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Born Scrappy
The go-to podcast for scrap metal exporters and traders
Born Scrappy
Failing fast with Andrew Lincoln of Lincoln Recycling
In this week’s episode I chat to Andrew Lincoln, VP/GM at Lincoln Recycling and Recycled Materials Associtaion (ReMA) Director-At-Large. He’s a third-gen recycler and together with his brother Jeremy, they have continued to grow the core business while expanding into brokerage and remote interior demolition services across the US.
Andrew is also a reality-TV sensation, featuring in both seasons of John Sacco’s acclaimed Table Scraps. While some would argue that the International Team was robbed in season 2, Andrew’s Team OG did take home the trophy.
In this episode, we talk about:
👉 Having a fail fast philosophy
👉 Capturing relationship data
👉 Why small gestures matter
👉 Weight estimation pitfalls
👉 And much more!
Listen to the full episode. Wherever you stream your podcasts.
Born Scrappy. Brought to you by Buddy.
The only marketplace and trade OS built for scrappies, by scrappies.
https://www.linkedin.com/company/tradewithbuddy/
WHO IS STU KAGAN ANYWAYS?
26 years in the metal recycling game and still learning and growing...
I learnt from the best and worked my way up from yard labourer to Executive Director of Trading and Operations for the largest metal recycler in sub-Saharan Africa. Responsible for 4,500 employees, 85 sites, and the overall profitability of a multi-billion dollar operation.
I brought my breadth and depth of knowledge to bear and co-founded the fastest growing, most-loved, and most awarded metal recycling company in New Zealand. No small feat in a country where people are outnumbered 4:1 by sheep (spoiler alert: sheep don’t produce much metal waste).
I thought it was time that tech worked for our industry, so I took all of my experience as an operator and trader and leveraged that to build THE killer scrap app, Buddy. That’s right - built for scrappies, by scrappies.
Father of two crazy-awesome boys. Husband to Lisa. Under 9 rugby coach. YPO member. Lifelong learner. Mentee. Mentor. Chief dog walker. Committed Stoic. Undefeated dance-off champion.
COME SAY HI ON LINKEDIN
Hi, I'm Stu Kagan and welcome to Born Scrappy, the podcast for scrap metal exporters and traders. Join me in conversation with some of the most experienced traders and operators that have helped shape this incredible industry. In today's episode, I'm chatting with Andrew Lincoln, the co-owner of Lincoln Metals. Other than running a great business, Andrew's also very involved in Rema. Plays a huge role in putting on the Great Lakes annual Yvette, which I'm super excited to attend again in August. Andrew AKA. The accountant is best known for his role in table scraps on YouTube tv, which is a show all about daylight robbery. And spoiler alert, he plays the lead role escaping with the loot. In this week's episode, we chat about having a fail fast philosophy. Weight estimation pitfalls. Why small gestures matter, capturing relationship data and so much more. So let's jump into it with the 27th Best Chef in the scrap industry, Andrew Lincoln. But first intro. Hey. Hey, Andrew. How are you? I'm great, Stu. How are you? Yeah, I'm, I'm awesome. I just threw a little, um, spanner at you, a little curve ball just before we came on air. Um, so this is gonna be really exciting. We've got 45 minutes to talk about. I'm ready, I'm ready. Talk now about cooking and, um, how you basically stole that award from us just the other day. But before we get too much into, you know, the fun stuff, Andrew, tell us a little bit about how you got into metal recycling. You know, what Linker Metals does, who you guys are, how long you've been around for. Sure. Um, well, I got, uh, involved I would say when I was probably seven or eight, I would come with my dad on the weekends and, you know, he would let me pick up a, um, a sledgehammer and break, break aluminum cast, uh, the old grills. And I kind of would just kind of see what he would do and, and meet customers and people. And, um, you know, as I got older, I worked numerous jobs. Um, I was a lifeguard. I sold, uh, Cutco cutlery, um, and when I was driving our, our, uh, can truck for my dad and worked numerous jobs and went to college and it was after college, I was in grad school and, you know, I was talking to my dad. I was living in Boston, Massachusetts, and he approached me if, if I was interested in coming back in the business. And, you know, I'd given it some, some thought. Originally I was, I, I, I did not have interest in it. I was in my twenties. I, I was loving the Boston life, but work-wise, you know, I wasn't feeling the urge, uh, or the love for it. And I decided to, to make a, a switch. Um, so after I finished my MBA. I quit my, my work. I, I worked at a Fortune 100 insurance company and I packed up back for Erie, Pennsylvania, and that's when I say I got my scrap MBA. So yeah, I, you know, immediately went from my first job. Uh, I didn't ever really work under my dad. We have, uh, another yard and I worked under the general manager of that facility, and so I learned how to torch steel. Um, I got my CDLI really wanted to learn. What all my employees do and touch every day, so I could understand the time it takes to process metal and the difficulty some metals have over others. You have to, man. I mean, that's, that's the best way to, to do it. And, and now it's put you in such good stead to be able to, you know, see what's going on on the scale. Know the grading, steal a trophy away from other teams when you're in a cooking show. I mean, really you learned right from the beginning how to, uh. Um, really how to be a metal recycler. So I want to just touch on it quickly.'cause for those of you that haven't seen table scraps. Andrew Lincoln, um, his team, which I mean it fell apart. They couldn't even put a whole team together for the actual event. Um,'cause some of them were just knew that they wouldn't be able to perform. So I think Mike pulled out. Um, they ended up coming to the event I. They ended up winning the award, but I think it was'cause John SKO felt a bit bad because they had been there before, or either