American Ingenuity

Blair Brown

Roger Brown faced his share of uncertain situations as an Army Ranger who served three tours of duty in Vietnam, including missions on long-range patrol teams deep behind enemy lines.

Perhaps less perilous, but equally uncertain, was Roger’s initial foray into the recycling industry in the early 1980s, which started when he determined that he had acquired more surplus Army field manuals than he could possibly sell as reading material.

Roger Brown

His research into paper recycling marked the start of what would become All-American Recycling Inc., now a thriving multi-materials recycling business based in Columbus, Ga. The company today is led by Roger’s wife Linda Brown, who is owner and president, and by Roger’s son Blair, the vice president of operations.

BARNSTORMING. As Roger looked into what to do with his surplus Army field manuals, he became intrigued with the potential of the recycling industry.

Roger already had entrepreneurial experience in the military surplus sector. In the early 1980s, he began purchasing surplus military gear from the Defense Department and would then offer it for re-sale at gun and collectibles shows.

The dilemma of having more field manuals than he could sell introduced Roger to the secondary commodities and basic materials markets. Rather than dismissing the surplus batch of manuals as a one-time event, Roger instead purchased two vertical balers that he placed inside the barn on his 300-acre farm in Georgia.

Roger’s contacts within the Army led him to call upon military accounts as some of his earliest customers, including a Marine Corps base in Albany, Ga.

As Blair now recounts, "Shortly thereafter, we found out there was more money in paper recycling than in military surplus."

All-American Recycling left the Brown family barn some time ago and is currently housed in four buildings located on two parcels of land near downtown Columbus, Ga.

Blair estimates that the company has about 250,000 square feet of plant and office space under roof. The majority of All-American Recycling’s operations are located in three buildings situated on a 9-acre parcel of land, while a wood pallet recycling operation is sited on a 2-acre parcel across the street.

Some 25 people now work for the company guided by Blair, who says that his desire to fulfill customer requests has seen the company slowly expand the variety of materials it handles. "When we started, we focused on high-grade paper, but now we focus on eight grades of paper and eight grades of plastic, as well as operating the pallet facility."

NEW DIMENSIONS. The growth of All-American Recycling in the past 20 years has included a willingness to accept, process and ship new materials and a willingness to invest in the plant and equipment.

"When we were still handling high-grade paper only, we were in a 50,000-square-foot building with four loading docks," recalls Blair.

Three different buildings now come into play in All-American’s paper and plastic recycling efforts, according to Blair. "In our yellow building, we have a two-ram Harris baler with a Navigator system and a steel belt conveyor that feeds material from the outside," says Blair. "Our compactor and waste hauler loads and shredded paper loads brought by document destruction companies are dumped there and pushed onto the steel belt by skid steers," says Blair.

"The blue building is where loose material that has to be segregated is sorted by hand so we can create office pack or white office pack grades," Blair continues. This building’s operations also spill outside, taking advantage of Columbus’ Sun Belt climate. As containers with sorted grades fill up on the inside, they are dumped into larger outdoor containers. "Then our compactor trucks pick these loads up and take them over to the yellow building to be baled," Blair explains.

A third building is used for storage. "The white building can store a lot of material—if for some reason we need to store 3,000 tons of OCC (old corrugated containers), we can do so," says Blair.

Across the street, eight employees work in the pallet recycling division. "This side of the business came from customer requests," says Blair. Although he adds, "In fact, we’re often our own biggest supplier of pallets."

Wooden pallets are assessed and handled in two different ways. "We fix some of them and resell them whole," says Blair. "We have special saws that cut them down and make them into 48-inch-by-40-inch pallets. Those that can’t be fixed, as well as the residual material, we grind and sell as boiler fuel."

Perhaps the fastest growing segment of All-American’s business is neither paper nor pallets, but rather scrap plastic. "The way that developed is we determined that if we focused on materials beyond paper, we put ourselves at an advantage over some of our competitors," says Blair. "If I see that a competitor is only offering to handle the corrugated of a potential customer, I can come in and say I can handle more than that," he remarks.

"A perfect example is with one customer who I called upon to propose handling their corrugated," recalls Blair. "They also generated nylon and rubber and white LDPE plastic scrap and they were dumping all that. We prepared a comprehensive proposal, and now they’ve been our customer for eight years."

Similarly, at a beverage bottling plant, Blair says All-American "found a market not only for their cardboard, but also their caps, their stretch film and their pallets. Being a ‘one-stop shop’ recycler is something we helped innovate in this region."

Currently, Blair identifies eight polymers segments with which All-American has become familiar. "We handle PET bottles, PET strapping, HDPE, white LDPE, natural (clear) LDPE, polyurethane foam, rubber and poly-blend materials," he says.

