January/February 2011
Bodner Metal & Iron Corp. has created a big presence in its community and the scrap industry by establishing a reputation for service and always speaking up for the little guy.
By Diana Mota
By most measures, Bodner Metal & Iron Corp. is a small scrap company. Its facility, on 10 acres of industrial land north of downtown Houston, primarily processes ferrous and nonferrous scrap. The company provides roll-off container service to industrial and commercial customers within a 100-mile radius of its facility and buys scrap from over-the-scale customers as well. It also brokers a small amount of ferrous, nonferrous, paper, and plastic. Its fewer than two dozen employees process and ship about six to eight containerloads of scrap a day.
Being small allows BMI to form close rela tion ships, which are what the company and the scrap industry are built upon, says BMI’s president, Manny Bodner. “You have rela tionships with your suppliers of scrap, whether they’re individuals, companies, or industries; you have relationships with your consumers, whether they’re mills, foundries, or brokers; and you have relationships with your employees,” he says. “These relationships are key.”
Despite the demands of operating a small yard, BMI’s leaders—Manny and his sister, Karen Bodner—are very much involved in their community and in ISRI. Karen is an active member of the ReMA Safety and Environmental Council; Manny has held a variety of leadership roles in ISRI’s Gulf Coast Chapter and now serves on the ReMA national board, as president of the Recycling Research Foundation, and as chair of its Design for Recycling® committee. The Bodners say they don’t let BMI’s small size keep them from having a voice and trying to make a difference.
A History in Houston
Manny and Karen Bodner are the second generation to lead BMI. Their parents, Eugene and Eve Bodner, founded the company in Houston in 1948, soon after Eugene Bodner emigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia. “Dad started without an actual facility,” Manny says, but he had a pickup truck, which he would drive from manufacturer to manufacturer, offering to clean the facility in exchange for scrap or offering to buy the scrap. He then would sell the material to dealers and processors.
Later that year, BMI opened its first, very small yard, on Canal Street, Manny says. “It was just a lot with an office and maybe a small warehouse.” The company continued to grow, and in the early 1950s it established its Lyons Avenue yard, where it added more employees and trucks and installed a shear so it could process plate and structural steel. “That was a major grade for us,” Manny says. The yard was well-located, he notes, because it was across the street from a foundry that made manhole covers and grates for the city. “A lot of [BMI] material was supplied to that foundry.”
In 1978 BMI moved to its present location, which houses an office, nonferrous warehouse, maintenance building, a Sierra 5000 logger/baler, and a MAC auto crusher as well as supporting cranes and material handlers. The facility is always a work in progress, Manny says. “We try to continue to make improvements and modifications as we go.” For the first time in the company’s history, for example, BMI traded in its old fleet for a brand-new fleet of Mack trucks that consists of two roll-offs and two flatbeds.
Spurring some recent changes to the company’s operations has been its implementation of the Recycling Industry Operating Standard, which Manny says has had “a positive effect on us” by revealing certain safety and environmental issues, among other things. BMI was asked to represent a small yard in the RIOS pilot program, and though it has not yet completed the certification process, “we are going in that direction. … We already adhere to the principles of RIOS.”
A Family Affair
Manny spent his time in the scrapyard trenches as he was growing up. He recalls working in the Lyons Avenue yard after school and during vacations, cleaning metal and separating iron from sheet metal. He says he never really considered any other career path. “When I was growing up, if you had a family business to go into, that’s what you did,” he says. “If your family was in medicine, you went to medical school. If they were attorneys, you went to law school. If they were in the scrap business, you went into the scrap business.” In 1969, after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in business administration and a major in industrial management, he started at BMI full time. “My dad offered me a position that no other company would offer me [as a recent college graduate], and that was vice president,” Manny says. “That meant that I also swept the floors, I called on accounts, I took down orders,” he laughs. “In a small company, titles mean nothing.”
He and his father naturally fell into their roles, which overlapped, Manny says. “Wherever we felt one was stronger, that’s how we did it. There wasn’t any decision that I would do X and he would do Y.” In the beginning, Eugene was responsible for final decisions, but that shifted after Eugene stepped down as president in 1995, and Manny took on the role. Eugene Bodner served as chairman of BMI’s board of directors and continued to come to the office until his death in May 2008. “I continued to call on him for guidance and advice,” Manny says. “He was a very special man,” Karen says. “He worked up to the end. It was good for him.” In the company’s early years, their mother did the accounting, but as the company grew, she remained at home to care for her family. “That’s not to say she wasn’t involved in the business,” Manny says. She continued to serve on BMI’s board of directors and attend meetings until her death 17 years ago.
