Joel Takes Charge

Joel Denbo has spent more than half his life serving in scrap industry trade associations. In April, his hard work will be rewarded when he’s elected ISRI’s national chair.

By Kent Kiser

Joel Denbo remembers the precise moment he thought about leading a scrap industry trade association.
   It was 1982, and he was attending the annual convention of the Institute of Scrap Iron and Steel (ISIS), an ReMA predecessor organization. Morton Plant of H. Klaff & Co. Inc. (Baltimore, Md.)—then ISIS president—was onstage, speaking at the president’s breakfast. At the time, scrap markets were just rebounding from a slump. Plant noted this improvement and, since it happened during his administration, jokingly remarked that he would take full credit for the turnaround. Denbo, only 27 at the time, laughed along with the crowd, then he thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to be president of this organization?”
   Now, 22 years later, Denbo is about to turn that idea into reality. On April 29, during ISRI’s annual convention in Las Vegas, he will be elected the association’s new chair.

Born for the Job
You could say that Denbo has been preparing for this leadership role his entire life. After all, his life has been immersed in the scrap industry since he was born, and especially since he was about five years old. Then, his father Morley used to bring him to the family scrap business—Denbo Iron & Metal Co. Inc. in Decatur, Ala.—on Saturdays. Even at that tender age, Joel found tasks to do—such as sweeping the office—so he could earn money for a Coke or a movie.
   Then there were the family dinners on Saturday or Sunday evening, when the Denbos and other relatives—all in the scrap business—would gather at each other’s homes in Decatur or nearby Pulaski, Tenn., to catch up and, of course, talk scrap. “Those conversations—which go back to my earliest recollections—always ended up focusing on business,” recalls Joel. The discussions gave him an informal education in running a family scrap business, including “the lingo, the thoughts, the pressures, and the different interpersonal dynamics between fathers, sons, brothers, and brothers-in-law.” 
   Thus, Denbo already had a solid grounding in scrap by the time he started working “in earnest”—at age 12—during summers at the family’s plant. He started out doing chores such as painting lugger boxes and pulling weeds. At about 14, he progressed to sorting nonferrous metals, then “into areas more interesting to me”—namely, anything involving machinery. As Joel recounts, he learned to drive a car by first learning how to operate a forklift. Then he started hanging around the company’s mechanics, picking up those hands-on skills. Later in his high school years, he operated a crane and, during his college summers, he learned how to drive a truck and became a buyer at the scale as well as in the warehouse. In short, he learned the business from the ground up, just like his grandfather—Isaac Denbo—and father before him.
   Perhaps it was a given, then, that Joel would follow in his ancestors’ footsteps and pursue a career in the scrap business. Though his parents never pressured him to enter the business, he knew the opportunity was always there—and, in his mind at least, “it was always a done deal that I would enter the business after finishing college.”
  So, in 1976, armed with a degree in business management and a minor in economics, Joel became a full-time employee of Denbo Iron & Metal. He created his own title—marketing and production coordinator—though, he says, “titles really are inconsequential in a family business.” In other words, he quickly realized that he “had to do everything. Quite frankly, my duties were soup to nuts.” 
   Though he was still “green as grass” in many respects—especially at handling the middle-management tasks he was assigned—Joel “jumped in with both feet” and never looked back. In his 28-year career, he has served in a variety of positions for the family’s scrap business and many of its other ventures, including its commercial stevedoring firm, its land management and development entity, its aluminum brokerage operation, and its eddy-current nonferrous recovery facility.
   Today, Joel spends the majority of his time serving as chief manager of operations for Tennessee Valley Recycling L.L.C., which was formed in 2000 by the merger of Denbo Iron & Metal with scrap operations held by other family and relatives in Alabama and Tennessee. This combined firm now has about 200 employees working at five locations. 

