Winning effort: in St. Louis, Cash's Scrap Metal helped clear the way for the new stadium that hosted a championship season.

Everyone likes to take part in a winning effort, especially one that is followed by millions of people around the world.

Although their role was most often behind the scenes, Stuart Block and the employees of Cash's Scrap Metal & Iron, St. Louis, can point to a clear link between their company and the 2006 Major League Baseball championship banner hanging in the new Busch Stadium.

Throughout late 2005 and early 2006, the scrap recycling company worked a rigorous schedule to transport and process tons of scrap metal from the original Busch Stadium that was demolished and cleared to make way for the new one.

"That was a special project that we were able to handle," says Block. "The project generated some 12,000 tons of scrap, including structural steel, rebar and some nonferrous scrap."

BASES LOADED

The sheer volume of the scrap involved was not the only weighty thing about the project--so was the scheduling and transportation coordination involved.

"We were running from 25 to 35 trucks per day during the peak of that project," notes Block. Such intense trucking involvement meant the company learned even more about routing, logistics and material handling than it already knew.

Block started Cash's Scrap Metal & Iron as a retail scrap operation in 1984 from a one-building location in "the shadow of the St. Louis Arch," along with one co-worker and one truck.

Block persisted through up and down markets to slowly add containers, trucks and machinery. By 1996, Cash's opened a second operation in nearby St. Charles County, Missouri.

The two locations helped Cash's obtain a growing amount of material to the point where Block had the confidence in the fall of 2004 to open a location with Mississippi River access in south St. Louis. The new riverfront yard proved critical to allowing Cash's to take part in the huge Busch Stadium project during the next two years.

As in most major American cities, when a new sports complex is built, an old one is usually demolished first or shortly thereafter. In the case of St. Louis, the new Busch Stadium, home of baseball's Cardinals, was constructed on land adjacent to the former Busch Stadium, which was built near the city's central business district in 1966.

The demolition contractor that entered the winning bid for the old stadium's tear down was T.J. Ahrens Excavating Inc., based in St. Louis. "We had worked with and had a relationship with Ahrens, but even so the company had a concern as to whether we could handle the material and keep it flowing," says Block. "But once we gave our commitment--and since we had our riverfront location up and running--we made sure we could make it work."

By carefully observing and repeating the process of picking up material at the stadium site and hauling it away, Block says his employees cultivated efficient methods throughout the project. "We went from 25 minutes to under 15 minutes to depart the stadium grounds, get to the yard, weigh in, unload and leave," he notes proudly.

The demolition job, like the entire construction project, was on a tight timetable. Contractors involved had one off-season (approximately the six months from October through March) to take down the old stadium and build the new one. It was an ambitious project timetable that was watched with great scrutiny by engineers and contractors throughout North America.

Block says the demolition portion of the job "went beautifully--in record time." He is quick to praise the demolition firm. "The entire project worked because of T.J. Ahrens' expertise. They used high-reach equipment with crushing jaws as attachments and worked as many hours per day as needed to meet the deadlines."

Cash's Scrap was spotting from seven to 10 containers on the job site during the peak of the project, with drivers "running 'round and back," says Block.

His company's involvement in the project has been a source of pride for Block (See the "Stadium Souvenirs" sidebar on page $40). It was made all the more enjoyable when the Cardinals took to the field in April of 2006 and kept playing into the late October World Series, winning Major League Baseball's championship in their first season in the new Busch Stadium.

EXTRA INNINGS 

As much of a highlight as the Busch Stadium project was for Block and Cash's Scrap, the company has remained busy both during and after the end of the project.

Overlapping much of the same time frame as the stadium project, Cash's handled the scrap generated at "two major bridge projects" in the St. Louis area, says Block. "Having the multiple yards helped us keep that material moving and get it processed and not get buried in scrap," Block comments.

In addition to publicity received from being involved with the stadium project, Cash's Scrap also hosted cable television personality Mike Rowe of The Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs," in a segment that has been broadcast several times on that cable network (see the "A Dirty Job" sidebar at right).

Away from the limelight, the company continues to serve industrial customers with the placement of containers as well as by accepting retail traffic at the original St. Louis location and the St. Charles County location. The River Terminal site processes and ships scrap from a 15-acre parcel in south St. Louis, while the company is now also processing nonferrous metals from a third St. Louis location.

The River Terminal location has allowed Cash's to have access to all major forms of transportation: the inland waterway system, the Class I Railroad network and the highway system.

Ferrous scrap is the volume leader for the company, but Block says Cash's also handles "a decent amount of nonferrous, and we'll handle old corrugated containers and plastic for our customers. We try to be a full-service recycler for the manufacturing plants we serve. A lot of them are ISO 14000 companies that are looking for a vendor who can handle everything that is recyclable."

Material is processed with a growing variety of equipment, including two portable shear/balers made by Sierra International Machinery as well as Caterpillar and Liebherr scrap handlers outfitted with mobile shear attachments made by Genesis Attachments and Stanley LaBounty.

Stuart Block, who views himself as a "small town guy" who moved from Indiana to St. Louis to chase the American dream, says he has been pleased with the path the company has been taking.

Cash's Scrap Metal & Iron now has nearly 100 employees working at its four locations.

The company's Web site notes that it maintains a high credit rating with Dunn & Bradstreet, but more importantly strives to maintain a higher rating with its customers. The company's mission: "To take care of those who work for and do business with Cash's Metal & Iron."

Block says, "The last few years have been good." He adds, "We've grown appropriately with the rest of the industry and we have expanded our marketplace as well."

In particular, 2006 proved to be a memorable year for Block. "It was an extremely exciting year with the project and then the championship," he declares. "Coming from a small town in Indiana to St. Louis in the 1980s, and then to become such a part of history, it was pretty thrilling."

A dirty job

Viewers familiar with both scrap recycling and The Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs" program could probably predict that the two were bound to get together at some point.

That point was in fact reached fairly early on in the series, and its geographic location was Cash's Scrap Metal &, Iron in St, Louis.

Host Mike Rowe and the show's crew spent some time at Cash's Scrap in September of 2005 in preparation for a segment that made its broadcast debut on Nov, 8, 2005.

"We had a company party on the night it debuted," says Stuart Block, owner of Cash's Scrap Metal & Iron.

Although Block says he tried to "bribe" the show's crew with soft drinks and ice cream, he was not chosen to appear on camera.

But Cash's Scrap employees Lance Spector, Oscar Armour and Heath McClain all appeared on segments instructing Mike Rowe on how to load railcars, strip copper cable, sort metals by grade and hale aluminum scrap, including beverage cans.

Stadium souvenirs

Being involved in the demolition of the original Busch Stadium in St. Louis allowed Stuart Block and Cash's Scrap Metal & Iron to create unique customer premiums for the 2005 holiday season,

Using pieces of steel rehar harvested from the stadium--some as thick as 3 inches in diameter, according to Block--the scrap company created unique souvenirs that it presented to customers and friends in late 2005.

"We took some of those pieces and had then] enclosed in Lucite cases and presented them as 'pieces of history' as a way to show our appreciation during the holidays," says Block.

The gifts were very well received, says Block. "Our previous gifts have included food baskets and other very nice things, but nothing created the kind of excitement as this piece of steel rebar," he remarks, "We had a customer in Tennessee who said it nearly created a riot in his office, since everyone there wanted to keep it."

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted via e-mail at [e-mail].