Unlike her brother, Karen Bodner did not always expect to work in the family business. “As my mother would say, I was a free spirit who had to go and [spread] her wings,” she says. After earning a degree in public relations from UT Austin, she pursued opportunities in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, raised a son, and came back to BMI for good after her mother’s death. At the time, “Dad said, ‘Karen, it’s time to come back,’” she says, and she did. Karen remembers that, over the years, she worked the scale, did payroll, and helped clean the facility, among other duties. “Our father had told us, ‘You’d better learn to do it all,’” she says. “We really learned the inner workings of the company.”
Her public relations experience is an asset to the company, Karen says. “I can pretty much talk to anyone about anything.” Her brother agrees. “Karen calls on our customers. I think those conversations and dialogues are key.” Karen’s title is corporate secretary, but that doesn’t describe the extent of her role in the company. On a day-to-day basis, she works dispatch and oversees safety and environmental issues, among other areas, while Manny is more responsible for yard coordination, production, and marketing. This brother and sister team runs the company together, they say. “Karen and I have a close relationship,” Manny says. “We share responsibility in the company.”
A Philosophy of Involvement
The Bodners consider their ReMA volunteer activities an extension of their day-to-day work. Being an ReMA member is an important part of doing business as well as a great way to build friendships and relationships, Manny notes. “I don’t know how you can be a member of an industry—whatever profession you’re in—without being a member of your trade or professional association. The knowledge that you’re exposed to is invaluable.”
Their philosophy is that scrap companies of all sizes should become active with their federal, state, and local governments as well as through organizations such as ReMA to promote recycling. All scrap companies can be advocates for the industry as a whole, and they can provide a wide spectrum of perspectives covering a gamut of recycling needs. For such a diverse industry, they say, the more voices the better—more participation will give others a clearer picture of the industry.
Manny sees the value in continuing this outreach and involvement over the long term. “People are in and out of office, whether they’re appointed or elected officials. There’s a need for dialogue and constant education.” Public officials need to know about the good things the industry does, how it works with law enforcement and with legislators, he adds. “We are responsible; we do have policies; we do have a code of conduct. We are on the positive side of the equation.”
A wide range of participation also helps ensure that laws, regulations, policies, or best practices apply to companies of all sizes—not just the big ones. At the ISEC meetings, “sometimes I’ll raise my hand and say, ‘You have to look at this from a small yard’s perspective,’” Karen says. For example, she reminds others that at smaller companies, individuals might wear several different hats. BMI is “a firm believer in safety”—the company has signed and follows the ReMA Safety Pledge to operate “Safely or Not at All”—but she must balance her role as safety manager with her other day-to-day duties, she says. “Some of the larger companies, this is all they do—they [have managers who] eat and breathe safety. I have to do it all. It gives me a different viewpoint.”
Ultimately, they say, BMI’s involvement in public affairs and in ReMA benefits itself, other recycling companies its size, its community, and the industry.
The BMI Team
To keep the yard running smoothly, the Bodners rely heavily on their staff. “We depend on them,” Manny says. “If I’m not here or Karen’s not here, this business has to go on.” They consider each one a key member of the BMI team, they say. “Everybody has a contribution to make,” Manny says. He acknowledges that he likes things done in a certain way, but at the same time, he’s open to new ideas. “I want them to think and be critical. … They’re out in the field. They see how it works.”
The company fluctuates from 20 to 25 employees: two in the office, four in the warehouse, and the remainder in the yard. “We probably could add another two or three [employees], but I’m being cautious at this point,” Manny says. “I don’t know what this economy is going to do, and we’re very careful that we do not lay off people unless we absolutely have to.” In the past few years, the staff has shrunk due to attrition and their leaving some vacant positions unfilled. Manny’s wife, Jennifer, who is a retired teacher, assists with the accounting.
With a small company, everyone really gets to know each other, the Bodners say. The employees “are part of our family,” Karen says. “They usually will seek me out personally or professionally. They know if there’s a problem or an issue [they can] come to Karen.” Manny contrasts this to a reality TV show he saw recently, Undercover Boss, where the owner or CEO of a company goes undercover in his or her own business. “It was as if the owner was doing something special by interacting with his employees,” he says. “You’d better know who your employees are, and they’d better know who you are. You should be able to talk to them, and they to you.”
