I promise that will be done.
This is just this is kind ofimportant to me too. I'm not
(39:28):
rushing you. Do you feel rushed? No? No. If you're listening
to this and you own a companythat has tires and someone is coming around
and picking them up for free,just no, there is a cost associated
with that, whether they're selling thetires, you know, you have to
(39:51):
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 ifyou're getting it for free, just no,
you need to have some type ofpaper trail. You got to be
responsible to make sure those tires aregetting thrown away, because if it's too
good to be true, it probablyis. And there's a lot I get
calls from retired people that own landand they on a fixed income and they're
(40:15):
like, hey, someone has thrownthree thousand tires out on my property right
And this is not a company.This is not someone that you know through
their tire that they're tired of havingin their garage. This is the three
thousand tires. It's someone that isactively collecting tires. So I think it's
(40:36):
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, youknow, make sure that they're legitimate company
and they're not just throwing your problemon someone else. I just want to
get that out there. Just thepeople don't understand. I experienced it early
(40:58):
on when we start this company.There's some big trash tire piles. Even
here in Idaho. We don't havenear the population you do. But a
matter of fact, I checked yourcounty has more more people than our entire
state. But the idea of peoplepicking up tires for free and not being
responsible with where they're going is whatI think I hear you say, because
(41:22):
we actually had people that weren't pickingthem up for free, but they're picking
up really inexpensive But then just didexactly what you said. There's I mean,
that's probably the size of like four, four or five two story houses
this guy's tire pile. And nowthe county has come in and put a
chain link fence around it, puta sign up says no dumping. You
know, that's that's an issue,and that's it's an high sor it's right
(41:44):
off the 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 bigpile over there, right, and you
know there's a big lawsuit going ondown the road where a company in the
middle of nowhere maybe they had ahard time picking up tires. Well,
some guy he's collecting the feed,but he's found a vacant piece of lamb
(42:07):
got a huge company owned and hewas dumping over eight years. Well,
the car and it was car dealerships, it was legit businesses. They were
paying him, but they weren't gettingany documentation that he was disposing of him
like he should, and they endedup getting sued and they had to pay
twenty times the disposal fees over eightyears, millions of dollars. They're still
(42:29):
in litigation. So it's just youknow, whether you're a business owner or
just someone trying to get rid ofstuff. You know, as businesses,
we just got to be responsible andknow that there is a cost associated with
this and kind of do the rightthing. Nobody really thinks about it until
they see the pile there, LikeI can't believe someone dumbs that. Well,
I can't believe you expect them whento pick him up for free.
(42:51):
So yeah, that's it. Well, yeah, there's a video rolling around
it, and I won't spend toomuch more time on this, but rolling
around about I think it's a Kuwaitsor something like that. But you know
those huge graveyards of tires, andwe probably have something similar like to that
across the United States if they wereall in one spot like that. But
if you're thinking about tires on theground, we probably have that many sitting
(43:13):
out in rural areas all over theUnited States of America. So I think
it's time for us to go outand gather those up, one tire at
a time and have a big impacton this world. So Tom, I
appreciate you, man, I reallyreally do appreciate more than just this podcast,
everything you do for our industry,everything you've been doing for Brett and
I to get tyre Reclaim off theground again all American tire Recycling. If
(43:38):
you don't know Tom, he's underThomas cloud Parker on LinkedIn. I would
say go find that gentleman because he'sgot a lot of cool posts. If
you're interested in crumb robber TDF people, you never know who's listening. Reach
out. We've got questions and answersthat might fit right into your business models.
(44:00):
So absolutely, and I'll tell youwhat there is there Chrome is in
short supply, especially good crumb.At least in our market here in Texas,
there's only a couple of people thatdo it. But that being said,
some people don't understand kind of howit works. But you know,
(44:22):
we have this new machine. Allour crumb is not spoken for. It
will be soon in the next fewmonths. So, I mean, we're
all about building relationships. So youknow, if there's someone out there that
does need a crumb supply or orsomething along those lines and they want to
build a partnership with us, youknow, we take care of those people
(44:43):
first. So you know, ifyou've hit me up in six or eight
months and it's all spoken for,I may have something left over, but
I don't know that I'll be ableto commit to it. So yeah,
they're looking for those partnerships. That'sa good place to be my friend.
All right. Well, thanks forcoming on. We'll talk to you later.
Good congratulations on your first podcast.Thank you
Welcome to Talking Tires, the podcastthe delves deep into the world of tires.
