SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007
A drive-through facility for peddler traffic has made Bluestar Metal Recycling safer, more efficient, and more attractive to a new customer base.
BY JIM FOWLER
Simon Altfeld started peddling scrap with a horse and wagon from his backyard in Elyria, Ohio, in 1883. Nearly 125 years and three generations of Altfelds later, the company he founded, Bluestar Metal Recycling Co., focuses primarily on industrial scrap, but it still welcomes peddlers. In recent years, the company began to realize that the mix of industrial traffic and increased peddler traffic was becoming a safety hazard. Its solution—a drive-through recycling center—has made the facility safer, more efficient, and more attractive to new customers who were not part of its traditional peddler trade.
Industrial by design
The 4-acre Bluestar facility is in what company president Ted Altfeld calls a “quasi-industrial area that gives you the feel of an old industrial town.” Railroad tracks run along one side of the property—that’s “the main track route between New York and Chicago, with steady rail traffic,” he says—with other industrial facilities and a residential neighborhood on the other sides. The small property is enormously productive: “Every month we handle several thousands of tons of ferrous and nonferrous—predominantly aluminum, copper, and stainless steel—and we have 18 employees,” Altfeld says. The yard features a brand-new 800-ton shear, a mobile shear, hydraulic cranes, and a track crane. Most of the scrap arrives by truck and leaves by railcar. The plant “had been designed, basically, for industrial traffic,” he says.
About four years ago, company leaders realized the yard’s design “was not conducive to the increase we were experiencing in a new breed of customers among our peddler traffic,” Altfeld says. Throughout the community, “the awareness of recycling was increasing,” he explains, “and we wanted to position ourselves to be a more convenient, safe, clean place for not only what we call our normal peddlers, but also for grandmas and soccer moms to come to us and drop off their items without it being [an] ordeal.”
At about the same time, Bill Ivancic joined the company as vice president. “He had a strong safety background from the steel industry,” Altfeld says, “and he was uncomfortable with Bluestar’s accident rate. Bill said, ‘We can change that,’ and he has brought about an amazing transformation in our emphasis on safety, completely changing our track record.”
One area ripe for improvement, they decided, was the commingling of peddler and industrial traffic. “It was not a safe situation,” Ivancic says. “We thought about constructing a new building or finding a way to modify our existing building so we could handle the peddler traffic separately.”
Constructing a solution
To find out how other operations separate their peddler and industrial traffic, Altfeld and Ivancic drove to nearby Mansfield, Ohio, where Milliron Iron & Metal has a “state-of-the-art” drive-through facility, Ivancic says. “That inspired us to look at how we could do something similar in Elyria.”
Coincidentally, at about that time a 15,000-square-foot industrial warehouse on Bluestar’s property became available. “On a visit to our operation, Grant Milliron noticed it and said, ‘Why don’t you use that building for your drive-through recycling center?’” Ivancic says. Contractors examined the building and declared it suitable with only minor modifications. “It turned out to be just a matter of creating an entry point by raising one small section of roof,” Altfeld says. “The modifications cost less than $100,000.”
To complete the new setup, the company purchased a nonferrous baler, a can-handling machine, and a skid-steer loader. “We didn’t have a good way to process cans, and with the increased volume, the baler has proven beneficial,” Altfeld says—not just for cans, but for copper, radiators, and wire—“items we previously had to ship out loose.”
The construction didn’t disrupt normal business, Altfeld says. “Because the facility was adjacent to, but not in the path of, our ongoing operations, we were able to do the construction, install the new equipment, and get everything up and running before we even began to steer customers through it.”
When the construction neared completion, the company initiated a promotional campaign to attract the public to the new facility. “That was something different for us,” Altfeld says. “Because of our prime focus on industrial business, we had always maintained a quiet presence here.” Television and newspaper ads, billboards, and fliers announced the opening of what the company dubbed the Bluestar Recycling Center.
The facility began with a “soft opening” on Oct. 1, 2006. “We slowly began to utilize the drive-through in order to get our feet wet and see just how we were going to handle things,” Altfeld says. The company tweaked the facility’s operations over a few months and held a grand opening this spring.