Hope Gonzalez and Andrea Ornelas, who work in the office, agree. They like working in a small business “because we know the owner and he knows us,” Ornelas says. “You know who to go to” when you need something, Gonzalez adds. “You don’t have to call an 800 number.” The mix of personalities also works, they say. “We work well together,” Ornelas says. “We all have a sense of humor.”
Standing on Service
Over its more than 60-year history, BMI has relied on a ferrous customer base rooted in Houston’s oil industry, with suppliers that include machine shops, construction firms, and steel fabricators, Manny Bodner says. Those and other industrial and commercial customers provide about half of the material BMI processes, with the other half coming from over-the-scale business. (Some recyclers refer to those customers as peddlers, but Manny says he considers that term offensive and disrespectful.) The proportion of industrial to over-the-scale business varies somewhat. Lately, “as industrial intake has gone down, our individual intake has gone up,” Manny says. “It’s roughly 50-50, but that could change at any time.” Karen Bodner estimates overall the company ships anywhere from six to eight truckloads a day, but it really depends on the market. BMI added scrap brokering to its portfolio in the early 1990s. “People were asking us for our assistance, and we saw an opportunity to provide that support,” Manny says. Though BMI primarily brokers ferrous scrap, it also brokers paper and plastics—whatever grades are available.
All trucks that enter the yard pass through a radiation monitor system before moving onto the scale. Either Gonzalez or Ornelas visually inspects the load for unwanted items, records the weight, and directs the driver to the left, to unload at the nonferrous warehouse, or to the right for ferrous. Yard workers use a material handler to position the ferrous material—which might include large and small appliances, construction or agricultural scrap, or vehicles—for crushing, baling, shearing, or torchcutting. Some material gets sorted and sold unprocessed, too, “depending on the market and who our customers are,” Manny says. “It’s whatever makes sense at the time.” One area holds automobiles, which come from the public and from other companies, with the engines and fluids removed, waiting to be flattened; another area holds the crushed cars. There’s also space for torchcutters. BMI sells mostly to mills, foundries, and other recyclers. Most of the material moves via trucks, though some of it is shipped in containers as export markets become available, Manny says.
The company continues to abide by the philosophy that Eugene Bodner developed when he started the business, Manny says. BMI was neither the first nor the largest scrap company in Houston, so his father looked for ways to set his company apart from the others. The secret, he says, is doing more than the customer expects. For example, he says, “You don’t just pick up the scrap. You do something extra: You sweep; you make sure it’s clean; you check in with the manager or owner; and you make sure they’re satisfied.” That’s how his father grew the business, he says. “We believe in that philosophy today. You don’t just exchange containers. You make sure the customer is satisfied. If there’s a concern, you address the concern.”
That philosophy pays dividends because if there’s a problem with a future load, you already have cemented your relationship with the customer, he says. “Either you’re known for shipping a correct package, and this is just an error—and we can get past the error—or you’re known for shipping a package that always tends to just slip by,” in which case this error could be the one that ends the business relationship.
BMI also strives to give its customers an accurate picture of the market, Manny says. “I make sure there are not misrepresentations. I give a range of recovery for a product.” He tends to represent material on the low side, he adds. “I want to represent it a little bit worse. I always tell the buyer it will probably recover out a lot better, but I don’t want any misrepresentations.” That tactic works well for BMI when the markets are good as well as when the markets are not so good, he says.
Looking Ahead
After more than 40 years, Manny Bodner says he still enjoys the business. “What people in this industry will tell you—what they so enjoy—is that there is no typical day.” The company and the industry continue to evolve, and he credits ReMA for a large part of that. “We’ve always been a professional company, but I believe we’re more professional because of our ReMA participation.” Take the company’s work toward RIOS certification. Manny believes every company could benefit from RIOS, even if it thinks it’s already doing all the right things. “RIOS is such an intense program” that it ensures you’re actually doing everything that you think you are, he says. It turns quality, environmental compliance, and health and safety from priorities into core values, he says. What’s the difference? Priorities can change over time, he notes. “Today you’re doing one thing; tomorrow you’re doing another.” Core values do not.
He’s most proud of BMI’s ability to adapt to changes in the industry, he says. “That’s because of our people. We have good relationships and strong relationships. We can solve things.” The Bodners continue to grow the company and build those relationships, Manny says, with the goal of moving the company to “the next level—whatever that might be.”
Diana Mota is associate editor of Scrap.
Bodner Metal & Iron Corp. has created a big presence in its community and the scrap industry by establishing a reputation for service and always speaking up for the little guy.