Scrap Samaritan

September/October 2011

From his humble scrap-peddler roots, Randy Castriota has built three successful businesses while keeping an equal focus on his community and philanthropic efforts.

By Kent Kiser

Randy Castriota proudly shows me around the new Castriota Metals & Recycling facility in Pittsburgh’s Brookline neighborhood. In the final stages of construction and refurbishment, the plant still smells of pine and fresh paint. The operation—which includes new offices, an 11,000-square-foot warehouse, and 1½ acres of outdoor unloading and storage space—is a sign of how far Castriota has come in his 49-year scrap industry career. He started as a peddler, opened his first scrap plant—the original Brookline facility—24 years ago, and now owns two scrapyards, a roll-off service, a solid waste hauling company, various warehouses, and about 40 apartment units. He’s the epitome of the scrap entrepreneur success story. Castriota puts equal value, however, on his philanthropic activities outside of work, gauging success in not only financial but also personal and spiritual terms. “I’m proud of what I’ve done—not just producing revenue but helping other people,” he says. His success is the result of not just hard work, he says, but also his belief in directing one’s own destiny and in the power of goal-setting.

From Peddler to Processor

Randy Castriota began his scrap education at age 12 by helping his father collect scrap for extra income. “Big Al” Castriota—a 6-foot, 255-pound Pittsburgh motorcycle cop—would go scrapping after work in his 1949 Chevy, Castriota recalls, collecting and selling brake shoes and other automotive scrap for $10 a day, which was “big money back then.” The elder Castriota later progressed to a 1956 Ford pickup, which he purchased for $108. He never established his own scrapyard, Castriota explains, because “he was a Depression-era baby and didn’t want to borrow money.”

Castriota continued making the scrap rounds with his father throughout high school and college. After graduating from Duquesne University (Pittsburgh) in 1972 with a degree in political science, he decided to make scrap his career, so he continued peddling, even as his dad retired from the scene. In 1975 he bought a 4-ton Ford F600 dump truck at auction for $1,800, and he set his sights on one day opening his own scrap facility. That day came in 1987, when he bought two adjoining buildings—a total of 12,500 square feet—in Brookline and incorporated Castriota Metals & Recycling. When it opened, the company consisted of him and two employees.

As his scrap operation established itself, Castriota launched his second company—Pittsburgh Roll-Off Services—in 1996. As in the scrap niche, he started small but dreamed big. His goal was to have 500 containers and 10 trucks by Jan. 1, 2002, which he did. “That shows the power of goal-setting,” he says. Today the enterprise has about 517 containers and 18 trucks.

Another goal was to open a second, larger scrapyard so Castriota Metals could increase its volume and operate larger processing equipment. Castriota found his second scrap home in 2001 in McKees Rocks, a Pittsburgh suburb about 10 minutes from downtown and 20 minutes from the Brookline facility. The 6-acre plant, which opened in 2005, has a Marathon Nexgen baler for processing nonferrous scrap and mobile shear attachments and torches for ferrous scrap. Always keeping an eye on the future, Castriota purchased the 30-acre tract adjacent to his McKees Rocks operation in 2007, which he uses to store Pittsburgh Roll-Off’s containers and stockpile construction and demolition debris prior to recycling.

As if two scrapyards and a roll-off business weren’t enough to keep him busy, in 2010 Castriota established a third corporate entity—Castriota Metals Solid Waste—to gain a foothold in the commercial waste and recycling market. To enter that niche, he purchased a rear-loading compactor truck and about 60 containers, an assortment of 2-yard, 4-yard, and 6-yard units. The company serves commercial customers such as taverns, body shops, and car dealerships within a 25-mile radius of downtown Pittsburgh.

Soon after launching this new company, Castriota took his scrap operation in Brookline to the next level, moving it in May from its original home to an adjacent property to give it more room and a more efficient layout—not to mention a large, newly paved entrance area and brand-new offices for Castriota and Phil Costantini, the company’s chief financial officer. Though it was difficult to leave his company’s original home, “it was time to move on,” he says. Of the new plant’s 25,000 square feet of internal space, Castriota Metals occupies 11,000 square feet and leases the rest to a manufacturer of patio enclosures. The facility serves mainly as a feeder yard for the McKees Rocks operation, shipping roughly 80 percent of the scrap it receives to that plant, with the remainder going to other scrap companies.

