Latest / Trash Talk / 35 Years In the Trenches - Where the Landfill Group Began (Part 1)

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35 Years In the Trenches - Where the Landfill Group Began (Part 1) · Trash Talk

• 0:00
  Do do do do do do.
• 0:02
  Welcome to trash talk.
• 0:05
  Welcome back to Trash Talk.
• 0:06
  Eric Stuehrenberg, here is your host.
• 0:08
  We've got William Brinker, CEO.
• 0:10
  We've got Andy Murrer, Advance One director.
• 0:13
  And then we have April is in.
• 0:15
  I want to say HR, but that's not right.
• 0:18
  Onboarding Champion Well I am really excited to be here today as you guys are.
• 0:24
  You know, Eric, I know you've only been with us for a year and a half as far as a Landfill Group employee, but you've been supporting our business for well over a decade.
• 0:30
  Andy, I've literally known since he moved to North Carolina his freshman year of high school.
• 0:36
  And April has been on our team and a champion for like 12 years now.
• 0:41
  11011 going on 12.
• 0:43
  Yeah, but yeah, it's awesome to be here.
• 0:44
  I know the topic of our of our conversation today is that our that we've been in business for 35 years, which is kind of wild to say.
• 0:52
  And we're here in a new facility and a new podcast room that we haven't even quite set up yet.
• 0:57
  This is exciting to be here.
• 0:58
  Talk about celebrating our business, all the accomplishments like where we started, where we are today and where we're going in the future.
• 1:06
  Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 1:07
  Absolutely glad to have you.
• 1:10
  So being 35 years, I mean, 35 years ago, where were you 35 years ago?
• 1:15
  Yeah, 35 years ago.
• 1:16
  I was seven years old, drawing circles on the baseball field, you know, not paying attention to the actual sport.
• 1:24
  And I can remember very vividly as my dad, Bill, was starting the business like landfills have like, had been part of my DNA.
• 1:33
  Like I joke around that I was born in a landfill, but like, realistically, you know, my dad started messing around in the landfill space before I was seven years old, before 1991, when he started the business.
• 1:43
  Yeah, we would detour.
• 1:45
  And if there was ever a hill, if we were driving to the beach or we were going anywhere and we saw a mountain that didn't belong, we stopped.
• 1:52
  If we saw an Olympic torch burning, we stopped.
• 1:55
  It didn't matter what time of day of day it was or where we were.
• 1:59
  You know, we were always exploring landfills.
• 2:02
  So like from an early age, I got to learn about this industry, about the space.
• 2:09
  You know, my, my senior exit project was a model, full 3D model, landfill like working model.
• 2:16
  We put gas wells in, powered it with, with propane, like one of those mini propane tanks, you know, built little all the gas wells had, you know, toy caterpillar equipment.
• 2:30
  I mean, it's just literally been part of kind of every step of my memorable life.
• 2:35
  Yeah. So go back one more step.
• 2:38
  And your dad started the company what year?
• 2:42
  91. 1991.
• 2:43
  But what got Bill into the landfill business?
• 2:47
  Nobody says, hey, I think I want to go into the landfill business.
• 2:50
  Whether it's out of high school, out of college, maybe besides you.
• 2:54
  Yeah.
• 2:55
  But it's I mean, that's just not a normal path.
• 2:58
  So what got what drew Bill into that that business segment.
• 3:01
  Yeah.
• 3:02
  Well, for those that know Bill, everybody knows that he's not normal.
• 3:06
  Now he got his the idea or his entry into the space from my Uncle Russ.
• 3:12
  So Russ Patterson Patterson exploration.
• 3:15
  He was a geologist and had a drill rig and, you know, studied rocks.
• 3:20
  Right.
• 3:20
  So drilling in rocks and soil science and all these types of things.
• 3:24
  And there was a explosion on a small closed landfill in Raleigh, North Carolina, just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.
• 3:32
  And my uncle was called in with his drill rig to drill relief wells around like the perimeter of the landfill to reduce the gas pressure.
• 3:42
  So what had happened is gas had migrated into a maintenance building, and the guys went in to turn the shop lights on on Monday morning.
• 3:50
  And, you know, there was a big explosion.
