Practical conversations on carbon, soil, and water

Full transcript of the episode with host Al Levy and Scott Ledford, founder of Georgia Wood Char. Wording may differ slightly from the published video edit.

Al Levy: Welcome to the Georgia Wood Char podcast. I'm your host, Al Levy, and I'm here today with Scott Ledford, the founder of Georgia Wood Char. How are you doing, Scott?

Scott Ledford: Good Al, how are you today?

Al Levy: Great. Couldn't be better. Looking forward to spending a little time with you. today I really wanna talk about your entrepreneurial history and you know what what influenced you in the early years and how Georgia Wood Char came to be. so I don't know if you wanna kick it off, but maybe you could just tell us a little bit about your family, your background, where you grew up and and what things were like back then.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, I'm I'm one of three kids. my both my parents were both self employed. My dad was he done earth moving grading and my mom was a beautician and both self employed. So I've I grew up in that world and have pretty much stayed there the whole my whole working career is started my own businesses. first business was started back when I was a just turned sixteen.

Al Levy: So your parents were obviously very self sufficient and just self starters, really believed in a strong work ethic, I'm sure, and and that all came straight through to you.

Scott Ledford: That's right. My mom she she was a she worked a a beautician late hours a lot of times and no rainy days, no sick days. She's always in there, you know, reliable for her customers and and I I took heed from that. She's very inspirational.

Al Levy: Well, I can tell you are a product of her haircutting 'cause it looks like you're always neat and trimmed.

Scott Ledford: Well, p I get a l I get picked on a little bit. I I I I go get a haircut every Monday and I have for years and years. My mom was being a beautician, she was a she would critique my haircut quite regularly. So it was my responsibility to get to her every Monday and let her trim my hair and when she got where she could no longer do it. I found a a lady here local that knew my mom and she's cut it ever since and every every Monday. the what is the Some of the ladies that come in the beauty in the beauty shop, they they they giggle about a little bit, but they they actually respect what I'm what I'm honoring there.

Al Levy: That's sweet. So are you literally the only man in the shop? Is that how that goes?

Scott Ledford: Not no, not always. There's there's other other men that that I knew in the community that they go to the same beautician. I don't know that we've actually got like a regular just a barber shop around here. It's mainly just little pop up beauty shops, but it it's nice because my beautician, she's got a similar personality to my mom and she works hard and and I I'm I appreciate that.

Al Levy: Yeah. Well, it's nice to be taken care of and I'm sure she really appreciates your consistency and your sort of love for your mom and and the way that plays out. So that's fantastic. and your dad was out there doing what sounds like long days as well and and hard labor grading, but maybe using big machinery, is that right?

Scott Ledford: Yeah, he was a he was a military man for twenty one years, retired from that. And then he when he retired he he got into the the grading business and he build like small roads and grade house places and different kind of commercial, small commercial jobs and stuff he would do. But a tough life that grading. It's tough life. In the area of the state that we lived in. We back then we got a lot of rain. It's not like it rained every day through the summer, so it was very, very difficult to make a living at that. F I I but

Al Levy: So you it was harder to do your work in the rain or I mean back then I'm sure and maybe less so today, but you were just out in the open on a greater now they got climate controlled you know, units that you don't have to worry so much about, but back to

Scott Ledford: We had we had climate magnification is what we had. So it it wasn't it was no comfort in it at all. It was open cab. If it was hot, it was ten times hotter on that machine. If it was cold, it was ten times colder. It was it's it builds a little grit and character, I guess, when you get to run that older equipment before you get to run this plush stuff t that you have today.

Al Levy: Did you get proficient with the equipment as well?

Scott Ledford: I loved it as a kid. They they used to joke that one of my first words as a as a baby that I would my first words was backhoe was which is a a type of earth moving equipment, you know, and I always just loved to watch a backhoe run when I was a a kid. And my mom and dad would joke around that my my first words was not mom or dad or anything friendly, it was just like backhoe, I want a backhoe and that's that was my thing. So yeah.

Al Levy: Yes. I love that. My first word was armadillo.

Scott Ledford: Well you didn't mess around. You just went straight for the tough one. That's nice.