Join us as we explore everything fromthe 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 howthey work, how to maintain them,
and how to dispose of them responsively. Whether you're a season mechanic, curious
(00:26):
car enthusiast, or an avid recycler, Talking Tires is the perfect podcast for
anyone who wants to learn about theessential component of the modern vehicle and heavy
equipment. So buckle up and joinus for an informative and engaging journey in
the world of tires. All right, welcome everybody to the first episode of
(00:46):
Talking Tires. I'm here with TomParker from All American Tire Recyclers and they
are a sponsor company for Talking Tiresand we're excited to have them as our
first guest. And Tom, welcome. I appreciate you being here. I
know it takes time out of yourday and if I had to pay your
hourly wage, I probably would notwant to do that. So why don't
(01:07):
you go ahead and introduce yourself andtell us about all American tires. Hey,
Craig, happy to be on yourfirst podcast to stop them. We're
furthers to be here. We didn'tget snow last night and I can't see
behind me, but there's no snowout there. Fun and sun here we're
out collecting tires and and starting thebeginning of summer. So it's it's the
(01:30):
real reason you're saying no snows becauseI told you we had woke up to
snow today April thirteenth. I don'tgo up to snow, snow in thirty
degrees. I couldn't believe it myself. Just so you know, it's not
normal. You guys even have agroundhog. So we're in Idaho, right
and you're in Texas. I guessI should say that. So in Idaho,
yeah, we did. You guyswe have groundhogs. Yeah, there's
(01:53):
no groundhogs there because it's winter allyear right right while we call them whistle
pigs, all right, man,But yeah, no snow in Texas.
That's good snow. Um. Soa little bit about us. We've we've
been doing this for about eighty years. My wife and I started this company,
(02:14):
you know, obviously eight years ago, but it was kind of one
of those things where I was doingmedical sales and she was a nurse,
and I was laid off and outlooking for a job and was getting towards
the six months eight month unemployment thing. I was trying to pound out and
get back into medical sales, butat that time that just, you know,
(02:37):
we'd just come out of the mortgagebus and and it just was still
a hard time to kind of get, you know, into that industry.
And I was out visiting one ofmy buddy's shops and and trying to help
him with his business at the time, and it ended up kind of falling
into this. So I never thoughtwe'd be here where we're at today,
(03:00):
at this stage of the game andjust making such an impact that we are
right now. Can you give usa quick synopsis of what it is all
American Tire does in a day.So you pick up tires, right,
Yeah, So we're doing quite afew few loads of tires. I mean,
we're doing eighteen thousand tires a day, seven days a week are more.
(03:25):
But we we do everything from semitires to car tires, agg tires.
We make a product called TDF,which stands for tire derived fuel and
that's used in like seament films,and I think paper plants also use them
for us at the cement plants thatburns it its fuel. And then we
(03:47):
just recently just had our grand openingabout a month ago, and we started
doing chrome rubber. So people arenot familiar with the tire industry. Chrome
rubbers more or less. In ourbusiness, it's like going to the super
Bowl. It's very difficult to makein terms of the size, and there's
(04:10):
customers a lot of customers out therethat are getting more more pick of these
days and are wanting better chrome andand different sizes chrome really small from a
majority of that product will go intoeither asphalt or football fields. You know,
we've all seen NFL football, collegefootball, and you see their feet
(04:31):
when they do it close up andyou see the rubber come out of the
ground. That's pretty much what wemake. So a little black rooster tail,
yes, sir, then that's wherewe're at right now. We've got
a lot of projects in the works. But eight years ago, I thought
this was going to be like asummer job until I could felt I could
find some stet employment. So herewe are franking it out today. We're
(04:55):
one of the largest plants volume wiseand in North Texas. So it's fun.
That's fantastic. So you talked aboutgetting started, and you know,
it's kind of a ticking clock ifyou will, to go out and earn
a living. And it turned outto be something quite a bit more than
(05:16):
you expected. And I know yourstory a little bit about actually getting out
on the streets and driving and pickingup tires. Can you talk about that
a little bit when you got started. Yeah, And I want to just
touch on it. I'm gonna kindof ramble through it quickly just because I
don't want to bore the people outthere listening. But I think it's important
(05:36):
to know that, you know,my wife and I started this with thirty
five hundred dollars and uh, andyou know, the American dream is alive
and real. You got to putthe hard work in. But I mean,
I get the chill. I didtoo. At the exact same time.
I think, oh, we sortof with thirty five hundred dollars,
(05:58):
and I'll tell you just a littlebit around the business model when we started,
but basically the tire shop, Iwasn't a tire shop of a mechanic
shop. He had tires everywhere.He did a little bit of tire work
here and there. But I pulledthe tires out to get his shot cleaned
up so he could work on hisbusiness. And I've always been a salesman.
I'm driving to get him disposed ofabout thirty miles away, and I
(06:20):
only had like thirty tires in thetruck and it would maybe hold a hundred,
and I'm like, what the hell, I'm already going over there.
Let me stopped at a couple oftire shops, and my first tire shop.
I walked in there and I said, hey, you know, you
got any old tires you want disposedof? And he asked me how much
to you know, throw him away? And told him a dollar. The
(06:42):
guy got extremely excited. So rightaway I'm thinking, oh man, this
is I must be way too lowright And reminder, I don't know anything
about anything in terms of tires.So I pick up a few tires there
and the story goes. I stoppedabout four places by the time I got
to the play where you could dumpthose tires. Uh, my price was
(07:03):
at a you know, a dollarfifty already so, um, I got
excited. You know. So I'mdriving back and all this stuff is running
through my head. Every place Iwent 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 wenthome and immediately I was so excited.