Getting ‘Juiced’ on Associations
Joel’s rise from sweeping the floors in his family’s scrap company to running its operations mirrors his ascent in the industry’s association world.
   His first memories of such associations go back to the conversations between his father and relatives over the Saturday and Sunday family dinners. Morley always stressed that participating in the industry’s associations—such as ISIS and the National Association of Recycling Industries (NARI), another ReMA predecessor—was an invaluable learning opportunity. In fact, he credited the associations with giving him the knowledge to grow his company beyond mom-and-pop status.
   Joel picked up on these dinnertime messages. It wasn’t surprising, then, when he asked if he could accompany his father to an ISIS Southeastern Chapter meeting. At the time—in 1969—Joel was only a freshman in high school, attending a boarding school in Nashville, and Morley was vice president of the Southeastern Chapter. This would serve as Joel’s first “official” introduction to association activities.
   His next association experience came in 1977. He had just started working full-time for Denbo Iron & Metal the previous July, and he expressed interest in attending the ISIS annual convention, slated for January 1977 in Las Vegas. He attended with his parents, sitting in on committee meetings and the board meeting, and he “got juiced by it,” as he puts it.
   In particular, Denbo found it intellectually stimulating to sit in on meetings with leaders of the industry and interact with scrap professionals from all over the country. “I resolved in my mind that this was the place for me to get the further education I needed in business,” he says. “I realized that I could learn the things that would allow me to become a better business person.”
   After this first convention experience, Joel started attending the quarterly ISIS national board meetings as well, and his association involvement took off from there, beginning with serving on various committees, then climbing the ranks of the ReMA Southeastern Chapter through the president’s chair.
   By 1996, Denbo had the professional and association experience to vie for a national officer position in ISRI. He ran for the secretary/treasurer position against Larry Cohen, then of M. Cohen Iron & Metal Co. (Nashville)—and lost. “I was very much disappointed in that defeat,” Joel admits, “and quite frankly I didn’t know if I’d ever recover from it.”
   He did, of course. In 1998, he ran again—this time against Frank Cozzi of Cozzi Iron & Metal Inc. (Chicago)—and was elected secretary/treasurer for a two-year term. Since then, he has also worked his way through the vice chair and chair-elect posts. All that remains is to assume the chair position, which Joel will do this April.

Plans and Priorities
As he looks ahead to his two-year administration as chair, Joel points to three priority issues:
   First, ReMA must be ever-vigilant in the environmental and legislative arenas to address existing regulations and laws as well as ensure that future ones aren’t detrimental to the industry.
   Second, ReMA must help its members increase their awareness of safety and insurance issues to minimize both their injury rates and premiums. “This will affect every member’s profitability,” Joel says.
   And third, ReMA must continue to find more effective ways to communicate with its members “to bring them to the table in a prompt fashion on issues relating to our industry,” he says.
   On a larger scale, Joel sees other challenges to the scrap industry, with the most worrisome one being the questionable financial health of many scrap consumers, domestically and abroad. In recent years—especially in the recession period of 2000 to 2002—many scrap companies were hit by bankruptcies among their consumers as well as low scrap prices and the weak U.S. economy. While ReMA can’t control such macroeconomic trends, it can at least “make its members aware of those problems so they won’t be blindsided by them,” Joel says.
   No matter what the future brings, he asserts, “ISRI has the framework, the troops in the field to address any need in the industry and make us all better business people.” Joel is also confident in the strengths and abilities of his fellow ReMA leaders as well as the association’s Washington staff, stating, “I do believe that we have the assets and the tools to manage anything that’s thrown at us.”
   On the financial front, he adds, “this association is rock solid, which means we have an adequate war chest to defend our industry as necessary.” And thanks to the recently improved scrap markets, he sees even brighter, stronger times ahead for ReMA and the industry in general. 
   Yes, it’s a great time to become ISRI’s chair, Joel says, adding that he truly looks forward to representing the association that has given him so much. To be sure, Joel is a true ReMA advocate, crediting the association with making him “a better businessman, a better thinker” and with helping his company understand “the proper path to growth and success.” Without ISRI, he says, his company would have struggled to keep up with the myriad issues that all recyclers face—regulations, legislation, insurance, safety, technology, operating practices, business management, and more.
   Overall, Joel says, ReMA helped his company broaden its perspective, expand its business opportunities, and—in the process—increase its success. As he explains, “If you isolate yourself within the confines of your own business and your own town, you don’t see outside the box. By being involved regionally and nationally with the association, you cast a wider net.”
   How can you put a price on such benefits? Over the years, the Denbos have attempted to do just that. First, they added up their costs in ReMA dues, convention fees, travel, and so on. Then they compared this total against the cost to do similar activities on their own, also factoring in any new business from ReMA relationships and money saved through ReMA membership benefits.
   The results? The Denbos figured that they would have to spend five times more on their own to get similar benefits of their ReMA membership. What this means to Joel is simply this: “ISRI is worth the money. I always like to say that your ReMA dues aren’t an investment in ISRI, they’re an investment in your own business. Recyclers make a serious mistake by not being involved in association activities.”