How it works
The drive-through facility accepts the full range of metal scrap from the company’s traditional peddler customers as well as cans, electronics, lead-acid batteries, and newspapers. Bluestar accepts the newspapers as a courtesy to those who want a single drop-off point for all their recyclables, Altfeld says. A separate company provides the containers for them, and the proceeds go to the local school system.
Customers can stay in their cars and let the two or three workers dedicated to the drop-off line remove the materials. If they choose to get out of their cars, “the area is well-defined with signs and floor striping as to where customers have to stay,” Ivancic explains. “There is no overhead activity, and the way the building is designed, there is limited opportunity for customers to wander around.”
Cans go into a hopper and up a 12-foot conveyor, allowing visual inspection. They drop into another hopper that’s on a scale providing a digital readout. That hopper opens to a larger bin where a skid-steer can pick up the cans and dump them into the baler. Though the baler is operating in the building while customers are driving through, it’s well away from the traffic coming through the center, Altfeld says. A loading dock adjacent to the baler facilitates the bales’ removal for shipping.
The customer takes the receipt, drives to the cashier at the main office—which is far from any processing equipment—gets paid, and drives away.
Safety and other benefits
One of the biggest advantages of the new drive-through facility, Ivancic says, is that it accommodates customers who might not be aware of the potential safety hazards of a scrapyard. It was always a concern for the company, he says, when someone came into the yard wearing flip-flops and carrying a bag of cans.
“You’re really taking a chance,” he says. “We knew a separate facility would minimize—if not eliminate—that kind of liability. We have gotten folks out of the area where our heavy equipment is operating and where the traffic conditions are not safe for peddlers.”
The customers also appreciate how the drive-through shelters them from the elements, he says. “Though it’s not heated, it’s warmer in the winter than it would be outside, and in the spring and summer they can avoid the rain and stay dry.”
Traditional peddler customers also like the drive-through facility, Ivancic says. “It’s a clean, organized environment. We have ergonomically designed carts for them to move material from their pickup trucks to the scale. We’ve also raised the scale so customers don’t have to bend way over [to reach it]. We’ve tried to make it convenient and easy.” Peddlers still have to take larger volumes of ferrous material to the main yard, so “the drive-through hasn’t totally eliminated our peddler traffic from … the yard, but it has minimized it dramatically,” he says.
Industrial customers like the new setup, too, Altfeld says. Previously, “many of the folks driving into the yard were not familiar with its accessways and were an impediment, slowing big trucks down while they were trying to move tonnage,” he explains. “Productivity-wise, someone with a bag of cans holding up a truck with tons of material doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Return on investment
Bluestar’s new drive-through facility has been well-received and business has increased significantly, Altfeld says. “On a daily basis we are seeing more people come through who say they didn’t know we were here,” he says. “They acknowledge that they were throwing their recyclables in the trash. One of our objectives is to make people aware of the importance of recycling and to provide them with an easy and safe way to do the ‘green thing.’”
He attributes part of that success to the facility and part to the new advertising program, which he plans to continue. “People tell us they see our ads,” he says. “The advertising does pay, which is contrary to my ancestors’ thinking. They thought it was unnecessary, with our being strictly in the industrial business. It’s a new philosophy for us.”
Will the renovations be worth their cost? “While it’s going to take some time to recoup the investment, it gives every appearance of being cost-justified, and we’re very pleased with the reaction we’ve received from the community,” Altfeld says. Anyway, he adds, “we’re a safer and more productive operation as a result of it.”
In fact, the new facility’s safety benefits are just the tip of the iceberg for the company’s new safety focus. “Our safety in general has taken a 180-degree turn,” Altfeld says. In Ohio’s mandatory state-run workers’ compensation plan, “we have gone from a penalty rating to substantial discounts because our experience has changed so dramatically,” he says. “We have signed the ReMA pledge to work ‘Safely or Not at All.’ At Bluestar, we believe in safety for our customers and for our employees.”
Jim Fowler is retired publisher and editorial director of Scrap .
A drive-through facility for peddler traffic has made Bluestar Metal Recycling safer, more efficient, and more attractive to a new customer base.