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Our Industry News |
The sweet smell of savings
[Read Article]
Former salesman makes mark with garbage
contract analysis company
Brian Forrester
Nashville Business Journal
Real estate broker opts for trashy new
career
[Read Article]
Jacksonvill Business Journal
Susanna Barton
Cleaning up on garbage
[Read Article]Services help companies cut down on their trash bills
Cindy Bent Findlay
For Business First
The sweet smell of savings
Former salesman makes mark with garbage contract
analysis company
Brian Forrester
Nashville
Business Journal
Not many children say they want to grow up to be garbage haulers. Paul Goode
sure didn't, but for the past five years, he has been swamped in trash on a
daily basis.
Goode, president of Waste Consultants of America, provides a service not
typically sought by many businesses. It's called waste consulting and it
provides savings to companies by monitoring their trash, calculating any
overcharges and maximizing efficiency.
At no cost to the company, Waste Consultants examines several months of
bills to see if there is an opportunity to save money. If Waste Consultants
reduces the client's trash bill, the two companies split the savings. If no
money is saved, then no money is paid.
"Nine out of 10 times, the last thing they want to worry about is trash.
Part of our service is to dig into that and make sure it's as cost-effective
as possible," says Goode. "There are dozens of components of why you're
charged what you're charged. That's part of what we help our clients figure
out."
Waste Consultants works with trash haulers to renegotiate contracts for
clients, which can sometimes be a sensitive process.
"We have a great working relationship with all the vendors," says Goode.
"From day one, there was a building period when we were a new, small company
on the block."
Waste Consultants has saved money for about 90 percent of its clients and
reduced trash bills on average by 25 percent to 50 percent. Most companies'
savings come from adjusting trash container sizes, the frequency of
pick-ups, taking advantage of technology improvements or renegotiating
contracts between clients and waste haulers.
"When you start out, you order a container and don't think much about it,"
says Wayne Oakes, president of Oakes Agency. "We learned real quick not to
take it for granted."
After Goode got a hold of Oakes Agency's trash, he was able to save the
insurance agency 50 percent of its waste bill. Waste Consultants renewed a
36-month contract with Oakes Agency to make sure additional potential
savings are taken advantage of.
Mike Cote, general manager at the Courtyard by Marriott in Brentwood,
experienced similar results.
Waste Consultants reduced the hotel's annual trash bill by nearly $1,000. In
three years, Cote estimates he has saved Courtyard nearly $5,000.
Waste Consultants oversees trash bills for several other Nashville-area
Marriott International Inc. properties. Goode is in talks to provide
services in other markets for Marriott International.
"We'd really like to pass along these savings to other sister properties,"
says Cote. "I'm sure there are many [other] companies out there that get
these bills and pay them and assume they're correct."
Nearly 25 percent of Waste Consultants' client base are hotels, hospitals or
apartment complexes, says Office Manager Justin Bradley.
Goode got into the trash business after a career in retail sales.
"I literally spent two years looking at businesses to get into," he says.
Goode considered gas stations and sub sandwich shops, but thought waste
consulting possessed the greatest opportunity after reading a Wall Street
Journal article.
Waste Consultants focuses exclusively on trash contracts. When the company
began, its services were a profitable complement to services already offered
by Nashville-based Tax Tariff Consultants Inc.
"It was good for us because we didn't audit waste at that time," says Mark
Parten, co-founder of TTC Inc.
TTC provides similar cost-saving services for companies by examining gas,
water and electric bills and property taxes. The company didn't have the
resources to provide the labor-intensive waste consulting service so Parten
partnered with Goode to provide savings to each other's clients when
possible.
"Waste Consultants immediately became a part of TTC Inc.'s client list that
it had spent seven years building," says Goode.
Waste Consultants continues to attract new business in the soft economy. In
fact, with a bear market clawing many companies' backs, Waste Consultants'
cost-saving services are increasingly welcome.
"Once we're involved, either they're going to save money or nothing
changes," Goode says.
One challenge for Waste Consultants is to continually sign contracts with
new clients to avoid riding a revenue roller-coaster from year to year. The
company renews about 30 percent of existing contracts in addition to adding
new clients.