• 3:52
  Nobody died. A few people were hurt.
• 3:54
  My uncle got the call because, you know, he was in an adjacent business with a drill rig that could relieve pressure.
• 3:59
  And that was like the at the time, in the late 80s.
• 4:02
  That was a common method for just mitigating, you know, gas from building up was put perimeter wells on.
• 4:08
  Give it a path of least resistance.
• 4:09
  Give it give it somewhere for gas to go.
• 4:11
  Believe that that experience, you know, resulted in a conversation over a Thanksgiving gathering with my entire family.
• 4:19
  And my dad was like, oh, that's a cool idea.
• 4:22
  And they kind of got together and they actually started an early business called Teradyne, and they were doing soil remediation and drilling wells and relief wells on landfills.
• 4:32
  And my uncle really was like decided he didn't like really playing in trash that he like, like geology.
• 4:41
  So they dissolved that.
• 4:42
  And my dad started running with it and formed Enerdyne in 1991.
• 4:45
  And I'll say, we've never looked back.
• 4:47
  We just have continued to grow on and keep adding businesses over the years.
• 4:51
  And leading with the chin made lots of mistakes.
• 4:54
  One of those mistakes was a really, I say what felt like a huge mistake at the time.
• 4:59
  On a construction job, we bid a piece of equipment and we way underbid it and we won the bid.
• 5:06
  We won the job and it was bonded.
• 5:08
  And that is effectively where Advanced Biogas Systems was formed as we go timeline maybe that we can we'll rewind slightly before that.
• 5:17
  So again Enerdyne in formed in 91 by my father in 2005, he sold the vast majority of his assets to Detroit Edison DTE Biomass.
• 5:28
  They co-developed several project, but they ended up buying his interest out of kind of the vast majority of his assets.
• 5:34
  Andy started working with me when he was a freshman in high school and part of the Dream Team.
• 5:40
  We'd run around and do maintenance work on Wells, fuze pipe, do all kinds of stuff just in the landfill gas to energy space.
• 5:47
  And that, again, that happened in 2005.
• 5:49
  I graduated college in 2006, almost didn't go to college because I was like, I just wanted to do constructions.
• 5:56
  But, you know, we had been doing for a number of years in high school.
• 5:59
  But in 2006, we officially branded Advance One to be the construction division of the Landfill Group.
• 6:05
  And that was kind of twofold.
• 6:07
  My dad was actually in a non-compete with DTE and really on the development side of things, not necessarily on the construction side of things, but it was the opportunity to go ahead and form the construction company that I had always kind of dreamed about doing.
• 6:18
  Andy graduated a few months later, has been working with me ever since. And, we were in Greenville, South Carolina, on the inner landfill, just installing a collection system and a flare station for that county.
• 6:33
  It was a big job, and that's the job that we underbid, a component, which was the flare station, and we were able to build it ourselves.
• 6:43
  We built it in a field on my grandfather's farm, met spec, and actually operated that project until about a year and a half ago.
• 6:49
  And I'll fast forward a little bit just so we finished timeline here early on in the podcast.
• 6:53
  So recapping a little bit 91 in Enerdyne 2006, A1, 2008 slash 2012 Advanced Biogas Systems.
• 7:04
  And then in 2022 we officially formed Jade Biogas Engineering, which is the engineering arm of the Landfill Group.
• 7:11
  But that ties back to 2008, because the engineer of record for us on that particular project was Dan Waineo.
• 7:18
  And it took me that many years to convince Dan to come work with this full time engineers can be really slow to make change.
• 7:26
  Let. Me.
• 7:26
  Talk about it.
• 7:28
  And he came on board and that was leading that division as our director of engineering.
• 7:33
  And, you know, those four legs collectively, you know, embody the Landfill Group, along with all of the different project entities that we develop.
• 7:42
  Nice.
• 7:43
  So you mentioned Advance One, Andy you're the director of Advance One and you're leading the charge.
• 7:53
  Tell me a little bit about what Advance One does and what you do.
• 7:56
  Advance One is the construction arm of Landfill Group.
• 7:59
  So yeah, we were established to support originally our internal own and operate projects, you know, well, field expansions, drilling wells, installing vacuum piping.