that, or there was some form of bribery because they basically just cooked blueberries, um, which you could buy at the store. I mean, I'm not sure if you know, but you could have just gone to the grocery store and bought some blueberries if that was what you were gonna serve. Hey, Elise, Elise, Alton and I were cooking. Stu, I, I don't know what you were doing. You were, you were orchestrating, you were like the conductor. I mean, I would say I was like the chairman or the CEO, you can call it a conductor, but I put the team together. Um, and we deserved to win, but we were robbed. There was another team there. I can't remember who they were, but there was like another team hanging out and drinking. Um, they made some salty food. I don't, I don't remember who they were, but there were, there was another team there. And apparently next year is in Italy. Um, no pressure John, but, uh, table scraps will be hosted in Italy, sponsored by Sierra. Right. Sounds good. I think my schedule will be open, so, great. Okay, so confirmed by Andrew Lincoln. So it's John, ask Andrew Lincoln told you that, um, it was going to be fully paid for by Sierra in Italy, um, and only the top two teams of the last three will be attending. So sorry for that barbecue team, but uh, we'll be going with you. Let's, let's maybe go back into, I mean, a bit of scrap. I mean, we can talk cooking all day and maybe table tennis we'll talk about as well, because I think you lost every game against me when we were there, but we can, let's not get it there right away. Oh, not true. We call it ping pong here in the States. Oh, okay. Still sorry, pong. Remember where you're now? Okay. Yeah, you lost that. Now, where have you been? You lost that sports as well, so you lost ping pong and table tennis against me. Um, can you think of when we think about metal recycling. In fact, just recently I'm getting messages from people that are really thankful for putting Born Scrappy out and helping the, the next generation, um, the younger crew coming in. Um, and I've just hired this incredible weapon of a youngster who's come in, who was like involved in the REMA scene and that, um, and they've, he's also reached out to me earlier on about how much value they get when people tell stories on Born Scrappy and kind of like. What really molded them. So can you think of an experience in, in like trading, whether you were buying or selling that, you know, had any a significant effect on your operations going forward? Oh, great question. Um, yeah, I mean, I think for me that was really formative. So I came back into the business in 2006, uh, and during that time my brother was president of the Pittsburgh chapter and, and that's how I got involved Inma. But. If you recall markets during that time to 2008, I mean, it was just, uh, you know, an upward trajectory. And even, even, you could make money in those days, right? E exactly. Everyone could make money. Um, and metal was just coming in and everyone was living high off the hog. Um, and I, I would joke, we would go to our association meetings and everyone's like, business is great. Business is great. And it was 2008 leading up to that we had a competitor come into to our region and my dad just, you know, I'm two years in, my dad told me, pack up your bags, you're gonna go over and open up a, a yard of your own, like right in their backyard. And that's what I did. And you know, lucky he allowed me to make every decision whether it was a good one or a bad one. But you quickly learn from your mistakes. Um, you know, I did the, the yard, the yard layout. I mean, this was a small little feeder yard, but from the ground up it was a really a big teaching moment for me. And, you know, one takeaway from my dad was, you know, it's okay to fail. Just, just fail fast and then get over it and move on. So you can't just dwell on it or it is just gonna bring the company down or make you indecisive. So, uh, that was a big teaching moment for me and being able to do that. Was there something in particular?'cause that's more a, you know, a general going into your own yard. Is there something where you feel that maybe you made a mistake? So was the yard layout the great success? What did you learn from that? You know, did you put things in the wrong place? Or as an example? Oh, I see what you're saying. Um, I mean, if I were to look back at it, I would, I would just focus on, I like to call it the, the cream of, of the milk. It would be the non Ferris metals looking at it, you know, if you're setting up a, a new operation. There's a lot more capital required and land to handle the Ferris side of things. Uh, and then you have, you know, obviously regulations around that osha, EPA. So, you know, finding a warehouse and, and opening up in a co in a couple weeks or so forth is not that difficult and warehousing material inside. So I would've changed that layout a little bit there for that facility than rather try to be, you know, everything to everyone. And another teaching moment for me, just a small demo that we were involved in. And this is early on in my career and just, uh, you know, being pressured to buy material from the seller, uh, with, without, you know, an estimate on weight. And using my knowledge, I should have gone to other individuals, um, my brother, our gm, to kind of verify the weight that I thought was there because. Unfortunately, you know, with some of these deals, they like to be paid out first and then any overage, you're paying them for the additional tons. And luckily it was not a big job, but I, I overestimated and so just learned not to purchase material that way and I, I don't, we don't do that today. So it's interesting they, you pay them for the overage, but you definitely don't get money back for the shortage, is that what you're saying? Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's very much a one way door. This is like, you know, it always feels that way, Stu, I, I, I mean, it's happened to me so many times. You know, you think like once bit and twice shy or, you know, um, you should be learning from your lessons, but, but you carry on doing it. Like, I mean, you go into a demolition site, you get really excited. Everything looks bigger. When it's cut to size, and that's the one tip that I'll tell everybody is like, when you see these huge structures, don't go, wow, these structures are huge. They must be massive tonnage. Just ask yourself what this looks like. If it was a cut out into size in a pile and you were delivering it to the local mill, it's very quickly can become a few loads, not a hundred thousand tons. Um, uh, yeah, well said. I mean, I, I honestly, that's kind of my how I picture things too, when I go walk through sites. I, like you said, I try to picture them process, what would this look like, and yeah, your estimates come down. It'll by a good margin. And, and the demo boys lick their lips when they see a youngster from the insurance industry coming and saying, Hey, I'll pay you a lump sum. And they'll be walking around and they probably told you on the spot the, that's at least 500 metric tons. And that, you know how heavy that is. I mean, I've been there when the demo was, are just telling you, you know, how, how heavy everything is. So. One of the other things we used to do a lot was we used to take three of us. If there was a big parcel or a big project, take three of us on site. We weren't allowed to talk to each other. We had to do the entire site. And then we would come back and use the average no matter what, like three people with experience use the average. Yeah, because one's gonna be higher. And we found that that worked the best if there's a big project that you have to pay another sum for, so hopefully that that helps some. That's a good method. Yeah. Yeah, we found it worked. It was a lot better than when I was the only one buying and, uh, losing money for the company. So also the, the demo guys love to stack their prepared piles on top of dirt, so makes it look bigger on a mound. So there's a mound and they're like, look, we've already processed and this was only when small little piece of the structure. And look how big the pile is that it produced. Right. And there is so much cable inside that machine. It's like, yeah, we can go on for days on that. Just before we started, you were talking about having an incident on the sell side for you lately, and the markets are Absolutely, I think the PC way is to call it volatile at the moment. Right. Pretty scary right now. Very. Um, you know, how do you choose who you're selling to? Relationships are important, price is important, proximity's important. All the payment terms are important. What really, how do you, what's your priority, I guess, when you're selling? Uh, priority one I would say is, is, you know, being a consistent buyer, that consumer. So I really, you know, I focus on where are the, the largest volumes that we move, you know, what grades are we selling the most and are we a consistent supplier of, and those are the relationships I, I work on, you know, the most. And, and those are your standard, you know, your, your turning MSTs. Cut grades and, and prime bushing. So, and, and it's really, I mean, we ship to directly to all the mills, you know, within a 400 mile radius of our yards, which, which is feasible for us for trucking. Um, you know, and payment terms and it's relationship and the payment terms are, are, are part of that. So I, I really am looking for consumers that are gonna be in the market every month. Whether it's good or bad. And, and Lincoln Recycling is gonna be in those markets too. And we'll, we'll supply you material when markets aren't so great. And maybe we don't wanna sell that much, but it's about the relationship on both ends. Um,'cause we need each other to survive and that's important. Um, so I mean that's, that's kind of my hierarchy where I look at it and, you know, I'll rely. A lot on, on brokers as well.'cause there may be some grades that I'm not in the market every month and we may get some manganese or some, you know, a weird off alloy with some nickel in it. So, you know, I, I use the relationships that I've developed through the Pittsburgh chapter of Rema. Mm-hmm. And those are very valuable too, because, you know, right now the market just finished up here, we're the 8th of May. Um, but you know, I, I'm only talking to two, three mills. And, and I'm not, you know, I'm not a big hitter for them, so I really talk to the other brokers and so forth to find out what they're hearing and, and kind of understand more about the dynamics of what's going on, you know, in the whole Great Lakes region and where scrap is flowing from. And this month, Turkey was very weak, the export market. So we have a lot of scrap moving inland from the coast, so. It looks like that might change. It looks like the domestic mills are gonna drop, but Turkey seems to be hungry again. So, yeah, I think it's, it's all over the place. The more material that comes into the inland mills, the more they'll drop their price. Less goes to Turkey, the more they'll increase their price. So it's just global economics at the moment and uh, I think Rema will be quite interesting. There's a lot of really good talks that are gonna go down to really understand, I guess, the global context of law. In order to sell this material, you have to be buying it. So have you got buyers on the street that are seeing industrial accounts? Are you, how do you strategically focus on getting more in the door? You know, are you doing marketing, just the whole range of, what is your strategy behind bringing metal in the door? Uh, well, it really evolves around my brother and I, I mean, we're, we're a very lean organization, so my brother Jeremy, he and I are 50 50 owners now of Lincoln Recycling. We just recently brought in an account executive to kind of help just, you know, as you know, it's a revolving door with some of the accounts regarding personnel and names, changes of who's the operations manager or who's calling in the boxes. So it's just really important for us to, to always know, you know, who the names are at the accounts and just stop in and just, you won't have. Any idea how far just, you know, a box of donuts go stopping in just saying hi to someone, and you know what, and you have, you have no initiative just to check in and see how they're doing. So there's