"We're the one set of trash men that people like to see coming," says Goode.
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Services help companies cut down on their trash bills
Cindy Bent Findlay
For Business First
Are you throwing money away on trash?
Trash removal is an odd service that most businesses probably don't think
about very often. It costs what it costs, most figure, and that's that.
Enter the waste consultant. A pair of firms in the Columbus area are now
providing a service that can significantly lower a business' waste removal
bills. They say a few minutes of trash talk could pay off for many
companies.
"For most people, once they've signed a contract with a service provider,
they just forget about it because they figure it's not worth spending their
time on," says Larry Patten, president and founder of ITrac Inc., a Columbus
company that uses a group-buying model to save customers money.
"But we save our customers an average of 40 percent on their bills, and you
can spend your time doing something else," he says.
No matter how much comparison shopping a customer does, small companies mean
smaller volume to the haulers and higher rates. ITrac consolidates its
clients together and shops for service at a group rate that results in lower
rates per company.
Don't Trash Your Cash is the trademarked message it's taking to customers
all over Central Ohio and beyond. Patten says the company has grown rapidly
in two years -- from serving 50 client locations to 600.
The emerging business model for trash consultants is contingency pricing.
ITrac, for example, charges a percentage of savings generated for clients so
if you don't save, you don't pay anything.
LifeCare Alliance is one of ITrac's satisfied customers. The Columbus home
health-care nonprofit runs Meals-On-Wheels, senior meal programs at various
locations around the county and other home-health services.
"Nine out of 10 times when vendors call us, I say no thank you, but as ITrac
described their concept, it made sense," says John Petraitis, director of
purchasing for LifeCare.
"And they were able to negotiate $755 in savings a month, which was about
43 percent less than we were paying. It was remarkable," he says.
While waste was not a huge portion of LifeCare's monthly outlay, says
Petraitis, he's not going to turn down that kind of money in an economic
climate where every penny counts.
Of course, roughly half of those savings will go to ITrac, at least for the
first year of the contract, but to Petraitis, the other half is free money.
ITrac and other consultants also work with clients in other ways to reduce
their garbage collection costs beyond the group buying model. Right-sizing
garbage, for instance, can also make a big difference in the final bill.
"Every day a hauler comes out to empty a half-full dumpster, you're spending
money. In the industry, it's referred to as hauling air," says Chip Chapman,
president of Knowledge Group, a Columbus-based independent consultant and
parent company of Audit-MyBills.
Audit-MyBills works with companies to lower an array of their client's
services, including utility, telecommunications and waste removal bills.
Environmental Waste Associates, another Columbus firm, began providing the
waste consulting services for Audit-MyBills' clients in response to requests
for the service from clients.
Audit-MyBills' fee structure is similar to that of ITrac -- customers pay a
portion of savings received or nothing at all.
Environmental Waste and Audit-MyBills rely on Environmental Waste's
President John Halliday's decade of experience and connections in the waste
industry to find ways to reduce waste expenses and negotiate favorable deals
with haulers for clients.
Larry Clark, president of Made From Scratch, a Columbus event planning
company, says he wasn't surprised at the savings Audit-MyBills and
Environmental Waste were able to win his company.
"We don't just take things at face value, we do a lot of research. We
thought we did a pretty good job; we'd even bought a huge compactor to
reduce the waste stream." Clark says.
"But they were able to give us significant savings -- I think 32 percent on
our total bill," he says.
That translates to about $1,000 a year -- not an earth-shaking amount for a
$5 million a year company such as Made From Scratch, but as Clark says, why
waste money?
Both ITrac and Audit-MyBills/Environmental Waste say they focus on the
traditionally underserved small- to mid-sized business markets.
A smaller, leaner business model and less time and red tape with smaller
clients mean they can deliver savings where larger competitors don't tread.
The niche is almost virtually wide open across the country, according to
both companies.
Both already have clients nationwide and are looking to eventually expand
their reach beyond the Columbus market in the years to come.
Copyright 2007. Clear Waste Solutions