• 8:09
  Basically just get as much gas out of the well field as we can.
• 8:12
  They kind of expanded and has developed into more over the years.
• 8:16
  We kind of play in the third party marketplace.
• 8:18
  We serve customers really all over the country.
• 8:20
  Yeah. Nice.
• 8:22
  So I'm going to switch it up just a little bit.
• 8:24
  So you guys met in high school April, how did you get mixed up into this?
• 8:30
  Into the Landfill Group?
• 8:31
  I found the Landfill Group on Craigslist.
• 8:34
  Oddly enough, there's one other person that I know of that worked for another one of Will's companies that also came from Craigslist.
• 8:41
  They were both pretty great.
• 8:42
  So maybe you're on to something.
• 8:44
  I'll say I still hire people to this day.
• 8:47
  Or try to from Craigslist.
• 8:49
  It's not as popular as it was eleven years ago.
• 8:51
  I started as just kind of a front desk answering phones, and then moved into the accounts payable portion when I worked there.
• 9:00
  I also helped a lot of times with A1 or just anything and everything.
• 9:05
  I feel like that's how I've learned.
• 9:06
  Everything that I have learned is just jumping in where I can.
• 9:09
  So then I was given the opportunity to move into HR fully about three years ago, and that's where I'm at now, working with the hiring people and onboarding them and and getting the right people to say.
• 9:21
  Yeah, I know when when I came on board, you were instrumental in making sure that I had everything that I needed.
• 9:29
  Every question was answered, which there was a lot, and it probably still is.
• 9:33
  But no, that was it was a, I say, a very unique experience coming from a corporate level world to a family owned business.
• 9:41
  How's the saying go?
• 9:42
  It's, people don't care what you say until they know that you care.
• 9:45
  And it's like everybody in this business, you can tell that that level of care is there.
• 9:51
  And that was one of the very first places that I exhibited that I was like, wow, this is just, just has a different feel to it.
• 9:58
  And that was that was it made my onboarding experience that much better.
• 10:04
  That's good.
• 10:05
  Good fun thing.
• 10:06
  Like April is like a huge champion of our business.
• 10:09
  Yeah.
• 10:10
  And I think it's amazing to see the growth from starting from the Craigslist ad to the, to the, you know, receptionist to like, seeing a need and filling a need to just embracing the company and our values and in the culture.
• 10:25
  And I believe that I'll say starting from where she did to where she is now, like the growth throughout the whole piece, you know, sitting on our leadership team.
• 10:35
  And Crystal said, going through lots of leadership training.
• 10:38
  I mean, you did a a two year training program, man, like creating more Aprils is part of the goal with the Landfill Group family.
• 10:49
  Like, how do we get people to, like, really absorb who we are, what we do and why we do it? Yeah.
• 10:55
  And when we get people to buy into that, to buy into our values, our vision and our mission, like the lift becomes easier.
• 11:03
  And there's still a lot of lifting to do.
• 11:05
  Like every day, I think we all know that.
• 11:07
  It's like, man, you would think that, like, things would just be easy.
• 11:11
  They're not easy.
• 11:12
  Like, they're just not.
• 11:12
  Doesn't matter how much effort we put into it, they're just not easy.
• 11:15
  Like, life isn't easy.
• 11:15
  Anybody that tells you that it is, I would be cautious to believe them.
• 11:21
  Right.
• 11:22
  Because we do a lot of things well and a lot of things right, with a lot of good intention.
• 11:26
  And without good people like I, I don't know why people would want to come to work.
• 11:34
  Yeah.
• 11:34
  So just surrounding ourselves with people that embody our values is huge.
• 11:39
  Yeah. So thank you all for doing it.
• 11:41
  So from day one to today, that's hard to say.
• 11:45
  What do you think is one of the biggest changes from then to now?
• 11:50
  Probably just taking the time to be consistent putting down processes over the last five years or so, that's been a huge thing across the whole entire company.
• 11:58
  But the leadership team has really gotten with their departments.
• 12:02
  Onboarding, for example, it we used to kind of wing it Andy knows like we would just what day works for you.
• 12:08
  When can we get this gone.