Al Levy: Nope. Right right for the hard one. I don't even know where that came from, but that's what I was told. so at some point you started up some businesses of your own, I take it, right?

Scott Ledford: Ha ha. I did. When I turned I worked with my dad in the summers until I turned sixteen and at that point I started a a little business when I was in high school called Scott's Pressure Washington and I would I can remember back when I if I had a job right after school, I would just drive my my big van to school and d do my classes and as soon as I'd get out I'd go pressure wash a deck or a house or whatever it was I was doing. And there was a few of the local People that was in the grading business like my dad and they would a few instances I can remember, they would call the school and they would tell the school, I need him now. I need him to come wash this equipment now. And they would let me out of school to to go wash this guy's radiator out so he could keep running. It was it's just cool that how things how much different things are today than they were back then.

Al Levy: Yeah. Yeah. In a in a sounds like a close knit community and everybody knows how important your role was. so

Scott Ledford: Everybody knew everybody, you know, kids still got in trouble just like they did, but you had instead of iPhones with cameras on you, you had every neighbor in the on the street had an eye on you. So you if you've done anything you you mom knew it before you got back home, you know. You're not getting away with it. Yeah.

Al Levy: Yeah. You're not getting away with it. You had surveillance. Yeah. well, I I appreciated those times too when I was young, just a neighborhood full of kids and unlike you, I got to play some games. It sounds like you were working mostly, but yeah.

Scott Ledford: It was a a lot of a lot of work and but I've appreciated and and learned a lot over the years by the the path that I've taken. I don't I don't I don't begrudge it a bit.

Al Levy: No, not at all. I think it served you well. what I've seen over the years with entrepreneurs is they tend to have started very young. Like most of them that have that DNA, were doing it i you know, as soon as they could and in various ways. And yes, the lemonade stand, but beyond that, you know, it was always something mowing lawns, shoveling driveways, you name it, and it sounds like you you came from that cloth.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, I I can I have to say I c I can't deny that one. I I just I love it. I love building the companies of even then with Scott's pressure washing actually turned into Scott's exterior designs further down the line. We started doing landscaping and that sort of thing. So it's things change and you kinda change with it and learn and grow.

Al Levy: Did you sell that business off or close it down when you when you moved on to the next thing?

Scott Ledford: I ended up shutting it down. so there's obstacles obviously when you start a new business and the young people don't have all those answers. And so it it got to to be a little more difficult financially to run it and I needed to I need a little more education. So when I restarted I was a lot more prepared.

Al Levy: Right. Yeah. Okay. So what what was the follow on to Scott's pressure washing?

Scott Ledford: So from Scott's pressure washing, we went to Scott's Exterior Designs and in the summer that I got out of high school, I was awarded a a landscape contract for a big nursing home down in down around it's Lawrenceville, close to Atlanta. And I basically lived in that nursing home for like five months and landscaped. The whole grounds. Me and I had some my friends from school. They would come down, we'd s sat down and we'd we'd work all day and then have pizza delivered to their our nursing homeroom and hang out for lunch. We'd we eat lunch with the the older people and we s made friends with them and it was just it was fun. I mean I looked back over my shoulder and it was just like a fun time. We learned a lot and got to know people and, you know, of course

Al Levy: Yeah. How great.

Scott Ledford: Picking and joking and cutting up with and they would you'd be working, you'd look and their little wheelchairs would be set up in front of the the window and they're just watching you go at it, you know. So

Al Levy: Yeah. You were the entertainment for the day and it sounds like they loved hanging out with you.

Scott Ledford: They did. I mean it was it was refreshing to them, you know, 'cause they had somebody neutral there that's not looking over at everything that they're doing and of course coming at with some with some humor and joking with and picking out People love that at the end of the day. They like to be, you know, put a smile on their face and go on. So i I enjoyed that time. It it was a long time down there. I'd only go home maybe every other weekend. I would work straight through 'cause so much. It was such a it was like ninety something acres and we had to

Al Levy: Yeah.

Scott Ledford: Touch on about all of it. So there was a lot of work, a lot of grass to sew and stuff to clean up. So it's it was a fun project for me.

