Balancing Opportunities

As concerns with identify theft hit the mainstream press and legislation affecting more industries gets put on the books, more companies are setting out to develop a published standard procedure to handle the shredding of documents.

To service this burgeoning demand, companies in the document destruction and storage business may need to offer a range of services. Increasingly, secure destruction firms are faced with the question of whether to provide a mobile shredding service or to set up a central shredding facility to which documents are taken—or whether to provide both services.

Trying to decide which of the procedures best suits a company can depend on a number of factors that bring both controlling costs and answering service requests into play.

While most companies are reluctant to spell out the cost difference to the penny, the cost to shred material on site with a mobile shredding fleet is generally considered more expensive than hauling documents to a central off-site facility.

As Glen Howard with All Shredding Corp., a New York City-based shredding operation, notes, "Price is king." With prices often higher for an on-site shredding operation, companies are weighing the comparative advantages of both procedures.

Howard says that customers who have developed a high level of trust with their shredding company are more likely to choose the off-site shredding option.

As a rule of thumb, a company can operate a smaller fleet and make more stops per day if it is collecting documents to take to a central facility rather than shredding documents on site.

While security remains a big concern, shredding companies contacted for this article all say that there are cases when a customer asks to view the shredding of the documents, either at the mobile shredding site or at a plant.

While developing a relationship with a customer may allow some companies to migrate their operations from on site to off site, many clients who, through company policy, mandate that a witness is needed to view the actual shredding process.

Regarding the procedure of having a person stand and watch while a vendor shreds documents on site, Mike Tingle with Tri-R Shredding, Denver, says, "When we offer on-site shredding, most people watch carefully the first time. Then they watch over us increasingly less with each visit."

Nonetheless, security continues to be one the biggest factors some customers keep in mind when deciding between the off-site and mobile shredding operations. Joe Lee, with Mega Shred, a Houston-based company, runs three mobile shredding vehicles to guarantee to his customers that the information is being destroyed at a company’s site.

Many in-plant operators are using broadcast and recording technology to provide an electronic proof-of-destruction method for customers who request or insist upon it. (See sidebar "Keeping an Eye Open" on pgs. 40-41.)

As to the difference in time, many shredding company managers agree that the actual time to shred documents, except for extremely large pick-ups, is only a minor factor. Lee notes that his trucks "can shred as fast as you can load it."

Mark McKenna, with Shred-Tech, a Cambridge, Ontario-based manufacturer of shredding equipment, including mobile shredding units, says that the technology for both mobile shredders and off-site shredding operations has sharply improved. For mobile shredders, the ability to process more material has occurred through a series of several steps during the past few years. McKenna says that five years ago, a shredder could handle around 1,000 pounds per hour. Now, the threshold can be as much as 3,000 pounds per hour, with some trucks capable of handling 6,000 pounds per hour or more.

The jump in the processing capabilities has allowed mobile shredding companies to handle larger accounts.

A chief selling point for mobile shredding unit operators remains the ability to offer immediate proof of destruction. Lee cites a host of scenarios whereby documents to be destroyed could be compromised, including an accident involving a pick-up vehicle that could cause the documents to be exposed.

Even though some of these scenarios are unlikely, they can be among the factors weighed by companies choosing between on-site and off-site destruction when hiring a shredding company.

Operators of off-site locations have developed several ways to offer proof of destruction, including providing tapes, time stamps and other forms of documentation to guarantee that the information was shredded in a secure environment.

Unless it is a written guideline to have an employee witness either an on-site or off-site procedure, most customers, after establishing a rapport with the document destruction firm, rely instead on certification provided by the shredding company to verify that information was properly destroyed.

Keith Ayscue, with Trident Paper Recycling, High Point, N.C., feels that mobile shredding is well suited for his smaller customers. At the same time, companies that generate a significant amount of documents to be destroyed are more likely to opt for off-site document shredding.

While there are variations in the amount of material they can handle, most shredding vehicles can process around 12,000 pounds of documents and files before having to dispose of the resulting material.

As a way of improving the security of off-site destruction, Tingle notes that newer truck designs allow a collection vehicle to automatically dump bins into truck compartments without any human contact before they are similarly automatically placed on the shredding conveyor at the plant.

"The contents of a bin are dumped into a larger bin that is sealed until it gets to the plant. The plant operator, who has been screened with a background check by Tri-R, places the documents into a shredder that reduces the material to ‘quarter/nickel/dime’ sizes," says Tingle. "I have come around to believe that off-site shredding is at least as secure as on-site shredding, if not more so."

The fact that smaller customers are often more interested in mobile shredding service is why Trident Paper Recycling is finding it more important to look at investing in a mobile shredding vehicle to handle many of these potential smaller accounts.

While the larger generators can be difficult for mobile shredding, smaller businesses are a good fit for mobile operations.

Mandanaro’s company provides both on-site and off-site options. For those customers who opt to have the material shredded off site, they provide a wide range of services to the customers, including videotapes and time stamps. In fact, the company is looking at adding a new feature that would allow the customer to view the shredding procedure in a real time environment as an added feature.

While there are differences of opinion on some of the selling points of on-site vs. off-site shredding, a factor changing the dynamics of the secure destruction industry is that more companies are being asked to shred additional, non-fiber products.

For example, many customers ask about destruction of videotapes, CD-ROMs, cassette tapes, microfiche, photographs and other materials. Additionally, clients request for companies to securely handle and destroy computer hard drives.

While commingling these materials in small amounts with fiber-based shred is acceptable for some companies, the overall trend is to focus on having these items destroyed at a plant.

Stephan Mandanaro, with Absolute Shredding LLC, Raritan, N.J., says that the company is finding out that more customers that have electronic media to be destroyed are looking at using a method called de-gaussing.

With this method of destruction, storage media is magnetically wiped clean. For most companies with written procedure manuals, it is usually acceptable for this task to be done at an off-site location.

While de-gaussing units can, in theory, be placed on a truck, most destruction companies are finding that locating the de-gausser at a shredding plant can allow the company to handle a larger volume of electronic material more quickly than having a smaller piece of equipment on a mobile unit.

Once all security needs are met, another factor that comes into play is creating a shredded product that is recyclable. Material that is exclusively fiber has an established market. However, if a range of other types of material need to be destroyed or shredded, throwing them into a hopper with the documents can degrade the material enough that, for recycling purposes, the value of the shredded paper becomes negligible.

What it all comes down to is what the client wants, says Mandanaro. "You have to look at the industry, the appropriate laws and the limitations and determine how the material should be handled."

The author is senior editor of Secure Destruction Business and can be contacted at dsandoval@SDBmagazine.com.