• 12:09
  And we've taken the time. Sign here.
• 12:12
  We've really taken the time to document processes and just really have everything panned out.
• 12:17
  And the work waits to get the employee in the correct way.
• 12:21
  And that's been a really big help.
• 12:23
  And I think when we haven't had to hire for A1 in a long time, and that's who we used to hire the most for.
• 12:29
  I think people are coming and stay in and we're taking that time to to make those decisions.
• 12:35
  I think we can officially say that everybody within A1 has been with us for over a year. Yep.
• 12:40
  Which is really cool.
• 12:41
  Which is a tough business.
• 12:43
  Yeah. I mean like the the like you're always on the road.
• 12:45
  Yeah. Rarely at home living out of a hotel.
• 12:48
  Living out of a truck, working in a landfill.
• 12:51
  You know, which I'll say isn't the most desirable work atmosphere.
• 12:55
  I mean, I'm okay with it, you know, it's like, you know, I’ll eat lunch on a landfill.
• 13:00
  No problem. But it's hot, right?
• 13:02
  Like, landfills aren't allowed to have trees, right?
• 13:05
  Because trees.
• 13:07
  Penetrate the cover. So you got no shade.
• 13:10
  Arguably is not the rosiest place to to to be smelling all day.
• 13:15
  It's a tough job.
• 13:16
  Yeah.
• 13:16
  Like it is a tough job in the road warrior, I believe is like a dying breed.
• 13:22
  Yeah.
• 13:23
  So having good people and good fit and good relationships is, like, critical.
• 13:30
  So 20 years you've been with the Landfill Group, right?
• 13:34
  22. 22. Well, full time.
• 13:37
  Full time. Okay.
• 13:38
  It goes further if you count part time, you know, back in high school School, say 22 years.
• 13:44
  Yeah.
• 13:44
  What one of those first projects look like compared to a project today?
• 13:49
  We were both a lot skinnier.
• 13:51
  Yeah.
• 13:56
  I was, I was thinking about that on the way here and yeah definitely a lot skinnier.
• 14:00
  But I mean you may have witnessed us without our shirts on, you know, trying to get a suntan while we were working. Yeah.
• 14:07
  Which is absolutely unheard of today.
• 14:09
  Yeah. Yeah, you get high viz long sleeves.
• 14:11
  Safety culture has changed.
• 14:12
  Well, it was high this until we got a good team.
• 14:15
  Yeah, exactly.
• 14:17
  There's a lot more planning involved.
• 14:18
  I would say, from the time there's conception of of project, the red tape, the time that there's actually boots on the ground, you know, the process.
• 14:29
  As far as, like, how our construction gets installed.
• 14:32
  You know, the trenching, the HDB pipe fusion really hasn't changed a whole lot, which is kind of neat.
• 14:38
  You know, I've learned it one time to have been able to carry that wisdom on.
• 14:42
  There's certain techniques that, you know, you can really hone in on, but overall, that's that's one thing that's really stay the same.
• 14:49
  Landfills all kind of look the same. Yeah.
• 14:52
  But yeah, I'd say the biggest thing that you might witness is, you know, just a much bigger safety culture.
• 14:58
  Okay.
• 14:59
  Man, I'd say like 22 to 25 years ago, it was a little bit more of the Wild West.
• 15:06
  We tried to make work fun every day.
• 15:09
  And I'll say in probably some of the most subpar conditions.
• 15:13
  So we didn't have any money like a as, like individuals, you know, we were getting paid eight bucks an hour and working 90 hours a week because, man, if we could get 12 bucks an hour overtime, that was huge.
• 15:24
  Yeah. And we'd sleep four deep in a hotel room.
• 15:29
  Will’s a very, wiggly, heavy sleeper.
• 15:32
  Yeah, but we would share beds, you know, like, for four guys after working in a landfill all day. I'm not.
• 15:39
  I'm not asking who's big spoon and who’s little spoon.
• 15:41
  But it was, like, stated in nights in, which is like, you know, the bottom of the barrel budget hotel, you know, like 30 bucks a night, you know, but it was like, man, that's like how we were trying to figure out how to make money in this space was like, yeah, pinching pennies everywhere that it mattered.