Leading by Example
   As Joel plans to assume ISRI’s highest elected office, he maintains that he’s “not nervous at all,” nor is he surprised to be in this vaulted position. After all, he notes, “I’ve been preparing myself for this for many years.” That’s why he can confidently state, “I feel that I’m ready to step into the chairman role and do a proper job for the people that have entrusted this to me.”
   As he looks ahead, Joel can’t help but also look back to acknowledge that none of his association achievements would have been possible without the guidance and support of mentors, family, friends, and coworkers. First and foremost, he thanks his wife, Sara, for her dedicated support and encouragement throughout his association service. “She has been my partner in this the whole way,”
   Joel says, noting that she carried the weight of home responsibilities while he attended meetings and worked overtime on association projects. “She had to be committed to letting me do this,” he concedes, “or it never would have happened.”
   Next, Joel recognizes his company’s “willingness and financial backing” as another key factor in his association success. Several industry mentors also made association opportunities available to Joel, notably Morton Plant, Barry Hunter of Schiavone Bonomo Corp. (Jersey City, N.J.) and, later, Samuel G. Keywell Co. (Elizabeth, N.J.), and Sam Pielet of Pielet Brothers Trading (Chicago). These scrap statesmen, he says, “gave me my first chances to take a bite of the apple, if you will. They really pushed me forward and got me thinking right in a lot of ways.”
   From those early pushes, Joel has certainly traveled a long way in his 27-year involvement in the industry’s associations. “This has been a long road,” he admits. But this slow, steady path perfectly fits his nature as a hard worker who never gives up. “I make up for my lack of brilliance,” he says modestly, “through my tenacious work ethic and my own personal stubbornness and perseverance.” (As a testament to his work ethic, Joel notes that he hasn’t had a two-week vacation since his honeymoon in 1980, stating, “I’ve been working hard for a long time.”)
   That work ethic surely colors the leadership style Joel will bring to his role as ReMA chair. As he likes to say, “I lead like the Israeli army officers do—out front and follow me. I believe in trying to set the example for people to follow.”
   He will soon have his chance to lead the association that he has served for so many years. Already, he is thinking about what he would like to leave behind after his two-year term is over. “The only legacy I want to leave,” Joel states, “is that people will say, ‘He did a damn good job and he did what was right for the industry—he represented us well.’ That’s the only legacy, in my opinion, that a national chairman should leave.” 

Denbo Details
Born: March 30, 1954, in Decatur, Ala.
Education: BBA in management with a minor in economics from the University of Texas-Austin.
Family: Married Sara Miller—whose family was also in the scrap business—in 1980. Three daughters—Ariel (21), Rachel (19), and Jessica (17).
Association/Industry Highlights: Director of the National Association Supply Cooperative (NASCO-OP) (1984-present); director of the Metal Scrap Research Foundation (now the Recycling Research Foundation) (1980-1998); member or chair of numerous ISIS/ISRI committees, including public relations, environment and legislative, shredders, manufacturing and technology, grass-roots implementation team, and bylaws; president of ISRI’s Southeastern Chapter (1995-1997); and ReMA national secretary/treasurer (1998-2000), vice chair (2000-2002), and chair-elect (2002-2004).
Community Involvement: Member of Alabama Lt. Governor’s legislative council on education (1997-1999); president of Temple B’Nai Sholom in Huntsville, Ala. (1994-1996); member of the Decatur Kiwanis Club (1976-present), including serving as director from 1997-2000; member of “Leadership Decatur” for the Decatur Chamber of Commerce (1992-1993); as well as previous service to the United Way of Morgan County and as president of the Louis Miller Lodge, B’Nai Brith in Huntsville.
Favorite Movies: In Harm’s Way, The Wind and the Lion, and Saving Private Ryan.
Favorite Drink: Belvidere vodka on the rocks with onions.
Favorite Foods: A good steak at the Capitol Grill in Washington, D.C.; Oreo cookies; and Butterfinger candy bars.
Favorite TV Shows: The West Wing and NYPD Blue.
Favorite Cities: Dallas, Texas, and Toronto, Canada.
Favorite Music: The Beatles, Todd Rundgren, and Steely Dan.
My greatest professional achievement was … navigating through the scrap depression of 2000 to 2002.
In my free time, I like to … play with my three dogs, travel, sit on the beach in Destin, Fla., and jog. I’m also an avid reader of World War II history. Plus, over the years, I’ve enjoyed watching my three daughters cheerleading at Decatur High School basketball and football games.
I’d like to improve my … 10K running time.
If I didn’t work in the scrap industry, I’d probably be … a lawyer.
If I ran the world, I would … end war, cure disease, and stop hunger. 

Kent Kiser is publisher and editor-in-chief of Scrap.•