no sale we're trying to make, we're just trying to make sure that we're getting all the feedback from them on how we're doing as a company servicing them, because that's where I think our priority is. It's all about the customer service and getting them exactly what they need. Um, getting their them payments when they, when they want'em. Um, and, and you know, we can customize it for each account for what their needs are. It's quite interesting because, you know, there's a lot of businesses out there that have bins on site servicing customers like you are and don't necessarily have account people out there looking after them or themselves aren't actually going out and visiting all the time. You know, there's nothing worse than getting that email.'cause usually they don't even like to phone. But the email say, please remove your bin. Right? Oh, yeah. Um, because somebody else is now gonna go look after them. But to me it's like you shot yourself in the foot. You've only got yourself to blame because if you weren't there and you literally didn't have any idea, they were unhappy about something, like, how can you blame them? They're running a business. They want the best price, they want the best service. If you're not giving them that and you're not aware of it. Like you deserve to lose the business. And we're not in the 1920s, like we're not the only metal recycler in town. That is competition. And if you want to look after your customer, if you want to keep getting from your customers customer experience, customer service has to be the number one thing that you speak about. So having an account executive now is going to, you know, be great for your business. Yeah. Uh, it's already paying dividends and, you know, he is very experienced. He's actually, he's had his own family business in recycling and we've actually competed against him years ago. So it's kind of nice. Uh, he, he thinks like we think, so I'm not having to take someone and teach them everything. It's just more of kind of guiding him about what our principles are and, you know, we stand behind our service so. So something that you said it, it's very important, I think, to get out in front of the accounts and, and it is very hard to hit them all.'cause you know, our, our top 10, you know, we're hitting, we're seeing, we're touching, uh, we know each other very well. It's the ones where, you know, you may only pick up the container once every three months and those are frustrating to lose'cause you feel like you didn't do anything wrong. But the, the fact is that they didn't feel. They were important to you. So always stop and say hi. But Andrew, I mean, oftentimes when I'm, when I, I live in Erie and I'm driving to my Meadville yard, uh, I don't, I try not to take the highway and I take the rural routes where I, you know, I got four accounts on this route. I got three on this one. And just stop and say hi. Check in. Anything you need? Yeah, no. Okay. Move on to the next one. And it's so powerful. Like, how many times have I checked in on a customer? And they happened to have a demolition project coming up and they weren't even thinking about us because, well, that's not the service we offer. Then I'm like, well, hold on. We have a cutting team. We can literally come on site plus like it's gonna come to us anyway. We might as well do the project. Right. It's a great way of, of building a relationship and showing you can add value, but if you're not in front of your customers, you absolutely have no idea what's going on in their business. You can have somebody else that's been there removing non-ferrous and you're just doing their steal. It's like, well, what's going on here? Oh, well we thought you guys just did steel for us. You know? Yeah, that well said. That's the most frustrating thing when you go in and they say, oh, I didn't realize you did that. And you're like, what? Yeah, it's metal. You have to blame yourself. Right? You have to blame yourself because it's like you haven't, we haven't taught them or spent enough time with them like. If anybody wants any sort of tips, it's a basic CRM system. I recommend every metal recycling company should have one. All it does is it has the information of the customers you can track when you last visited them. You can pull different filters. You're able to actually analyze, you know all the detail about that customer. You can then see, and if somebody does leave, say you have an account executive and they leave, it's like, oh shit. I don't know when we last visited this guy, I don't know anything about this customer because you became reliant on your account executive. Like it's very important they use that as a tool to superpower themselves, but it also gives you the assistance of a key person risk. If that guy leaves like, well, at least you know all the data on your customer, not only'cause people might go, well, it's in my software system. I don't like that term.'cause that CRM system is a software system. They're talking about the inventory system. But like you even, yeah, it doesn't have that detail. It doesn't know when you last visited. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't have any idea of who the different contacts are. All that information that you want. Um, who, what the lady in the front's name is. Every time you walk in like get her name, it goes a long way. Like know who the guy's, it does filling your bin, learn his name. You walk in there and went. He doesn't want to get rid of you because you give him a box of donuts once a month. Like these things go a long way. So look, I can talk about that. For days, it was a passion of mine. In South Africa, there was literally within one month we hired 75 reps, um, and the account executives. And the reason why we did that, we had the, the entire market in, in South Africa for a long time. Um, 85 yards. We pretty much had yards in every town and. All of a sudden, overnight all the dealers that were supplying us the material,'cause we were doing all the bug vessels, all of a sudden they've literally moved over from India, started opening up, um, businesses, and they started putting containers in the dealer's yards. So instead of it us collecting, they