(07:26):
I told my wife, I said, you're not gonna believe this, and
and uh, there's tires everywhere.Yeah, they're throwing them at me.
Literally. I just put a pencilto the paper and I started, you
know, trying to work the numbersand come up with some type of rough
business plan. And that's where that'swhere the that's where it started. Um.
(07:46):
As I looked into it a littlemore, I figured out they needed
a little bit bigger truck. Andand basically where we're at now, we've
learned through the hard knock price.It has been a journey. I don't
know what it's like in the scrapbusiness this or other businesses out there.
This is our very first business,and but nobody wants to help you.
(08:07):
Nobody goes out of their way totell you the secret. So I'll tell
you that you need the biggest truckpossible. Or you won't make any money
if you pick up one hundred tiresat a time. But that's where it
started. And I'm gonna interrupt youright there because I want to give you
kudos because Bret and I reached outto you and you're company, and you
(08:30):
were more than helpful to give uslots of information that you know, even
just in something as simple as howI bonus our route drivers, you know,
and it's like, well, ifyou do peace count, you kind
of encourage them to fudge the numbersa little bit, which affects your customer
and you. And then you know, you got to get weights on those
trucks, so you know that it'sfull of rubber. I'll tell you what,
(08:52):
you know, how long it mighthave taken me to figure that out,
and how many customers might have beenburned when you know, the guy
that I hire as much as Itry, but things happen, you know,
guys getting desperate and they do crazythings. And if you set up
your structures to that there could besome fudging going on, it's going to
happen eventually. So that you know, just having that little snippet has probably
(09:13):
saved me so much time and yeah, and having someone to reach out to
kind of like your your mom ordad or whatever. You know. Of
course, when we're kids, wedon't listen to them because we know everything.
But in business, if if youcan, you know, find someone
that can mentor you. And andironically, um, uh Brett will hopefully
he's now listening to this. Butwill Brett Eckart from United Medals Recycling,
(09:37):
Oh yeah, um so. Andactually I saw him on LinkedIn and he
had mentioned something about tires and Iactually called him first and I said,
hey, be careful. It's likethis business can be like dealing with the
moms. You know, you gotlots of great shady people. But um,
that being said, you know,it's it's nice. You guys have
(10:01):
been in business for a long time, uh United Medals, so I know
this is a spin off for anothercompany that he's He's always looking to grow
and be the best at what hedoes, so at that particular time I
wanted to help him, and youknow, um, it's it's kind of
worked the opposite. I haven't reallyhad a mentor, so it's been great
to like reach out to him andtalk to him and have him give me
(10:24):
some advice. On business stuff andand just helped me along the path.
So, uh, I'm very blessedto be able to help you guys in
return the favor and and and dothat. So so after we ended up,
Uh, I did that. Weended up my wife and I.
Um, getting a loan is incrediblyhard. So we pulled money out of
a four owing k. Uh madeup some crazy name. My brother has
(10:48):
a sign business called All American Signs. That's right, what's that the loan
on your four oh one k that'swhere the balls come in. Yeah,
So we thirty five So it wasn'tthat big of a deal. But we
have three kids, and you know, it was tight. I was unemployed,
so it's not like we had alot of money laying around. And
so we took that thirty five hundredand we got a box truck and we
(11:11):
started and it was just me andthen my wife was working. She works
as a nurse, and she wasworking weekends, so she would work Friday,
Saturday, Sunday and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. She would
get in the box trup with meand we would still pick up tires.
Oh great, and that's a greatAnd so we did that for a while,
(11:33):
and I'm just gonna touch on acouple of highlights and some I guess
we'll call me epiphanies. Where thelight bulb went off. And so so
we're picking up and we'll fast forwardto where I got enough business by when
she wasn't working with me on Friday, I would go do sales calls.
So it didn't take long, maybefour months, and we had two full
(11:54):
time employees in the box truck.So now I'm running a business and I
just happened to be sitting out oftramps, you know where I dumped the
tires at a dump station and um, and I saw semi truck come through.
So my wheel start turning. Thelight bulb goes off, and I
said, hey, what's that guydoing here? Oh, well, big
customers, we just have a semidriver. We drop off a big trailer
(12:16):
and we go pick it up.So, like I told you earlier,
I run home, Hey, Bay, check this out. We don't even
have to load the tires. Thinkof that and they'll do is the same
as as two box trucks. Sowhat do you think we did? Next?
We went and got our CDL andI give them my credit. She
got our CDL license first YEP,and we borrowed money. I gave up
(12:41):
a little percentage of my company atthis time to a close friend, and
we were able to get some moneyfor our first semi truck, 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 buyanother trailer. We have over one hundred
twenty trailers now. But that butthat's kind of what we've how we've grown
(13:05):
this business and such a short amountof time, we've lived on what we
need to to pay the bills andlive pretty tight. I would say comfortably.
