Holding His Own

When Collins founded PRD, he offered off-site shredding services to his clients, but in late 2004, he also began offering mobile services. "December of 2004 I bought a used box truck and generator and offered on-site shredding with my 5-hp shredder on the truck."

Nearly a year later, PRD was able to finance the move from Collins’s garage into a larger building, enabling the company to begin baling shredded paper and cardboard with a used down-stroke baler. But this new location proved to be temporary, with Collins starting construction on the company’s current facility in January of 2006. In addition to the new 40-hp shredder with tipper and conveyor, PRD also installed a used Max-Pak horizontal baler. Collins also purchased a new mobile shredding truck for PRD. "On-site shredding with a 5-hp shredder is tough at best, so in November of 2006, we added a used hammermill shred truck that took us from 500 pounds per hour to about 4,000 pounds per hour," he says.

Today, PRD services nearly 300 customers. And Collins has been able to add staff in the form of route driver Patrick Stone and office assistant Amy Eastlick. Collins is also talking about adding a sales person to his staff before the end of the year.

The company has also added electronic media destruction to its service offering. "Electronics and [electronic] media come with destroying information," Collins says of his decision to accept these materials for destruction. "We want to offer our service area all forms of information destruction."

As Collins sees it, electronics destruction represents a large part of PRD’s future plans. PRD recently became an authorized service provider (ASP) for GigaBiter, Norristown, Pa., a provider of electronic destruction services. Eventually, Collins says, he would like PRD to act as a hub for GigaBiter, aggregating loads of electronics and electronic media that the company would then ship on to GigaBiter for destruction.

Collins says he likes GigaBiter’s approach to electronics because the company destroys electronic media and hard drives rather than sanitize them. "I felt I needed to go with the destruction aspect; that’s what we do," he says. "I wasn’t crazy about the liability aspect," Collins says of data sanitation. "We have a big government presence here, and that would never work for them."

In addition to the total destruction aspect of GigaBiter’s service, Collins was interested in exploring a partnership with the company because it recycles all of the resultant material, he says. This dedication to recycling was part of the reason Collins got involved in the document destruction industry to begin with.

Prior to starting PRD, Collins was a long-haul truck driver. "Always an entrepreneur at heart, I owned and operated many trucks over the years and soon decided my fortunes lay in a different but familiar industry," he says. "I had experience with machines and route sales and driving, so this industry became my diamond in the rough."

Since Collins holds a CDL, he drives PRD’s shred truck on service calls, while Stone drives the company’s box truck, picking up consoles and bins to be shredded off-site. PRD currently services one route per day, with anywhere from 10 to 20 stops per route. "We shred 60 tons per month on average," Collins says. Many of the company’s customers are on a monthly or bi-weekly schedule, though PRD does have customers that require service weekly or twice per week.

PRD’s service area currently covers a 125-mile radius from its plant. The company was pushed to this distance by existing customers who asked for PRD to service their additional locations. To build density on these routes, Stone allocates his return trip to sales calls, with the goal of visiting 10 potential customers on average.

"We try to be masters of the soft sell," Collins says. "Most of our leads come from referrals. They are nearly convinced to use us when we get there."

The company owes its positive word of mouth to its focus on service,

"Moreover," Collins adds, "PRD is the only independent, Kentucky-based records destruction service in Kentucky with NAID AAA Certification for on- and off-site shredding."

Getting AAA NAID Certified was a strategic decision for Collins. "It is my opinion that information destruction companies will face much higher standards to comply with when bidding on government contracts," he says. "AAA Certification through NAID will be a must for all bidders."

Collins does not like to budge on the price of his services, saying that he believes NAID Certification holds value. "I am proud and grateful to have it. As far as I am concerned, that has put us in the ball game," he says. "If you want security and you want it done right, we have to charge."

In some cases, PRD is charging more than other companies in its operating region, Collins says. "I went to the NAID Convention two years ago, and I felt like I was about to get schooled. What I found out is that I am getting a great price," he says. However, he adds that some of his competitors have additional charges.

As for customers who may not know what NAID AAA Certification involves, Collins says the designation still helps to put PRD in a good light by showing that the company has gone to additional lengths to ensure the security of its customers’ information.

Recently, PRD added a fuel surcharge to help soften the effects of higher gasoline prices, though Collins says coming to the decision was a struggle. "Gas prices are killing me," he says. When Collins set his prices in 2003, fuel costs were not as much of an issue. "Most people have been understanding," he says of the surcharge. "I thought people would be more understanding paying a fuel charge than raising the rate."

Fuel costs are also prompting Collins to take a closer look at routing. "I know for a fact that we are not as efficient as we can be," he says. "While we don’t miss stops, I know we can be more efficient with the actual driving." Collins is currently shopping for routing software, which he believes will "pay for itself" in terms of the efficiencies it could bring PRD.

Efficient routing will grow more important for PRD in the near future. Collins says the company would like to expand into the Nashville-metro area, as PRD’s current business is already taking it into that area. "That is going to be very new to me, because there are probably four or five big hitters there already. But, we would like to have a route there," Collins says.

Despite his plans for expansion, Collins says adding additional offices is not in the cards yet. "We already have plans to expand this facility," he says, indicating the company’s current plant. "We’ve been in here a year, and we already need to add on. The thought has occurred to me that down the line, I may be able to buy somebody’s route and their truck in Nashville or somewhere like that, but I would still like to operate out of here, I think."

Collins says plans for PRD’s expansion are a work in progress. "I’m trying to get a real plan together. Our lender is willing, and that has freed me up to try to plan this out the right way."