were now paying For the first time ever, we had to look after our dealers. Like previously we just said, here's your monthly fer pricing. Here's your non fer list. Weekly. All of a sudden we had to hire a whole bunch of reps to do that. So we stood up a CRM system. I hired a ahead of all of them who kind of managed the team, but. That's at the one end of the scale. The other end is just know who every single customer is. Have a list of every single, you know, container that you have at every single, what their names are. If you can know, if you know what their hobbies are. That's even better. Like buy them at Christmas present. Yeah. Like anyway. Yeah. You know what sports their kids play. Absolutely. Then you're, then you're in deep. So, so you look at this, right? We're a relationship industry. Like there is absolutely no question in anybody's mind that that's what we're all about. Often we forget things about that. So we are like, yeah, we're a relationship. Well why don't you know enough about their kids? And if you know about it, document it so that next time there's some game on or something like sponsor the kids team, like do those sort of things. But your account executives, like we said earlier, they can leave, but not just that Andrew, when it was you and your brother, you might have 200 customers. You can't remember every single one's kid's name and their favorite sport. So you have it in a system and you're driving it to somewhere, you click on them, you're like, oh shit. Yeah, Johnny loves baseball. Cool. You walk in there, you're like, Hey, how's Johnny's baseball? Yeah, no, it's helpful. Yeah, so that's, that's actually the next thing we're, we're looking at. Once we, uh, you know, we get back from convention here in the summer and, um, you know, we use an ERM system for our purchasing, um, shared Logic Remus, and it's, it's very adequate for us, but. As far as capturing all the data on the customer side, um, and like you said, touch points, um, that's what it's all about. Um, over the years, you know, you've now got an account executive. You've employed multiple people, good and bad. How do you keep them? How do you get them to stay at you? I keep seeing those barbecue guys, that company, I think it was Ulta, I can't remember their name. And they keep, they keep having people at like 50 years, celebrating their 50 year anniversary with the company. Like that's a phenomenal feat and it tells me a lot about the culture. What do you guys do to keep your people? Uh, great question. We, we try to be very family focused and understanding. Um. So, I mean, I would say Jeremy and I, we noticed we were kind of behind the times during COVID. Um, it was very difficult then retaining employees and so forth. But, um, um, we're very understanding of time for being away with family, doctor's appointments, kids appointments. So, uh, you know, just. We just ask, give us notice and let us know. Um, if you need to take a day here or there, it's fine. We don't judge. And you know, I have the same issue with, with my kids and my family and sickness going around with everyone. So, you know, that's one thing. And, you know, another item we did was we increased our vacation for tenured employees. So the standard we have is, you know, after a year you get a week's vacation. After two, it was two weeks. And that was just the, the cap. Um, so we implemented all employees that had, were with us for, for five plus years. They get three weeks of vacation. Um, you know, obviously during COVID we all saw wages go way up for everyone just because of the shortage in the labor pool. Um, so we've just been much more proactive getting everyone to what we feel is a competitive hourly or hourly rate, and then reviewing it annually with them and doing an adjustment for them. So. When we look back at it, you know, we're about, uh, 65 to 70 employees right now, and we have over a half of them are, are getting the three weeks vacation. And our average tenure year is right around seven years of employment with us. So, you know, I think that says a lot. I don't know where the industry is, but as you know, the. The hardest part I see is, uh, is the new hire and then getting them to, to, to stay, you know, in that, in that first three months, getting them trained. Yeah. Um, and sticking with you, I'll jump in here. We are talking about people and the importance of looking after them. You know, you gave examples of, uh, medical, they, they need to go to see doctors, their family need to go see doctors. One of the big things that we had in New Zealand was. We have to treat our people as people because often we go when our kid's sick, everything must drop, right? You drop everything, you get to it, gotta take it. But as soon as one of your team members have that, it's all of a sudden looked in a different light. So we try to trust first. And it's all about intent for me. So what is your intention? Is your intention to go look after your family? Or is your intention to take a day off and try and sneak up some extra? If we can work that out. But first, we, we, we, we say that your intention is good. That's how we trust you first until you break that. As soon as it's like, oh, you, you said you went up. But in New Zealand, everybody goes fishing all the time. So it's like, oh, you said your kid was sick, but one of my friends saw you fishing at the dock. You know, it's like, ah, not sure if I'm gonna trust you as much anymore. But then on the other end of the spectrum, what might blow your mind is that buddy, my company has unlimited vacation days, so our team have unlimited leave. Right now it's not really doable in yards, it's not doable. I wouldn't recommend this for metal recyclers, but in a tech company, we value our team based on output and the value that they bring to the company. So I don't monitor if somebody works eight or nine hours in the day. I monitor what their output was in the day or in the week or in the month. So if somebody wants to keep taking Fridays off. Take every Friday and Monday off. I don't really care. But if they're coding, they're an engineer, I expect them to be keeping up and making sure that every single two week