Growing a recycling business from scraps

Jorge Luis Chàvez took over Port Washington recycling plant Ozaukee Iron and Metal in 2016. 

At that point, “it was all me,” he said. Since then, he’s built a full-time staff of five workers and four part-time employees and invested in an industrial can crusher and truck scale.

“We used to have a couple of customers a day. It has been growing over the years,” he said.

The expansion has been hard-won. Chàvez said that when he started there were three nearby recycling centers, all of which have closed. 

Ozaukee Iron is located between large operations in Milwaukee and Fond du Lac, that have bigger machines and more automated processes, which makes competition on cost impossible.

Commercial customers have to load their dump trucks with scrap anyway, so driving a few more miles for a better price is usually more cost-effective.

“I try to be as fair as I can in pricing,” Chàvez said.

Even so, Chàvez has worked over the years to create a regular customer list including plumbers, electricians and industrial companies.

His team processes scrap aluminum, brass, stainless and other metals as much as possible with an alligator shear and butane torches.

Chàvez said the market for different metals often swings up and down — a tough obstacle when dealing with fixed costs like employee salaries. 

He doesn’t try to time the market and avoids storing metals to avoid clutter and potential fire risks.

“There have been times of three of five months where it went really low and at that point, we don’t even want to pay for scrap,” Chàvez said.

Chàvez has worked in recycling since 2001 and was the manager of a drive-through center before purchasing Ozaukee Iron, which was then called Port Recycling.

Without that experience, he said, “you wouldn’t make it.”

Running a recycling plant requires knowing how to identify and value different scrap metal pieces and managing customer relations with both sellers and buyers, he said.

Even with the business’s success, it can be tough, Chàvez said, which is when he thinks about his original dream.

He had Ozaukee Iron’s motto planned before he purchased the company: “Recycle today for a better future.”

It’s a purpose that informs the not-as-lucrative parts of his business, such as accepting cardboard for free, buying aluminum cans and taking objects garbage companies won’t accept like furniture, refrigerators and microwaves.

Those things don’t make much money for Ozaukee Iron but are a service to the community, Chàvez said.

The cardboard gets crushed and stored until there is enough for a full trailer load of 43,000 pounds.

“You get money — it’s a little and not a lot,” he said. “It’s so it doesn’t go to waste.”

Refrigerators, freezers or other objects with Freon have to have the chemical properly removed.

“We have to put the Freon in tanks. Do things the right way,” he said.

He sells some of the types of Freon and pays to dispose of others — it’s about a wash cost-wise, Chàvez said.

Chàvez said he usually can’t do much disassembly on electronic devices. 

He ships circuit boards and sometimes whole devices to Chicago for advanced salvage, which involves smelting for valuable metals like gold.

“We recycle as much here as we can,” he said.

Chàvez installed a truck scale last year to weigh loads of scrap metal. Before that, he would borrow the scale at neighboring Schmitz Ready Mix.

A couple of years ago, he purchased a crusher that compacts aluminum cans into small rectangles, allowing far more cans to fit into the semi-trailers.

He owns the crane in the back of the center, which he used to rent.

“In this industry, you never stop buying things,” he said.

Chàvez has built his staff gradually over the years. He said he hasn’t had much difficulty finding employees, since spending time outside — even in frigid winters and hot summers — is appealing for many.

“A lot of people like to work outside,” he said. “Instead of being a factory with four walls, they like to feel free.”

Chàvez said he prides himself on having an organized facility.

“Every day I get a lot of people saying it’s one of the cleanest plants they’ve seen,” Chàvez said.