Setting Goals and Thinking Positively

How did a scrap peddler transform himself into an owner of three successful businesses? By valuing customers, Castriota says, which means responding to their needs, providing a reliable market for them, and paying good prices. As a former peddler, he knows what over-the-scale suppliers want from the companies that buy their material. Sure, they want to make the most money on their scrap, but they also want to feel appreciated and recognized. That jibes with Castriota’s personal philosophy, which he calls a “twist” on the Golden Rule: “Treat everybody you meet as if they’re the most important people in the world.” That philosophy helps explain why Castriota Metals has so many long-term customers, he says, whom he honors with an appreciation day at each yard every spring.

Castriota also credits his success to his belief in the power of goal-setting and positive thinking. “I try to seek my own destiny,” he says, “and I believe I can actually create it.” He has envisioned his goals—such as opening his own scrapyard or expanding Pittsburgh Roll-Off’s equipment holdings—and then met them through hard work and perseverance. “My mantra has always been, ‘Never give up,’” he says. His tenacity certainly was apparent during the market downturn in 2001, when his scrap operations—like many others—faced bleak prospects. “I thought, ‘I’m just going to cut my losses now and move on to something better,’” he recalls. “Thank God I didn’t do that.” Instead, he persisted and emerged from the downturn battered but wiser. “Everything’s an opportunity to learn,” he says. “I don’t view anything as a problem. There’s always a solution.”

Castriota makes a point of also acknowledging his wife, Christine, as another foundation of his success. The two married in 1987, and she has been with him at every step, through many scrap-related adventures. One time, while they were dating, Castriota picked her up in his 1975 dump truck to visit his parents at their cottage on Conneaut Lake, north of Pittsburgh. En route, all the truck’s lights went out, and they encountered a “mini storm” on the highway that forced them to slow down. On Saturday morning, Castriota—always the businessman—took time out of their visit to pick up some catalytic converters from a nearby wrecking yard. Then he and Christine continued their visit with his family, returning to Pittsburgh on Sunday evening. “Christine is a good sport, and I’ve been very lucky to have her support in growing the metals businesses,” he says. “She was with me when we only owned one truck and has been one of the major reasons for my success.”

Castriota’s companies must be doing something right to succeed in the competitive Pittsburgh scrap market. He estimates he has about six competitors within a 15-minute drive and more than 40 competitors less than an hour’s drive from his operations. Far from being daunted by so much competition, he views it as a good thing. It “forces you to think outside the box. You have to be a little bit better than the next scrapyard.” Also, he’s not a worrier by nature, he says, so he refuses to fret about something he can’t control, such as his competition. “The only thing I worry about is me,” he says. “If you worry about the competition, you’ll get yourself in trouble. Just try to do the best you can, and the customers will follow.” What’s more, he believes “there’s enough for everybody” in the market, so there’s no need to get greedy, he says. That equitable approach is one reason why Castriota can claim to have amiable relationships with virtually all of his competitors, saying he counts many of them as his friends. “I try to work together with everybody,” he says. “I can’t think of anybody I really don’t like.”

Castriota’s people-centric philosophy might be why his companies have so many long-tenured employees. Of the 34 employees he has across all of his businesses, about 50 percent have worked there for more than five years, while another 30 percent have worked there 12 years or longer. “I have a good group of employees,” he says. “I’m very happy with them.” He engenders their loyalty, in part, by offering decent pay as well as competitive annual and sick leave benefits and health insurance with a 10-percent co-payment. The employees are responsible for much of the companies’ success, he says, and he doesn’t hesitate to recognize each person for his or her unique contributions. “You bring a lot of different people together to build a business, and I believe everybody’s a genius in their own way,” he says. “Every person has something to bring to the table. I couldn’t do it without them.”