sprint, which is a period that we code over or whatever your targets are over every period, I expect you to be hitting those. If you're hitting those, I don't care if you come in one day in the two weeks. Right? Like if we can outperform our targets, that's fantastic. So that's not a recommendation for metal recyclers. Absolutely not. You can't do that. Um, just kind of was mind blowing for me coming from the Midwest recycling world when I saw that there were tech companies doing something like this. So we're trialing it. I'm like very hesitant myself because I come from a different industry. I expect no one's gonna pitch up for work on Monday. That's kind of like, yeah. No, it's tough. Everyone like, I mean, my brother and I are not often sick, but you know, we probably not the best if we are under the weather, we will. If we're not feeling that bad, we will still come in and see what's going on. It's just, it's in our blood. It's what we saw in our father. So, um, yeah, we have now expect that of others. You now expect that of others, and that's what I mean. Gary Vaynerchuk always talks about you can't expect your employees. To behave like owners. It's like, it, it, it's a completely different mindset. So if somebody is sick, you know, if you own 50% of your company, you can get out of bed, you're gonna go to work. Like, I've had that, you know, for the last nine years or whatever it is. But if you're an employee, it's like, you know what? I'm not feeling well right now. I actually, it's not worth me getting up right now. I'm gonna call in a day. Hard to, hard to, um, paint both those two parties with the same brush, I guess. Yeah, I mean, we have about four employees that work remotely. So I mean, if we give certain positions, um, they can log in, our dispatcher can work out any of our offices or out of our house. So, um, how did, how does, how does the rest of the team like that. Uh, you know, I, the team seems fine with it. It was probably more Jer, my brother Jeremy and I had to get Okay. Get used to it. But I mean, we see the emails coming in through the dispatch email, which we're copy, copy copied on, and we see the responses going right back out. That's awesome. So. It's working and the customers are not seeing any hiccups. Our non Farris trader works remotely and can log in and just, and see where the inventories are at each yard. Yep. And then our controller can, he likes to work from home or work evenings, or he'll come in in the after hours. So you know, you in today's. Today's age where it's really hard the to find employees and the ones we have are very experienced. Um, I wouldn't trade'em for another one. And, uh, you know, Jeremy and I can ease that for them and allow it, and we're still seeing the productivity, then we're fine with it. I, I asked the question, how does the rest of the yard feel about that? Because we had a, a, a serious situation that affected our culture in New Zealand. So post COVID, everybody came back to work. And we still allowed certain office members to stay home three or four days a week. And there was this animosity created between the yard staff because they felt, and they obviously had to come in'cause I can't operate a material handler from bed. So it was like this animosity of the yard guys were like. They don't even work anymore. They don't come to work, therefore they're not working. Right. And there was, this created this huge divide that actually after a while we brought the office team back in, um, because the yard were just so disgruntled with the way that it was being handled. Um, so that's why I, that's why I asked you that. It was, it was an interesting situation we went through. Um, when people don't come to work, the, everybody else goes, they're not working. So if they're working from home, people are like, oh, they didn't come to work today. So they're doing nothing. And that's what I I, the experience I had unfortunately. But when it comes to technology, it allows you now to do all of these things, right? So you've now got your team that can log in and they can see their inventory and you know, all these sort of things. Where do you see that moving? Like where do you see technology taking us in the next five to 10 years?'cause things are moving fast. They are moving fast. I mean, you're seeing it in the downstream technology already. You're seeing the, any of the companies, they're using AI to, to better sort the aluminum grades and so forth. We don't process anything like that. We don't have any shredders. Uh, so it'll be interesting to see, you know, how we would use ai. I, I could see it on the software side, helping processors, dealers. I mean, I just, I think about the. The number of tickets, inbound tickets that I, that I look at are just double check. So it's a big time suck for me to go through and just make sure that, I mean, think about it, all the different commodities we buy across, and if someone just hits the wrong number, you know, it could turn it from steel to stainless and. If I don't double check that ticket before it goes out and gets priced, I mean, that's a huge loss. So I, I can see AI helping on that. I've heard of some softwares out there that they're looking at, including your cameras on the scale. I mean, we take pictures of everything, right? Yeah. Everything we buy has a picture to it. Using AI just to detect if there's something non-conforming in the load. I mean, that would be. That would be huge. Or just think about, well you mentioned demo whenever you, we have a municipality or a demo and the load comes in, you just, you cringe when you see the, the blocks or the dirt coming out with the steel and how do you capture that? Really, all of us, it would be too much wasteful of a time for us to load up all the steel. Weigh it back out and see exactly. Okay. Was that 500 pounds? Was that 5,000 pounds? Mm. You know, and I know our operators are there, and they gotta make just a realtime decision. They take pictures, that's even better. We upload it to the ticket so I can show my customer when they see on their check, like, why did I get a deduction for 2,500 pounds? It's our best guess. I mean, I can see AI helping with that, I mean, mm-hmm. We had my brother-in-law, when he worked for us, his, his dad actually helped me open up that yard I was talking about in 2008. And when he retired, what he would do is he would get a batch of our daily tickets and he would look at like a threshold amount of, say anything over a thousand dollars that we cut a check for that day. He would review that, that scan the tickets for us. So I can see AI doing that and cutting that time in half for you. So. I see the industry going that way and just allowing you to focus on other items. Yeah, totally agree. I think. Look, it's moving at such a speed. Um, and even if we are a bit slow to get it, um, it's coming. It's absolutely coming. Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm excited at Rema. By the time this is Ed, I will have already done it, but I'll be announcing on stage a huge AI tool that we are bringing into Buddy, which is really exciting. Um, so there'll be less gut feel when trading and we can give you whole heaps of data at the time of trading. We'll be able to tell you things like, you know, if you're a buyer. How many times you've bought the parcel from this person. So if he's put up 12 listings and you've only been successful twice, we can give you an idea of what percentage you're missing out by on price. So as a buyer, you can now start to look at, all right, I need to be a bit more competitive. This guy's getting better prices. We were able to tell you on that commodity as a buyer, you're not competitive. You're missing out by 7% on average or whatever it might be. So all of a sudden there's data we can feed you at the time of trading, um, as well as. Started to give you things like tell you about relationships in the first time you meet somebody. So, hey, you're a massive 49 er fan, um, and we can actually match you and say you both support 49 ERs. So it's the first time you puts up a listing, it actually headlines and it says you both 49 er fan. So now when you're trying to like break the eyes with somebody, it's like, hey, like da da da, and, and we could do that on the trading side'cause relationships are so important. So there's a whole lot of, that's very cool. There's a lot of ready send, send all the skiers my way. All right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Done. Absolutely. But, uh, another thing just, you know, I never really used much of it till recently is chat, GBTI mean, putting forms together to send out to customers to get ahead of these tariffs if you just form letters, dropping customer data in, and then boom, you got 400 written letters ready to go out. So just things that cut down on the time is, is for me, very helpful. I mean, I, I live in chat GPT, I've got a whole lot of my own gpt that have been created. We've fed a huge amount of data. So on certain topics, I mean, I just had a sales meeting with my two new sales guys. We created our own company gpt, so that, um, it's learned from demos that I've done online. We've recorded those demos and now I've taken all the transcriptions, put that into chat, GBT, and now my sales guys can ask it. Any questions. Because I've already taught the GPT through all these demos I've learned so much. So now they don't have to phone me. They can first ask their GPT to see how great I would answer that question. That's great. Yeah. So there's a lot of incredible tools. I mean, Lisa, my wife's talking at a panel and, and Rema, so she'll be, um, talking on that. That's really, you know, she's doing a in technological futures. That's her game. So I've been thrown into it and I, I don't have the option, like every single day is I have to be 1% better when I wake up. It's like, she's like at, at the end of the day, what did you do that made you better? So, uh, yeah, that's, that's my life. I sounded sad all of a sudden. That's my life suffering. Yeah. No, it's, uh, it's amazing. So we use it as much as possible. I wanna ask you very quickly, um, before we get, you know, to finish this up, because we're running outta time, um. What's the best or worst piece of equipment you've ever bought, and has it changed the way you buy equipment going forward? Oh boy. Um, I would say the worst piece of equipment I ever bought, and I think you really gotta look at your operations and, and not get, um. Starstruck by what's out there or what others are doing. So this goes back to probably 2010, around that timeframe. Um, we bought a two ram non Ferris baler when everyone raved about it and we didn't really have quite the facility to put it in. It was very tight with the conveyor was above ground, which creates another challenging as for loading it. Uh, and also just what you need to think about is. The feed stock that you gotta be able to hold, you know, to have a two ram baler because it's not efficient to make a bale of aluminum cans and then switch commodities and then make a bale and then switch commodities. Uh, technology is what you can do, but you know, you really gotta talk to people that own equipment like that. So don't be afraid to, to talk to friendly faces or other dealers that you're not competitors with. Um, what are the pros and cons? So, I mean, we had that bailer for. Probably three years. And then we, we just realized it wasn't, we didn't have the volume and our volume was getting there, but we just really didn't have the space to hold that commodity. So, you know, we sold, we sold the baler. We actually were able to reuse that conveyor to something that was really useful for us. We took the conveyor and we actually moved it to our Meadville facility, and we have a big warehouse down there. We have the conveyor coming out of the building and we actually, we hold our aluminum turnings inside, and so we use the conveyor just to dump turnings into dump trucks. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, so that was another one. That was one I would say highly that don't be so awestruck of what other people are doing, and sometimes they're not pretty. Um, but they're cheap and effective as downstroke bailers. I mean, you can get them for used for six grand. You can buy'em new for 12, and you could line three of'em up, four of'em up, and you could handle each of your grades however you see fit. So, and they're great for small operations as well. Like we had a lot of feeder yards, right. Yeah. You just stick one in each one because they're so cheap and, and effective, so that's great. Mm-hmm. Um, didn't you just get a massive share lately? I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, we're loving it. Was that a, was that a good purchase? I thought you would've mentioned that. It was, it was, um, you know, we've been using Sierra equipment, uh, a long time. My dad knew John's dad and was very close, and I think my dad was one of the first ones to really, to latch on to these mobile bailers and. In my dad's lifetime, he probably had, and John would know better, he probably bought 30 of these machines. Wow. I mean, we had many of'em. We had mobile, we had a mobile recycling operation, bailing operation going around. So we would go around with an operator, we would bail at steel mills, um, big demos, jobs, hurricane Katrina. We were down there for two years, just bailing white goats. So anyway, we've. We have two Sierra shears, um, stationary shears in both our yards and the one machine we've had for probably 20 plus years. And um, you know, I can say, you know, I was kind of chomping at the bit, really kind of looking at the machine was getting older and, and downtime we were experiencing just'cause it was an older machine. And then just our volume had grown and we're doing different things now in our yard. And so it was time for, for a bigger sheer. And we did, we just. Trusted Sierra. We, we've had such a great relationship with them as far as, you know, any parts we need, answering the phone when we have a problem and just working with my operations manager to diagnose what's wrong with the machine. And then if we can't source it or fix it here the next day, the part is getting flown out to us. So, um, yeah, we're about. Two months in now with the new shear and, and we're, we're loving life. So the powers are getting smaller. The best is the team on the floor. When you upsize a a shear and they've only ever worked on one before, and when you move up, it's like, oh my god. It, it takes everything now. Right? It's the best. Like, you know, when you move up a shred, when you move, it's like the team always that only have experience in one size. They absolutely love it. They're like, wow, this is amazing. Sorcery. What is this? Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. It's making the other yard here. A little, little jealous. Jealous. I'm sure we may, you might have to get a second. There may be another one here. Yeah. I'm sure that excites John a but, um, who do you wanna hear next on Born Scrappy? Oh, great question. Um, well, you didn't get to meet him during table scraps too. Mike is Michael Augh. Um, you know, I, I met him out for the first season. Great guy. Great operator. Um, probably a better cook than me. I know. It's hard to believe. Oh, that, that, that is actually impressive. That is really nice. Um, but Greg Sugar in his, would he remember to put sugar in his dessert though? That's the question. Oof. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon. I have a surprise for you in, uh, in San Diego. So just wait to, I'm excited. Okay. Uh, Andrew, I wanna just ask you before we go Sure. Um, your, just to get to know you a little bit more, your favorite TV series or movie. Hmm. Uh, I'd have to go with, uh, it's been a while. Breaking Bad. I thought that was just an amazing, um, super long series. Uh, succession I really liked on HBO and just one, my wife just recently, and I, uh, she and I watched was, um, the White Lotus, which is intense. But short. Awesome. Yeah, I love, I love succession. Um, billions or so was similar to succession that I absolutely know. Favorite place to visit? Ooh, uh, Croatia. My wife and I went there two years ago. Um, just beautiful yacht around or not, uh, we toured around on a boat. Um, so we started up in split in the northern part and we sailed down to Dubrovnik and then hit the islands coming back. One, I would've never have gone just last summer, uh, my mom took my brother, sister, and I, uh, was to Ness. Lithuania. Lithuania. And that's where my mom's roots are from. And my grandparents are from Vnu. Oh, oh yeah. Beautiful. We could be cousins city. Yeah. Except my mom. She felt we needed to spend five days there. It's not a big city. You could Oh, right. See everything in like two. Wow. So I would, you know, in the summertime you have like 18 hours of, of daylight and everyone's out and about. They're loving, loving life. Great food. Um, so if I would do it again with my family, I, I'd love to hit villain and then. Go see the other capitals in Estonia. And, um, I don't know if I want to go to vous. I have this like idea in my head that there's just like thousands of people like me that they're like exactly like me. It's like a town that my grandparents are from. It's like little hobbiton. It's like little hobbits running around and like. Yeah, but Stu, when I went, everyone was tall and I was like, what's going on here? What Here? Maybe they got rid of, only the short people were told to leave. The short people made it to the states. I don't get it. Oh, man. All right, last, last two. What's your favorite book? Oh, boy. Uh, I wish I should read more. I'm reading right now fraction, so I, I'm into, you know, improving my business. I, I feel like I'm writing that. Time of my life. I, I wanna make things as best I can for awesome. For the next generation. So, great book. I, I'm halfway through it. I recommend it. And have you got a favorite quote? Uh, well, I said the one like to you earlier, if you're gonna fail, fail fast. I, I learned that from my dad and, um, probably the other one, I, I coach, um, ski racing, that's my passion. I, I pass it on to my, my kids. And Justin. I think in any sport I would say hard work beats talent. When talent doesn't wanna work, man, I tell my kid that every day. So that is spot on. Andrew, this has been great. I've loved this recording. I'm looking forward to catching up with you next week. Thanks for being, yeah, I can't wait to see you, Stu. Thanks for having me on. Cheers, Andrew. Bye. Cheers.
