Joe Flood is a trash guy. It’s in his blood. He finds treasure in other people’s trash. And he has been doing this since he first started working in the wood products industry over 30 years ago. Some of his customers include some of the biggest pallet companies in the country as he helps them identify ways to get more out of wood residuals. Joe Flood’s company, Meajm Group Services, offers consulting and project management for recyclables from wood to plastic to metal.
Joe Flood explained, “I’ve been doing this since I was five years old, literally. I could operate the back of a garbage truck when I was five. I grew up in the trash industry. My great-grandfather went into the garbage business almost a century ago.”
Flood sat down with Pallet Enterprise and spoke candidly about his experiences including a few horror stories about chickens going crazy and local municipalities forcing pallet operations to get rid of their grinders. Knowing a few key things now can save a lot of headaches.
Pallet Enterprise: What are the top misconceptions about wood waste and waste recycling?
Joe Flood: The number one misconception is that all wood is recyclable. A close second is that all wood waste is the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. Customers want specific types of wood. Some want more virgin material than recycled items, such as pallets, especially if it was a painted pallet. They want wood residuals, branches, virgin wood that can be processed into the right size. A common use for pallet material is animal bedding or mulch. But there’s all different grades of bedding.
Some people only want sawdust. They don’t want anything that’s chipped. Other customers don’t mind small chips. When I say ‘small chips,’ I mean three-quarters or smaller. The guys who use it for cattle bedding, you can have it up to an inch or two, depending on the region. Horses, as well, have some restrictions. You can’t use black walnut in the blend; over time, it can kill horses.
Pallet Enterprise: If you are a pallet company, what are the top factors to consider when it comes to putting in a grinder?
Joe Flood: In some instances, you’re talking about not only putting in a grinder. You’re talking about putting in a hammer mill as well. This is particularly true for markets that want very fine material, such as animal bedding. You may combine a grinder with an auger, and there may be a dust collection system that you have to factor into your cost model. You may also need an air system to blow the ground wood into a trailer.
If you are going to make your own mulch, you may need a colorizer for colored mulch.
You’ve really got to figure out which market you want to go into before you get the equipment. You can’t get the equipment and then figure out the market. It just doesn’t work well like that.
Think, ‘What’s in my area that needs wood residuals or waste? Is there a big woody biomass plant nearby? What about mulch business opportunities? Dairies or poultry operations? A plywood plant in the area? How far are these waste users?’
First, you have to find out if you can even have a grinder. Are there limitations from local ordinances or even the construction of the current plant layout? You can’t just assume that you can just add a grinder. The noise and wood debris can raise concerns for neighbors.
I was talking recently to a guy from a pallet company in Arkansas. He said, “I’d rather ask for forgiveness, than for permission.” I replied, “forgiveness can get very expensive.”
At the very least you want to take something that is hurting your bottom line and make it run in the black if possible.
Pallet Enterprise: So, explain how you work with a customer to find a good market fit?
Joe Flood: I’ll look at what a company does: wood, paper and trash. I then try to find a commonality between one of the two. I’ll give you an example. I have a client in the Great Plains region where I found a guy who hauls a lot of his spent grain out of a Cargill plant. So, it’s the logistics in many cases. In this case he removes our wood waste at no cost, as a back haul. It works for him. It works for us. If you like what you have, then we try and find any commonalities and go from there.
Pallet Enterprise: When you said they’re not allowed; you’re talking about the local municipalities and zoning…right?
Joe Flood: Some municipalities will not allow you to have a grinder. Some restrict outdoor grinders. Others restrict both outdoor and indoor. Depending on the construction of the building and location of the grinder, it can sometimes sound very loud outside of the building too. An indoor grinder that uses a dock door, for instance, will require extra safety precautions such as earplugs and more employee training. An inside grinder system will usually have a lot of exterior noise as well.
Pallet Enterprise: Any other factors to consider when you are looking into a grinder?
Joe Flood: What kind of return on investment are you looking for? They’re not cheap… Don’t get me wrong. There are ways to improve your wood waste situation with grinders. I just don’t want people to sugar coat the challenges and the costs.
