Metal Monday October 4, 2021 with Nick Snyder and Brett Ekart.
Play the youtube video and follow along with the text below.
Nick Snyder:
Another Mobile Metal Monday with Brett. I am not in our podcast room because that thing is pitch black. We have no power here in Boise today. Power's been out since 8:00, went out at 8:07. We had power this morning, but it's projected to be out until, I'm guessing most of the day from what I'm hearing. Anyway, how was your weekend, Brett?
Brett Ekart:
It was good, man. Yourself? I didn't have as fun of a weekend as it looked like as you did.
Nick Snyder:
Yeah, I had a great weekend. I got to say thank you to Drake and Wyatt from ReMatter for the invite. It was great to meet Adrian and Anthony, and all the other guys, the scrap people I met. It was awesome to meet everybody. I'm a Seattle Seahawks fan, so I was in a hostile environment.
Brett Ekart:
Yes, sir.
Nick Snyder:
But they're all really nice. They were a lot nicer when they were beating us though.
Brett Ekart:
Until the end.
Nick Snyder:
They gave me shit. That's to be expected.
Brett Ekart:
Yeah.
Nick Snyder:
It was a good time, short little trip. Me and a few people and met Anthony, who is involved with ISRI. I'm excited to get more and more involved with that.
Brett Ekart:
Nice.
Nick Snyder:
The market, though, copper's up about five cents right now.
Brett Ekart:
It started off down this morning and clawed its way back. The market in general, nickel's off a little bit. Aluminum's still staying pretty steady, steadily strong. We're getting some indications on the Ferris side that maybe that soft, down side we were looking at, maybe, this month isn't going to come to fruition, which is good. It looks like we might be getting maybe even a potentially stronger market over here in our area. I think the flow, the scrap flow, is still somewhat questionable, at least on the shreddable side. The shreddable materiel, your car bodies, tin bails, appliances, light gauge stuff, that market will be strong this month, I got a feeling. I'm not saying you're going to get a big up, but I just don't see where that market craters in the fact that there's not as much material out there as there is demand. There's some shredders out there that are pretty hungry. I feel like that's a good thing for the Ferris market. While we don't have any real solid numbers coming, I don't see any down side to it in October. At the very worst case scenario, I think you get sideways, but the way this thing is trending, it feels like we're going to get maybe even some up money.
Nick Snyder:
That's great news.
Brett Ekart:
That's where my gut is.
Nick Snyder:
I think sideways, honestly, would feel like an up month for me. I already was going in thinking we were going to be down, just from things I was reading and some people I was talking to.
Brett Ekart:
If feels like that could have been, that was the way it was leaning. I think everybody's felt like the end of this year would be strong, so I think maybe there might be some people trying to get ahead of it, trying to maybe not wait until November, December to get strong pricing. I think logistics has a lot to do with that. You're starting to see that it's hard to get trucks, it's hard to get rail cars, it's hard to get that material moved, get it to market. If anything, that's playing some role in keeping the pricing strong. The mills still have strong demand and, logistically, it's getting harder and harder to move material.
Nick Snyder:
That makes sense. I hear people that are farther away from a mill, they struggle to get the material there. I heard that this weekend. I heard people are struggling to get trucks. We're super blessed that we have United Hauling on our side. We've got that in our pocket, but if we didn't, it could be tough out there, man, really tough.
Brett Ekart:
Sure.
Nick Snyder:
If a mill can't move it, that's obviously a problem.
Brett Ekart:
It's a mixture of being blessed and also us having the foresight of knowing that transportation is a key part of our business, never hesitating to invest in the transportation side. Really, if you look at our 2022 coming up, we've got some trucks on order. 2023, we have a few more trucks on order. I think we're not going to shy away from investing in transportation. It's suited us well, it's served us well up to this point. We have a pretty bad ass team of individuals that manage that and do that for our business. It's what keeps the pipe train moving, it keeps the scrap train moving. Our transportation trucking side, that's a big part of our business that maybe sometimes doesn't get as much love, but it's times like this when we have a little more freedom than some other entities some other companies might not enjoy. It's because of all the time, effort, money, whatever we put in, to the trucking company over the years and just said, "Hey, we're not going to let somebody else's truck determine our financial future."
