Serving recyclers to the core

Ken Ely Jr. started Ely Enterprises more than 40 years ago in 1981 and has been around recycling equipment even longer than that.

“I’ve been around baling equipment since I was 13,” says Ken, the owner and president of Lorain, Ohio-based Ely Enterprises. In his teen years before he started his own company, “I helped my father install units on weekends and school breaks,” he recalls.

The knowledge and experience Ken gained is one reason Ely Enterprises has been named 2022 Distributor of the Year by Georgia-based equipment manufacturer Harris. Ken says, however, it is far from the only reason.

He lists three core values that have helped the company not only survive the ups and downs of the recycling industry, but excel. To be Harris Distributor of the Year in 2022, Ely Enterprises was measured by its revenue and the number of units sold. “In this case, we were No. 1 in both categories,” Ken says of his company’s 2022 standing.

The core values are: 1) team first, 2) can-do attitude and 3) commit to greatness. Regarding that final value, Ken says a key phrase for him and his team members to keep in mind is, “Whatever you do, do it best.”

The can-do attitude involves being “passionate about a strong work ethic,” Ken says. Such a work ethic may not be unique to Ohio or the Midwest, but Ken says he is glad to draw his workforce from that part of the country.

The second and third values would be difficult to instill without the first, Ken says. He describes his philosophy as “team before self,” which, for him, means valuing employees as much as valuing customers.

Ely Enterprises and Harris customers will get the best service they can, Ken says, if his team members are committed to accomplishing the same tasks and solving the same problems to benefit each other and, ultimately, the customer.

The company’s customers are extremely satisfied with the results. After confronting a catastrophic baler failure in 2021, Keith Wilson of Tennessee-based AFS Recycling turned to Ely Enterprises to navigate the challenge. “Ely Enterprises was able to get us up and running and quickly making new bales within a six-day window of removal of the old baler followed by delivery and installation of the new Harris Gorilla,” Wilson says.

Ken, who has spent 25 of his years in the business as a Harris dealer or distributor, says winning recognition for his 2022 efforts is a source of pride for him and his team. The entire team had its work cut out for it last year, with Ely Enterprises seeing a significant boost in topline revenue compared with the prior year.

“Our peers in the Harris organizations are all excellent companies,” Ken says. “It’s the competitive nature of all of us to want to be number one. There is a lot of satisfaction for our organization to be recognized as number one.”

Such success may be hard to duplicate, but Ely Enterprises can look to its core values and know it has as good of a chance as any other distributorship in 2023.