Maintenance on a grinder is constant. If it’s not done regularly and properly, it can get even more expensive. Those motors and teeth are not cheap. If you’re not keeping the purity of your wood, it’s going to cost you. Besides maintenance, you have to be very strict about processes to keep it as pure as possible.
A piece of metal in the wrong container can easily do thousands of dollars in damage to a grinder. You have to have a solid maintenance program with somebody who can actually do it. That’s incredibly important to consider. Maintenance involves keeping the machine clean from wood debris and oil leaks as well as regular checking of motors, belts, sharpening of the teeth, etc.
Keeping the machines cleaned and maintained leads to better operation and can prevent machinery fires.
Pallet Enterprise: There are services out there that will come in and grind on your site. What are your thoughts about those?
Joe Flood: They’re great, but can be very expensive too. It’s not something that can be done usually in large markets. There’s nowhere in the Chicago area for instance to drive up with a larger grinder, park it and spend a couple of days there grinding wood. The mess is incredible. The dust and fine particulate of the grind goes all over the place. When you’re out in the country, it may not matter.
Pallet Enterprise: Can you explain the size requirements of grind material for various markets? What about the quality of the purity of the material?
Joe Flood: The requirements in markets change. There’s not a hard and fast rule to it. Some markets use larger pieces of wood for mulch than others. Let me take a step back. Chicken bedding is normally very small. The chicken bedding market is different from the cattle bedding market. It’s actually even different than the turkey bedding market. The turkey barns may take a little bigger grind. It just depends on which market you’re targeting.
If I’m going to sell it to the chicken bedding market, I’m going to need a hammer mill. There’s really no way around it. There’s no grind size where you won’t blow motors, for instance, that will make it small enough for the chicken market. The chicken market has to have very pure. If there’s a red or blue piece of chipped wood in there, that could be a real problem, especially red. The chickens go nuts. Turkeys, I’ve been told, are a little bit better. I’ve actually been in chicken barns on a number of dairy farms, but I’ve never been in a turkey barn.
So, purity is really essential in animal bedding, more so than mulch. You can get the occasional piece of plywood in mulch. It’ll pretty much pass unnoticed. If you put a red pallet through and you don’t get the red out in a chicken barn… All I hear is stories about how crazy chickens get, especially when they see color.
When it comes to horse bedding, no walnut. The acceptable material size is usually larger. Not a lot of people use cattle bedding, but for those that do, it’s a larger grind. Burning sizes vary as well. I’ve had stuff that they want burned at three-quarters, and a couple of sites that use 3-inch sized material. It depends on location and what they’re doing.
When it comes to purity, I am talking about removal of metal and other contaminants. One of my clients has a grinder with a double magnet. It will wipe out your credit cards if you get too close. That’s how important magnets are. If a magnet works, you literally shouldn’t get more than one or two nails per 50 tons.
Here’s a true story. There’s a bedding guy I do business with in Iowa, who sells 2-inch sized bags of wood chips from pallets, to Walmart. To other clients he sells 2- to 3-inch material from virgin wood sources. These are house brand type things. Adding something like a baffle to a grinding system can help with producing a more uniformed size for resale.
Pallet Enterprise: If somebody is going to do a quick assessment of their recycling efforts for waste materials, what are the most important questions to consider? What kind of services can a company like yours offer?
Joe Flood: I have clients all over the country from Maine to California and from Washington to Florida. I do process work for people, too. Most of my wood clients are from Pennsylvania going southwest. Recycling and third-party logistics clients are all over the country.
Pallet Enterprise: How much wood waste/residuals do you think is being diverted by the pallet industry? Does the industry have a positive environmental story to tell? Why or why not?
Joe Flood: It all depends on whose numbers you use. The National Wooden Pallet & Container Association put out a survey indicating that 95% of wood pallets are recycled. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) suggested it was only 17%. The EPA’s numbers didn’t even touch on biomass. That’s a huge disparity between the NWPCA and EPA numbers. In reality, I think the industry has a good story to tell. The EPA numbers are way low, and the NWPCA estimates may be a bit high. I’ll be honest with you; I think it’s closer to 80%.
Editor’s Note: This is the first half of a two-part interview. You can reach Joe Flood via e-mail at joe@wastemanaged.com or call 312-286-3131.