Nick Snyder:
Absolutely. It also helps us. That trickles right directly over to the customer. We're able to get -
Brett Ekart:
100 percent.
Nick Snyder:
Trucks under silos, trucks under rooftop units, trucks at their yard that we build on site, the crush jobs. It goes hand in hand, and even thinking about the new bailer going in in our Twin Falls yard, it goes hand in hand. We did that not just so we can pat each other on the back, it's so we can take better care of our customer. That's where it all starts. You can handle your customer's material better, and a big part of that is moving the material. If you can't move the material, you can't really service your customer. It goes right together.
Brett Ekart:
If we roll into a crush job, whether we're bailing tin in a landfill or we're going to crush cars at an auto salvage, if we roll in and we say, "Hey, we're going to smack 10, 15 loads of cars, and every one of those loads, for the most part, we're going to put on our truck and we're going to get them out of here in an expedited manner." Most of these businesses, they're not in the scrap business, they're in the landfill business, they're in the auto salvage business. The sooner you can get in there, do your job and get out of their way and let them get back to their business, the better you are off. We take a lot of pride in going in there, moving the shit in, moving it out real quick and taking care of our customers. Like you said, it goes hand in hand.
Nick Snyder:
Absolutely. What are you feeling from the PGMs this Monday?
Brett Ekart:
I anticipate them to be a little bit stronger this week. They're not starting off that way, but platinum and palladium is a little softer, rhodium's up a little bit, but it got the hammer dropped on it toward the end of last week. We're looking at this from a long term perspective, and in the short run I think we're still going to get some more bumps and some bruises. I did read a pretty positive article this weekend that said some of the supply chain issues are starting to maybe get themselves figured out in the auto industry, which, I think, is going to be a big boom for the PGMs going forward. It's just how long are you going to have to wait.
Nick Snyder:
Everybody's on PGMs, I was just waiting for that to happen. We say this every Monday, I feel like, but it's true. When that happened, I think this will come back in a hurry, man. I think [crosstalk 00:08:58].
Brett Ekart:
Oh, yeah.
Nick Snyder:
I don't know if he'll get to 30,000. I don't know if we'll get there, but ...
Brett Ekart:
People don't need rhodium 30,000 dollars to be successful in the converter recycling industry. Realistically, you just need ... you could be successful in today's market. We're proving that right now just by being consistent. Your customers that are producing those units, they're going to continue to produce them, and you just want to take care of them. This is a cyclical industry, just like anything else, it'll have its ups and downs. I guess if you have any questions, then -
Nick Snyder:
Going into October, we have a handful of customers that we told in September, "Hey, we can't get to you until this day." At the time I truly thought it might be down, 'Right now I'm this, but it might be down, do you want me to put you on the schedule and I'll just ... " They have the faith in us to, if I can give them the news, "It went sideways, I can hold that price.", they're going to be stoked, or even better, "It went up 10." Even better. That's just the long term. I tell all of our customers, "I don't want to do business with you for one year, I want to do it for 30 years, 100 years." I want us to be connected on the long term. I'm not thinking of the short term. I'm going to, A, service number one. B, make sure the price is right, make sure the price is taking care of them, too.
Nick Snyder:
Always service. If you get them on the schedule and you say, "I'm going to be here a second week.", you communicate that, or, "I'm going to take care of you on the pricing once we figure it out." If you're just honest, "I don't know what it's going to be. I think it might go down.", because that's really what I thought.
Brett Ekart:
You get much farther in life if you're just honest with what the situation is.
Nick Snyder:
If you tell the truth.
Brett Ekart:
I don't know care what business you're in.
Nick Snyder:
I think we covered most everything that I can think of. Anything to add?
Brett Ekart:
I think we're good, man. This should be a good week. The weather's supposed to be beautiful at least until the end. We'll be out there doing what we do, trying to recycle some more scrap.
Nick Snyder:
All right. Thank you, everybody. We'll see everybody in a week. Have a good week, Brett.
Brett Ekart:
All right. Take care.