We're not starving. Up until thelast three years, we've been able
to buy like our first new car. I mean we would. We put
in a good five or six years, and I'm talking I personally worked in
(13:26):
between seventy and eighty hours a week. It was a lot of work and
we would have probably gotten out ofit had we not taken a loan on
the box truck. I'm not arisk taker. I was I did want
to find the job. This wasjust I got to feed my family,
get me to the next death.And then it continued to grow and grow,
(13:48):
and it came to a point wheremy wife is like, I'm stick
and nursing. You know, I'mgetting tired of, you know, dealing
with all the politics and and justthe headache. And at that time we
were we were actually parking my boxtruck in front of my house. The
neighbors are called the police, andyou know, just so we actually started
parking our trucks or semi truck andour box truck behind the loads front down
(14:09):
the street. And so it tookabout a year and a half where the
police suburb caught on and started settingus. But it was free parking for
a year or half. Yeah,you're way out of statut limitations. Better,
you're good, exactly. So umfast forward. So we're just to
glorify transporters. So there's different stepsin the tire recycling business, right,
(14:30):
and this is if you're new tothis, that's probably you know, all
kind of go over a couple ofthings. So we're transporter. We just
pick up tires. That's it.We make the money we paid the disposal
feed and whatever. The difference iswhat we charge our customers. That's what
we make and now we're doing semiloads, so we're doing bigger loads,
bigger customers. My wife's name isJody. Jody and I got our CDL.
(14:52):
We have box truck drivers and Jodyand I are running around doing swaps.
And the summertime we got we gota truck with a cat, so
we would we would load the kidsup in the back and sleeper cab.
Yep, we've we've hit the roadand and and go do these runs.
We do about two a day.And that's kind of where we went up
until another turning point happened where thebig guy, the big boys in town.
(15:18):
There's only one one major player.They 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 andso I had one I had one option.
Really some people would say too,I guess option number two would be
to just throw in the towel.They say, my price so high that
(15:41):
I was, it was more thanwhat I was charging my customers. So
there was no more middle ground there. So I took option one, which
was the only option for me andmy family, and that was to uh
to somehow start shredding tires. Now, I would have never wanted to do
that because I didn't know picking uptires is easy. Now I got to
(16:03):
shredum and maintain a machine. Anddid you know this is all a whole
other business, right, Um,So I found a ten thousand dollars aluminium
can pressure and I found that youcould least say, what are those indum
trailers? You said, same thingyou guys use in the scraps, and
I see you uses in the steelbusiness. Um, And basically I think
(16:29):
you've seen the pictures. But weelevated this this I learned how to well,
we elevated this aluminum can. Wedid one tire at a time.
At that time, we were doingtwo thousand tires a day, Monday through
Friday. And that's that's where westarted in the in the actual shredding business.
So um, as soon as wedid that, we cut out the
middleman. Now we're just sending stuffto the landfill, and now we're making
(16:51):
more money. So you reduced thesize right from a whole tire, and
you shred it yourself. So nowyou don't need those guys to take your
whole tire because it's legal to disposeof tires that they're shredded. Is that?
Hey? And guess what? Guesswhat now? Now there's the big
(17:11):
big boy in town, the Nationwideguy and a little old Tom Parker all
American tires. That's it, rightand h and so well, and you're
the guys I call T shirt anda pickup. You have those that flare
up, I'm sure right, theguys that just want to go and and
pick them up. Sometimes they'll doit for free and try to sell use
tires out of it. Yeah,there's still there's two people that are trying
(17:33):
to get great and great for usas good tires that they turn around themselves.
Those guys are picking it up forfree. Um, the guy's T
shirt and a pickup. We lovethose guys, we we you know,
they were a transporter like us.They actually get a very very almost at
costs. We take their tires sothe mom and pops can still make the
money. We're not going anywhere.We welcome them. Hey, you can
(17:56):
pick up your tires, you makeyour money. I won't touch your customers.
We started where you're at. I'mnot just because I'm the big dog.
I'm not going to run around andcoach your customers. If they call
me, I'll call you and say, hey, you're not picking up.
They need to pick up. Butwe're not going to go undercut someone and
and and go take take business.So we welcome those guys. UM.
(18:18):
You remember, you remember what itwas like to that. I can ever
forget where you came from when youdo and a pickup. Yes sir,
yes sir, we still are thet shirt in the pickup. We still
have that mentality. We still goout there and do what we can.
Um. So that's where we gotinto the business. Um. And then
from there it went back to thenumbers thing. I'm using an aluminum can
(18:42):
a shredder. Uh. It's thesize of smaller than my desk that I'm
sitting at right now. Not designedfor shredding tires. No, I just
the guy that sold it too manygoes. We only use it. It
kind of set it aside. Isaid, well, crush the tire.