A Big-Hearted Approach

Seeing Castriota interact with people throughout the day—customers, employees, competitors, friends around town—it’s obvious he’s a “people person” with a big heart and generous spirit. That generosity manifests itself, in part, in his willingness to employ ex-offenders. That all began in 2004, he recalls, when Larry Chisholm, a former drug addict and convicted criminal, visited Castriota’s office to ask about renting one of his apartments. They started talking about Chisholm’s life, and by the end of their conversation, Castriota had not only rented Chisholm an apartment but hired him to work at Castriota Metals. Since then, Castriota has hired many other ex-offenders—they currently constitute about 10 percent of his work force. He hires them, he says, because he believes people deserve the chance to make a new start in life.

Beyond being their employer and/or landlord, Castriota has given ex-offenders a hand up in other ways. Chisholm, for instance, was a boxer before his incarceration. When he got out of prison, he dreamed of opening a boxing gym to give young men an alternative to hanging out on the street. To help Chisholm realize his dream, Castriota founded a nonprofit group, the Gym of Future Champs, which bought a building in 2007 in the Pittsburgh suburb of Wilkinsburg. With two economic development grants, the group purchased a boxing ring and related equipment. The gym gives the area’s youth a recreational outlet—and a place to dream, Castriota says.

In the same philanthropic vein, Castriota founded Operation Valor Arts in 2010, a nonprofit that teaches veterans how to create public artworks out of carbon steel. He expects the group to gain IRS recognition as a charitable nonprofit organization this fall. Castriota has experience with public art projects thanks to his work with Allyson Holtz, an artist and welder who taught art at the Youth Development Center in New Castle, Pa. Three years ago, she told Castriota she was teaching an art class at the center—which serves delinquent teenage boys—and she wanted the participants to make a sculpture as a class project. Castriota provided steel for the artwork, which the students donated to a home for the elderly in New Castle. That first project prompted Castriota to get involved with a public art project involving students at Sto-Rox High School in Stowe Township, the location of his McKees Rocks facility. Students designed a 22-foot, welded-steel “peace” sculpture titled “Folding Hands,” which they plan to donate to the township. Metalico Pittsburgh, under the direction of Ken Mueller, donated about 3 tons of carbon steel for the project, and Castriota offered a 2,000-square-foot space at his McKees Rocks plant as a studio. The students began constructing the sculpture in July, with plans to complete it this fall.

Castriota’s philanthropic activities have earned him the respect of many as well as accolades from organizations including his alma mater, Duquesne University, which gave him its 2010 Mind, Heart, and Spirit Award for his work with ex-offenders.

The Road to Improvement

Castriota, who turned 61 in September, has plied the scrap trade in some fashion for nearly half a century, yet he continues to work five and a half days a week. “I’ve never regretted getting up in the morning and coming to the scrapyard,” he says, though he does talk about slowing down and spending more time at his second home in Bonita Springs, Fla. He also ruminates on the future of his businesses, noting that his 21-year-old son, Michael, occasionally works at the company’s yards. Though Michael currently has a stronger interest in race cars than in the scrap industry, Castriota hopes his son will enter the metals business in the future. That said, he’s confident that his wife, Christine, and the company’s managers—Phil Costantini, CFO; Nick Costa, webmaster and sales manager; Shawn Crowley, general manager; and John Lonsinger, dispatcher—could carry on the businesses quite well without him.

While he’s still at the helm, though, Castriota intends to help his companies improve and grow. He’d like to increase the throughput of his processing operations, for one. Also, though he has a great staff, “we’re always looking for better and better people,” he says. And he’s always seeking better ways to address his biggest day-to-day hassle, maintaining his rolling equipment and roll-off containers. On all counts, he says, his companies are improving, but “we’re not there yet.”

Even as he works to improve his current operations, Castriota dreams of the next venture. He’d like to open a transfer station for Castriota Metals Solid Waste, with a related recycling center for plastic and wood. His wish list also includes opening another satellite scrapyard in Washington County, 30 minutes south of Pittsburgh. And he’s considering installing a small baler at the Brookline facility to give it some processing capacity. As Castriota sits in his almost-finished office at the new Brookline plant, he reflects on how far he’s come since his first experiences with scrap. “I’m living the American dream,” he says. “America is the greatest country in the world. You can start with nothing, but you can live your dream; you can do whatever you want.” Then he heads for his pickup truck to move on to the next goal, the next dream.

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