Al Levy: That is a b a big opportunity. What a great I mean, I most people could work their whole life and not get a an opportunity that big and it sounds like you landed it pretty early on.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, one of my really close friends, he was he helped me work on that project. His name is Sam, and that's who my son's named after his is after him. And he stayed that whole s summer with me down there. And it was f funny because he was just he he wasn't graduated. He was eleventh grade going into twelfth grade, but his parents let him stay with me down there as just a graduating senior, and you're you're older. But his parent his parents let us stay down there and he helped me the whole time. And a year or so back me and my wife and his wife had went to a function and afterwards we were sitting around a fire and just talking and and reminiscing and h he probably spent half the night talking about all the fiascos that me and him got into when we were down there working and it it was it was fun to to go back and look at that and listen to it.

Al Levy: Yeah, special times. so I know that at a certain point in time, you must have been thinking about your future, family, all those kind of things, and that probably created a shift in your entrepreneurial trajectory.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, I'll so I'd worked for a guy that for a l for a little while that built communication towers. He re recruited me to do that and I had some experience through Scott's exterior designs. I built a couple of substations for the power company, not the electrical part, but the structural part and foundation part, fencing and all that kind of stuff is what I'd done for And so I had a a knowledge of that. So they recruited me to come in and build these communication towers. Up in St. Louis and I done that, for a for a good I don't know, maybe maybe three years total. And then we just didn't really see eye to eye on how people needed to be treated and how the business needed to be run and I didn't like the travel on top of that. So it was a pretty easy choice just to stop. And then from there, I come back and just picked up a few little odd jobs until we got married and then I decided to To start doing the communication tower myself. So the company that I was working that he was working for actually come to me, tried to recruit me as an employee. And I didn't want to do that 'cause I knew what it it it would entail. but then they ultimately s offered me that if I would start a business, they would keep me busy. And they had done that for close to thirty years now.

Al Levy: Wow. What a great opportunity. And it sounds like you pushed back in the right way and and got what you wanted, instead of compromising.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, it was it was tough. I mean, I had told when even when they offered me the opportunity, I said, you know, I'm not in a financial position to even start a company. I knew what it took. I knew what it took financially to to get it off the ground. And I just took a took a chance, went to a bank and they loaned me the money on the signature to get it started. And it wasn't much. It was tight and tight budget. Half of it went to Tools and the rest of it went to materials and when that was gone, it was gone. There was nothing behind it. And so we started the business in June of ninety nine, I guess.

Al Levy: Just living on the edge. that bank loan to you based on who you were, it sounds like your relationship and kind of a a a personal loan, right? Not or maybe it was a business loan, but wasn't secured by anything. Is that safe to say? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Scott Ledford: It was not secured by anything. Didn't have nothing to screw it with. It's just a a good handshake and yeah, I'm gonna pay you back.

Al Levy: Yeah, that's when banking was done a little differently, for sure. Well, they had a belief in you and that paid off. I'm sure that that note was gone in pretty short order.

Scott Ledford: [Short passage omitted from this transcript pending review.] From then on I never looked back. I was always strategically kept our funding. And we've I've always been one that's put w a lot of the business proceeds right back into the business. I didn't take a lot out for personal use, so just kept r trying to grow it and my theory behind it was is to grow it to a point where I had some had provided myself more securities with it, right? It'd make it not so vulnerable. So I'd would branch it out and offer different services and stuff like that. And I've done that and s continue to do that to s to some degree to this day. Just not on the scale that I used to do it on.

Al Levy: Very conservative. That's the right approach. I think that's the safe approach and the one in which you know, you're gonna weather whatever comes your way, 'cause cash flow is the most important aspect really of surviving a business. And and if you're not careful with that, you can have all the work in the world, but it's gonna be hard to get from A to B. So it sounds like you approach that right.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, cash flow was cash flow was definitely tough the first couple of years. But the print payment terms of that company, even though it paid well, the terms was pretty extended. You know, I would see constantly see ninety to hundred and twenty day terms on the money. And that was early on that was very, very difficult to obstacle to overcome. Once you got past it, it really didn't matter. I mean, once you you were planned for that and your your finances was set up that way.