I think so now it takes fifteenminutes to do a semi tire, but
for the most part it'll do Wedidn't really have some of my customers,
(19:03):
but for the most part, it'lldo car tires pretty easy. So that's
kind of where we started there.From there, what do you think I
did? I went home in ransomnumbers? Well, what if we got
a shredder that could do you know, ten tons an hour instead of instead
of one? So excuse me.Ever since then we kind of scaled up
(19:23):
and just kind of been running thenumbers. Okay, now we've cut off
the landfill. What's the next step? Where do we go? You know,
how can we keep these out ofthe landsill? Well? How it's
two million dollar investments. So there'slots of stories. I've worked deals out
where major companies as they you know, bought me a piece of equipment and
(19:47):
we signed an agreement. And I'vejust really put my time in and worked
my way through the system in orderto be able to achieve some of the
goals to get to where we arenow. You could send me the picture
of you when you're standing over thator I don't know if it was you
or somebody was standing over that shredder, the tin can shredder, that one
(20:07):
that's in your office, and justoh, yes, yes, via the
original one, and we could showa compare and contrast to your factory now,
which is is awesome. I lovewatching absolutely and just so people know,
I want you to if you're drivingin your car to picture. Then
it's aluminum can shredder that I've raisedthirteen feet in the air with scrap metal
(20:29):
that I could find laying around ajust use metal at the scrap yard that
they would sell me for, youknow, as cheap as possible. Everything
looks incredibly unsafe, it looks crazy, and I don't even know how to
welds. I borrowed the welder andthen I found some old post office conveyors
(20:49):
that they would roll around and movepackages in the trucks and stuff. They
were sitting in the back of someoneback y are one of my customers for
I think ten years, fifteen years, pulled them out, you know,
looped up the motors well died twobelts together and set it on top of
the things that's thirteen feet in theair, and to run the tires up
(21:10):
into the top of it. So, I mean it's it wasn't pretty,
but I mean here we are,right, and yeah, it has been
probably the hardest thing I've ever donein my life, but yet the most
fulfilling. You know, we all, I think we all wonder where we're
going to end up in life.And it's frustrating when you're working for someone
(21:33):
and and you put the effort intoa company and maybe you don't get what
you want out of it from thecompany. And and this experience has been
you know, obviously it's life changing, you can see from the pictures from
the plants. But but I willsay that there's a certain amount of stress
that goes with it, you know, just like I care about those transporters
(21:56):
that bring us tires and making surethey're feeding their families. Now we have
fifty eight employees, so when Igo to bed at night, you know,
it's a lot to carry, youknow, And I don't I don't
know how. I don't know howhow Brett does it owning multiple companies.
I guess when you have someone likeyou that can take the pressure off.
When I find that someone, andI'll definitely be pretty blessed at that point,
(22:18):
But I still carry a lot ofstress with me, and it's very
difficult, but it is. It'san amazing thing knowing that for the most
part, you know, I controlmy own destiny. So uh, it's
it's just been an amazing journey.And we've been so so now you've got
(22:38):
crumb crumb rubber facilities online and youand I were talking a little bit about
um. You know, I postedsome questions too, just to kind of
get the juices Boeing, and oneof 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 youthink? You know? Positives or negatives,
whatever, you're whatever you're feeling rightnow. So in any business,
(23:04):
from the very beginning, I guesseverybody always has an expectation and and I
don't think it seldomly ever comes tofruition. I think we've achieved the goals.
I didn't really know we were goingto go this far. I didn't
really know what it would look like. But it's just all that. So
(23:26):
the best piece of advice is toset the bar high and just know that
there's going to be hurdles to getthere. I'm sure there is with any
business. But it's definitely been alot harder than what I've expected in terms
of the just a broad statement,in the last eight years that I've been
(23:47):
doing this, the tire market isit's completely different. Nobody wanted to get
in this business, you would shredtires and you would land till the margins
were almost nothing. Um. Andand you have to do an incredible amount
of volume to even you know,validate the equipment and the maintenance on it.
(24:10):
Tires just tear stuff up. Um. Yeah. And in the last
three in the last three years,I've seen an evolution coming. And you
know there's uh, some manufacturers aroundhere. I know they have ten or
more crumb lines on order right now. Uh. And that's just one manufacturer
(24:32):
that I know of. The market'schanging, 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'sum. You know, you can put
it in turf, right, butthey want you to test for metal.
(24:52):
They want to make sure there's nolead or any you know, tires that
come from China or in these othercountries where they don't really have PA controls
on stuff. So you know,it's our responsibility. You know, you've
seen our laugh We have a laughsetup. You know. We test for
for metals, we test for themoisture, that the size of the particles.
(25:12):
You know, that's that next levelstuff. You know you talked about
super Bowl. You don't go tothe super Bowl unless you're ready to put
some work in and do some thingsthat you didn't do before. You're absolutely
right, and you know this whenyou talk about and these are professional athletes
are playing on this so so theyhave to hold the far higher. And
(25:33):
ironically, I talk about us beingthe super Bowl and one day our crumb
will be on a super Bowl field. I'm sure so into that, but
but I don't know if you putit on Dallas field, I'm not gonna
go there. You have to comeback to Texas soon, So be careful
next next year. This year's ouryear. That isn't that what everybody says.