Blair is pleased with how the plastics markets have evolved in the past few years. "Consuming markets for plastic have been steady and they are getting better," he states. He has enjoyed the recent market much more so than the one with which he first became acquainted. "We were in it back when the prices were nothing, and you even had to chase people down to get paid the nothing," he quips. "Now everyone is going after this market, and the material is worth a lot more."

The company procures material, both paper and plastic, from a regional market along the Georgia-Alabama border that Blair estimates has a population of about 600,000 people.

All-American serves customers with its "one-stop shop" philosophy of handling a variety of materials and also by placing equipment on site when necessary. The company has two roll-off trucks that help service some 85 balers and 15 compactors that it has placed in its market region.

The company’s core customers still include military installations, as well as offices and retailers. All-American also acts as a subcontractor, handling the regional portion of national accounts for companies such as Weyerhaeuser.

"We don’t really cater to across-the-scale traffic, although we will accept material from some churches and individuals," says Blair. "But we concentrate on comprehensive programs for corporate accounts."

RELATIONSHIPS. In all aspects of the business, Blair says that he and his parents have all worked hard to stress long-term relationships as the key to building a solid company.

"It starts with relationships," Blair says of the company’s strategy. "You must form relationships with the people with whom you do business. Many of our customers and our mill buyers are considered friends of ours. We take a sincere interest in the people we do business with. That sounds clichéd, but it’s what works in the real world," he remarks.

Blair says a business relationship can be fostered with good intentions, but it must be nurtured by good performance. "We’ve got good relationships with our customers, but they still sign a contract, and to maintain the relationship we have to make sure we provide service promptly and that they get paid promptly," he states.

A good relationship is a two-way street, Blair asserts. "If we have a customer who is going to replace us over a $5-per-ton transaction, chances are they are not worth keeping in the first place."

In addition to generating customers, All-American also prefers to make long-term connections with its consuming destinations. "We sell a lot of our paper tonnage to 10 or so mills here in Georgia and Alabama that we ship to," says Blair. "We’re loyal and sell a lot of our tons domestically, but we also have our toe in the water with exports."

On the plastics side, "We’ve got some good destinations," says Blair. "Knowing that they are reliable can be worth a great deal in terms of peace of mind," he continues. "In the plastics business, you get a lot of faxes touting ‘top dollar for your plastic,’ but you don’t necessarily know who you’re selling to or whether you’ll be paid at all," he warns.

All-American Recycling’s relationship bonds extend beyond the industry and into the neighborhood in which it operates. The company has ‘adopted’ a nearby grammar school to help provide funding and career guidance in any way it can. (See "A Junior Partner" sidebar on page 30.)

Blair says the number of good relationships he has formed in the recycling industry is the foremost reason why he is glad his career has followed its current path. "This whole industry is very tight, and we know so many of the people within it," he comments. "We see familiar faces at the trade shows we attend and we like being a part of that community."

MORE TO DO. Without question, Roger and Blair Brown have created and guided a company that has grown far beyond its roots.

Blair says he and Roger (as well as Blair’s mother Linda, who has an accounting degree and manages accounting functions for the company) remain committed to guiding All-American Recycling through the changing competitive landscape.

"My father is still very active in the business," says Blair. "He’s the guy who still figures out what to do and how to do it, especially on the operations side. He figures out if we need more trailers, say, and then he researches and buys the equipment. He’s retired from the military but still very active in the business. He’s almost 65 years old and almost 30 years my senior, but he can still outwork me."

Regarding his mother Linda, Blair says, "My mother should have been a Ranger is probably ‘Ranger-qualified,’ because she has the same work ethic as my father. She is often the brains behind our operation and puts 110 percent into our business on a daily basis."

Blair oversees the buy-sell side of the business. "We’ve tried to use additional sales representatives, but we’ve just determined it’s better to keep it in-house," says Blair.

Regarding future plans, Blair says he believes All-American could be positioned to engage in more brokering of materials than it is now. Blair already brokers long-distance for one customer that also generates scrap material at two plants in Michigan.

"We’ve begun applying that principle with other big companies we work with," Blair comments. "We demonstrate that we’re doing a good job for them here and then ask if we can handle other plants for them. Right now we only broker about 5,000 tons per year, so there is a lot of room for growth."

Plastics recycling also looks like an avenue for growth to Blair. "I would like to get into more plastics recycling. It’s a challenge to make sure the material is clean and represented well, but there are certainly opportunities," he remarks.

Blair says All-American will stick to core philosophies such as forging relationships, not carrying any debt and storing material until the right market can be found. These are strategies that have worked, says Blair, and he looks forward to continuing them.

"It’s a good business and it’s something that was basically passed down to me, and I’d like to keep it going," Blair says. "We’ve basically grown out of a barn to where we are now, which makes it gratifying and exciting to see your daily efforts."

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted at btaylor@gie.net.