• 15:58
  And even in those types of conditions, like we were still having fun.
• 16:01
  We were hanging out at night.
• 16:03
  We were up early getting the work done when we could.
• 16:06
  I mean, we'd have like the landfill gas games, like we'd make up our own Olympics where we'd be like Fuze and Pipe and see who could run with the pipe to get into the weld or the fastest.
• 16:16
  We'd, you know, safety things aside, you know, we knock on wood.
• 16:21
  Don't think any of us ever got significantly hurt.
• 16:23
  Not not from the West.
• 16:24
  This is definitely. Before we even knew that you had to report an incident.
• 16:27
  If there was an incident.
• 16:27
  Yeah.
• 16:28
  Like, but we'd get on, like, excavator buckets and be doing pull ups or put our legs in it and be doing crunches to see who could do the the most number of crunches.
• 16:38
  Who can run to the top, top of the hill.
• 16:41
  This is when you all weren't as skinny as you are today.
• 16:44
  Correct. I don't think I'll be able to make it to the top of the hill.
• 16:46
  Okay, we were way skinnier then we are now So then I got.
• 16:51
  I was thinking that. We look pretty good.
• 16:51
  You workout everyday.
• 16:53
  But yeah, man, we had a lot of fun doing building the business.
• 16:57
  So I'm scared to even ask here, but what's one project that stands out the most amongst some of the others?
• 17:05
  Well, you mentioned one earlier.
• 17:08
  Greenville.
• 17:09
  I've got another one personally that stands out the most to me. Out Robertson County.
• 17:15
  Oh, yeah, I.
• 17:17
  Adopted dogs, adopted a puppy.
• 17:19
  So that was really cool.
• 17:21
  I feel like I feel like I learned a lot the most on that project as well.
• 17:24
  You know, just super green.
• 17:26
  Still very early on in my career.
• 17:29
  You know, we we messed up a lot.
• 17:32
  And that's one thing that I will say, shout out to Bill.
• 17:35
  Like he would show up, you know, with ice cream or popsicles or whatever to support them.
• 17:41
  I remember the ice cream.
• 17:42
  And, you know, there was certain points that we actually, like, really messed up and tore into a liner.
• 17:48
  You know, but he would always come and, you know, always offer solutions and try to help work through it.
• 17:54
  You know, not only the construction standpoint, but even the engineering perspective of that project where, you know, the the design, they had header header and lateral piping that was just really undersized, believe at the time it was engineers first landfill gas project as well.
• 18:09
  So, you know, I remember sitting in a room with the project owner owners, representative engineers and Advance One, and we kind of hashed out a different method to deliver vacuum efficiently to the very backside of the landfill.
• 18:25
  I remember the tension in the room and everything from the owner's perspective.
• 18:31
  But, you know, we worked through it and we helped to make the project work.
• 18:36
  So the engineer record was Smith Gardner.
• 18:38
  They are huge allies of ours.
• 18:39
  So like while there was a there was tension on that first project.
• 18:43
  And I can remember at 27 years old kind of being a little bit of a hot head like, you know, felt like, you know, most young kids, you know, everything.
• 18:50
  I didn't there were certain things that we butted heads on, but we all came out stronger at the end after the project.
• 18:56
  And like, they're one of our preferred engineers to work with now.
• 19:00
  And we have, like, a great working relationship with them and even that landfill owner.
• 19:04
  Like, he came to our, open house at Anson County just a few weeks ago, and it was like it was greeted with a hug.
• 19:12
  You know, so, like the relationships that, like, we've built from 20 years ago still stand today.
• 19:19
  And I think it forged and even gotten stronger because of those tensions and because of how we handle things.
• 19:24
  Yeah.
• 19:24
  When you handle conflict and you're in the trenches together, you you now form that bond and you can work together.
• 19:30
  And that trust is built to be able to carry forward.
• 19:33
  Yeah. For sure.
• 19:35
  Thanks for listening today, folks.
• 19:37
  We could talk about the early days for hours, but we'll save the rest for part two where we get into the culture, the values, and what's next for the Landfill Group.
• 19:43
  Don't forget to like and subscribe to make sure you don't miss it.
• 19:46
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• 19:50
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