(25:56):
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna comedown. We're gonna have to go
to a game, absolutely absolutely,Hopefully it'll be one they win. There
you go. But so the market'schanging. I think you guys are getting
in at the perfect time. Ithink I'm a little bit ahead of the
curve on where we're at. Soreal quick, I just want to say
you when he says you guys.So this podcast obviously is always sponsored by
(26:19):
tire Reclaim because I'm the president andthe host of this podcast, Craig Hunter.
I don't even think I introduced myself, but that's all right, first
podcast, there you are. ButTire Reclaim we've been doing it, you
know, maybe fourteen months now orsomething like that, so we are still
baby. So for the listener whenhe'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
(26:41):
very helpful for us to get started. And now we're learning about this crumb
because our crumb facility comes online,you know, later this year, and
we're excited, but we're worried aboutthe pitfalls, which if you helped us
another they're all there. You can'tavoid him. But 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 I think what's going to set you
(27:04):
apart and us apart from the majorityof the people out there. And I
feel very comfortable saying this because nowthat I'm dealing with some of the stuff.
One of our customers as an asphaltcustomer, and you know, we're
talking about the moisture that I've kindof explained. It's like when you take
your chicken and you drop it inthe fryer, and if there's too much
(27:26):
water on it, it goes crazy. It boils over, it splashes on
you. When you talk about puttingwet rubber into a reactor, you know
at six hundred degrees, and youtalk about fluff and sand and contaminate that
are now going into a finished product, we're in a new error. You
know, when a recycling plant hasto have a laboratory to make sure that
(27:48):
the quality control going out the door. I mean there's there's untapped stuff out
there, and that's what sets usapart. You know, the our customer
shut down for two and a halfweeks because they had some contaminated stuff.
It's costume. I don't know theexact number. They threw two hundred thousand
out and that was for four daysjust on cleaning. I don't know what
(28:11):
volume they have. So that beingsaid, you know, I'm excited.
I'm excited you guys are coming onboard. It's it's not the same game.
You can't just get a shredder andstart shredding stuff and taking it to
the landfill and be successful. There'slots of avenues and you've got to you
gotta run it. And know it'snot just you know, we're creating a
(28:33):
product. We're we are setting thestandard so to go. From the guy
that's running from place to place tryingto figure out how much tires worth to
what we're doing now. I loveit and I'm super excited. And um,
you guys are gonna be right therewith us. We're gonna work together
and and do some amazing things.The sky's are limited. So so can
(28:57):
you talk about each thing it comesoff of your your line there. I
know you mentioned TDF and you stillproduce TDF and you along with the chrome
or how does that work? Absolutely? So, Um, to say you're
a recycler is in the tire business, it's extremely important to anything that comes
(29:27):
in the front door that has avalue. You know. It's like we're
working on a trash line right whereyou're pulling out luminium cans or you put
the paper in this pile, andit's the same thing we're doing with tires.
So in order to be sporting.Yeah. So, so we are
very diverse and we will always staydiverse. It's not necessarily what brings in
(29:48):
the most money for us. Youknow, chrome obviously is the big seller.
Obviously. Um it was during COVIDeverybody's doing the yards. It was
the rubber molt you know. Sothere'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 thatcome in that you want to you know,
(30:11):
turn around if they're good. Youknow, let's not let them go
to lanthil if they're brand new tires. So there's someone out there that that
could use those, right m Asemi tire, we get casings, We
do retreads on those. Let's whyare we going to shred a tire that
can has two years old? Wecan put a new a new tread on
it sending back out right. Uh. And so one of the things that
(30:34):
we do we separate the steel andwe sell it. And we have another
project we're working on and we'll talkabout that right now. But uh.
We make TDF TDFs tire drive fuel. Uh. And then now we do
the from rubber so uh. Andwe don't just sell to turf companies.
We also do asphalts. So wesell different sizes of that. So it's
(30:56):
incredibly important, you know, whenyou're running this business that you're very diverse.
You know, it's it's very hardto succeed when you're just you're the
guy picking up tires for free becauseyou want to sell the good ones.
But you've got to either you know, pay for disposal. Hopefully they're paying
for a disposal of the back themon someone's property. But um, it's
(31:18):
important to be diverse. And I'llgive you one example. You know,
we have a lot of of primarilycar customers car tires, but we also
have a significant amount of semi tiresthat come in during COVID car dealerships.
I mean, everybody's working from home, nobody's buying cars. So I mean
we took about a thirty percent drop, but I will tell you all through
(31:42):
COVID we had double digit growth.So and the reason we were able to
do that is because we're diverse.When the tire, the car tires dropped,
semi tires went to the route,medical supplies were out. Trucking companies
weren't just booming running around delivering itself. Yeah, I think there's experts in
every field. And you know you'resaying we're testing for moisture. We're doing
(32:06):
these different things for you know,it's quality control, quality assurance for your
end user. What are some ofthe things that you've seen the experts Because
we're in an evolving market you talkedabout things are changing, you know.
Did you have people come and tellyou, oh, you're gonna have to
do all of this or all ofthat, and you're like, well,
maybe, but we've got this.You know, your own ideas and your
(32:27):
own spin on some of that.So yes and yes and no. Um,
early on I did all the heartache. UM. I had an
employee that we're and I'm sure we'veall had bad employees. I don't want
to detract too much or go offtopic, but um, and at the
(32:49):
time, he knew a lot morethan me, and he was supposed to
help me get this piece of equipmentand 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 whatI need. I said, because
we're so new with this, Idon't have the money to go buy a
huge crumb line, so you needto figure out how to get it clean
(33:10):
and what we need and when weseparated at that time. One of the
things I had told them before thatwas otherwise I would just take a million
dollars or two million or whatever thenumber is, and go buy me something
from a market leading you know,equipment manufacturer and make the best product.
(33:34):
Right. But I'm I'm paying youthe good money so you can you can
be that expert. But that beingsaid, that's why a little plugged for
Joe Mar. I believe they makeone of the best pieces of equipment out
there. But I mean, theseguys got it dialed in. They own
a plant as well, and ifit goes wrong in their plant, they
fix it on the manufacturing side ofthe equipment. So so you're referencing Middlebury,
(33:57):
Indiana's Joe Mar and uh Encore right, yeah, in tech or in
tech I'm sorry, Encore, that'sreading ahead because I was gonna ask you
about that too, But yeah,in Tech and Lavan and those guys up
there, and we did. Wewent and visited that plant with you,
as you know. But for thelisteners that what's a really impressive visit.
(34:20):
Man, those guys are they're doingon top of it. That was really
cool. So we are exciting topartner with them as well, and we
uh we kind of mimic again.I've I've had the hard knocks, so
I'm going to help you avoid someof those and and with them that they
are amazing, amazing people. Soum, we're definitely going to continue down
(34:43):
that road with them. And they'vethey'll they'll, you know, get you
the stuff you need. But uh, back to where the industry's going and
stuff. You know, if Brettwas in the scrap business and when he
sold something or whatever he brought inand 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'sthe same same theory with with where the
(35:06):
chrome is going. And there's somany applications. There's new ones every day.
People are finding new uses for it. So like I said earlier,
I mean, this is exciting.There's gonna be a lot more stuff coming.
There's many ways to make money inthis industry. So I think moving
forward, you know, if ifif you and I are going to be
(35:28):
around down the road, I thinkthere's gonna be a lot more people in
this. But it's gonna be oneof those games. What what keeps Brett
better than everybody else. What areyou guys doing better? And I know
that that you and I, bothour companies are gonna gonna find out what
we can do better. If itcosts more to be better, we're going
(35:50):
to spend the money because we're investingin our employees, in our company,
and we want to be around whenthere's hundreds of people out there and people
pick us, right, that's myjob. Well, and I thought it
was important, you know, cominginto this podcast, I wanted to mention
something that that kind of hits homefor me, is you're recycling, right,
(36:10):
And that's a term that gets thrownaround a lot and green initiative in
this and that. But you're doingeighteen thousand 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 trashthat would it would be going in landfills.
(36:31):
That would be you know, fillingup the landfills, which that's a
new thing now. Everybody's like,oh, we can't just throw it to
a landfill. Well, nobody eversaid that a decade or two decades ago,
you know, So now here weare on the cutting edge of that
where we are actually profitable at recyclor try to be right, but actually
profitable at recycling without taking a bunchof subsidy money, without taking a bunch
(36:52):
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'twant to just take it to the landfill,
and so you upgrade it right,and you improved and you change systems,
and you made basically all American tirerecycling a name in the game,
so when somebody thinks of it,and that's really a big part of this
(37:15):
podcast, and my passion behind thispodcast is to get your name out there,
to help people understand that you builtthis from the ground up and you
are truly recycling products. They arethere's products coming out of the trash that
you're picking up right, So tome, that's full circle. You're doing
it right. I think it's fantastic. Did you have anything else you want
(37:35):
to add? No, No,I mean I think you kind of summed
it up. Only other thing whenit comes to recycling. I just want
to throw this out there too.In the tire business, it's not like
the steal business. And just there'sa misconception that you know, when people
bring Brett aluminum cans, you know, he compacts them and they said,
(38:00):
a luminum cans out. So peoplewill ask me all the time, why
don't you pay for tires, becauseI don't just take your tire and put
it in a bailer and send itout like there's time and energy and maintenance
and blades and you know, water, and yes, there's it's it's a
it's a huge manufacturing process. Sothat's why people pay it to take tires,
(38:20):
you know. So when you sayrecycling, there's always something the kind.
And maybe one day when we kindof let what I talked about earlier,
how it's getting more sophisticated, maybethere'll be a day where we pay
for tires. Then there won't beany abandoned tires at that point, you
know, right, and it'd begreat, but we're not there yet.
But we're going in that direction.But absolutely, But people say, you,
why why don't you pay me fortires? Well, because it's a
(38:44):
little different, but yes, weare recyde yeah, And someone pointed out
actually I think Nick Schneyder mentioned itin a Recycled Idaho podcast that I featured
on, and he said, Ithink people are becoming more comfortable with doing
the right thing. Like your BlueBins recycling. You know, you pay
for that service to be able toseparate your cardboards and plastics from the rest
(39:05):
of your trash. And that's justpart of it. Right, If we're
going to 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 at where
we're at, and that equipment isnot cheap. No, it's not.
And I want to say one morething. I promise that will be done.
This is just this is kind ofimportant to me too. I'm not
(39:28):
rushing you. Do you feel rushed? No? No. If you're listening
to this and you own a companythat has tires and someone is coming around
and picking them up for free,just no, there is a cost associated
with that, whether they're selling thetires, you know, you have to
(39:51):
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 ifyou're getting it for free, just no,
you need to have some type ofpaper trail. You got to be
responsible to make sure those tires aregetting thrown away, because if it's too
good to be true, it probablyis. And there's a lot I get
calls from retired people that own landand they on a fixed income and they're
(40:15):
like, hey, someone has thrownthree thousand tires out on my property right
And this is not a company.This is not someone that you know through
their tire that they're tired of havingin their garage. This is the three
thousand tires. It's someone that isactively collecting tires. So I think it's
(40:36):
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, youknow, make sure that they're legitimate company
and they're not just throwing your problemon someone else. I just want to
get that out there. Just thepeople don't understand. I experienced it early
(40:58):
on when we start this company.There's some big trash tire piles. Even
here in Idaho. We don't havenear the population you do. But a
matter of fact, I checked yourcounty has more more people than our entire
state. But the idea of peoplepicking up tires for free and not being
responsible with where they're going is whatI think I hear you say, because
(41:22):
we actually had people that weren't pickingthem up for free, but they're picking
up really inexpensive But then just didexactly what you said. There's I mean,
that's probably the size of like four, four or five two story houses
this guy's tire pile. And nowthe county has come in and put a
chain link fence around it, puta sign up says no dumping. You
know, that's that's an issue,and that's it's an high sor it's right
(41:44):
off the 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 bigpile over there, right, and you
know there's a big lawsuit going ondown the road where a company in the
middle of nowhere maybe they had ahard time picking up tires. Well,
some guy he's collecting the feed,but he's found a vacant piece of lamb
(42:07):
got a huge company owned and hewas dumping over eight years. Well,
the car and it was car dealerships, it was legit businesses. They were
paying him, but they weren't gettingany documentation that he was disposing of him
like he should, and they endedup getting sued and they had to pay
twenty times the disposal fees over eightyears, millions of dollars. They're still
(42:29):
in litigation. So it's just youknow, whether you're a business owner or
just someone trying to get rid ofstuff. You know, as businesses,
we just got to be responsible andknow that there is a cost associated with
this and kind of do the rightthing. Nobody really thinks about it until
they see the pile there, LikeI can't believe someone dumbs that. Well,
I can't believe you expect them whento pick him up for free.
(42:51):
So yeah, that's it. Well, yeah, there's a video rolling around
it, and I won't spend toomuch more time on this, but rolling
around about I think it's a Kuwaitsor something like that. But you know
those huge graveyards of tires, andwe probably have something similar like to that
across the United States if they wereall in one spot like that. But
if you're thinking about tires on theground, we probably have that many sitting
(43:13):
out in rural areas all over theUnited States of America. So I think
it's time for us to go outand gather those up, one tire at
a time and have a big impacton this world. So Tom, I
appreciate you, man, I reallyreally do appreciate more than just this podcast,
everything you do for our industry,everything you've been doing for Brett and
I to get tyre Reclaim off theground again all American tire Recycling. If
(43:38):
you don't know Tom, he's underThomas cloud Parker on LinkedIn. I would
say go find that gentleman because he'sgot a lot of cool posts. If
you're interested in crumb robber TDF people, you never know who's listening. Reach
out. We've got questions and answersthat might fit right into your business models.
(44:00):
So absolutely, and I'll tell youwhat there is there Chrome is in
short supply, especially good crumb.At least in our market here in Texas,
there's only a couple of people thatdo it. But that being said,
some people don't understand kind of howit works. But you know,
(44:22):
we have this new machine. Allour crumb is not spoken for. It
will be soon in the next fewmonths. So, I mean, we're
all about building relationships. So youknow, if there's someone out there that
does need a crumb supply or orsomething along those lines and they want to
build a partnership with us, youknow, we take care of those people
(44:43):
first. So you know, ifyou've hit me up in six or eight
months and it's all spoken for,I may have something left over, but
I don't know that I'll be ableto commit to it. So yeah,
they're looking for those partnerships. That'sa good place to be my friend.
All right. Well, thanks forcoming on. We'll talk to you later.
Good congratulations on your first podcast.Thank you
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