Al Levy: Well. Mm-hmm.

Scott Ledford: It it doesn't matter, you could operate and then we continue to grow more and more.

Al Levy: That's great. you were involved in citing cell towers and and kind of the growth of that industry at at a perfect time, right? Like it I I'm guessing that the heyday, yeah.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, I was in the I was the heat in the heat of it. So I'd done a a bunch in St. Louis. I've done a bunch up the Carolina coast. I've done them in Texas. Pretty much everything Texas East and say kind of eliminate Illinois and Missouri and just say south of Kentucky across that southern s corner is that's where we pretty much have focused. Now we've worked

Al Levy: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott Ledford: All over the United States to some capacity at this point, pretty much every every state. But then when we were doing full blown construction, ground up construction, it was mainly focused in that the South East Corridor.

Al Levy: Mm-hmm. Yep. And I bet you saw a lot of different types of sort of geographies, like were you working on mountaintops and building tops and everywhere, right?

Scott Ledford: All the above. I mean we would downtown Atlanta I've put I've been on all the high rises. I've probably been on top of that high rise on a ladder at some point, trying to to mount a antenna or something. mountaintops, they wanna put them towers right up on top, you know, whatever. probably probably Central Texas was the toughest place to work and anybody from Texas ever hear this, they're gonna Agree that their rock is the hardest and I can't let nobody tell me any different. It was so hard it would actually when you would be busting it it would have like a blue tint to it like the ocean. It was beautiful to look at for me being out here and our rock don't look like that. But the hardness of it was miserable because I'd send spend hours and hours and hours. 'Cause in back then in the cell phone tower industry you didn't use blasting agents. You had to

Al Levy: Huh.

Scott Ledford: Basically hammer it out with hydraulic mechanisms or whatever, but you couldn't blast because they didn't want to deal with the fractures and whatnot. And I remember that one site out there in Central Texas is my goodness, that thing was hard and it was rock. May they might have been four inches of topsoil, six inches on top of that rock, and then it was rock the full depth I had to go, which was like ten or twelve feet down in that rock. It was it was tough. And but it was To your point, is it really neat to see the different geographies and t in Tennessee, not to get too long winded, but in Tennessee there's these caverns in the rocks. And there was one time we we drilled for the drilled the hole for the tower foundation and started pouring concrete in it and it wouldn't fill up. It just kept going. And so we ended up filling the thing up with a

Al Levy: Yeah.

Scott Ledford: Product called a flowable fill and then redrilled through the flowable fill to stop all the frack where all those voids were at where all the concrete was going. So it's super neat, super cool stuff and stuff you remember from now on and how to address it moving forward.

Al Levy: Wow. Amazing. Well, I'm sure on the one hand it was really interesting to see this great country and all the different you know, locations and you probably saw a lot of really beautiful sights. I know that working on them and being in them are two different things, but what an opportunity to just travel and and soak it all in.

Scott Ledford: The people. I mean, the geography was great, but you the the people, you remember the people. I mean, that one site that I'm complaining about how hard the rock was in Texas. I can't complain too much because the owners of the property, every night I would be out there still busting on that rock and the the they were f German, German descent, and they would send me a

Al Levy: People.

Scott Ledford: Homemade, fresh, hot cookie and a big glass of milk. And in the middle of the you know, it just had got dark and they would he would see him with his little flashlight. He would walk out through there and he would bring it to me and I would turn everything off and eat my cookies and talk to him for fifteen minutes or whatever. And then he said, All right, get back to work and he would go on his way. But you know, I d we traded Christmas cards with him for until they passed. They were great people.

Al Levy: Wow. Yep, it is about the people. that's one thing that I can tell. It's very important to you in terms of who you are working with and kind of the nature of your relationship with your employees. I can I've already felt the connection that you have with them and how important their safety and well being is and And and it does seem like you really care and that makes a big difference.

Scott Ledford: It it's everything. And I I think it's the biggest measure of wealth that there is is how you treat people and how people view you. I think that's the the one thing that a balance sheet, the balance sheet don't go to your grave, right? So but that does. I mean, that's the people that's gonna be looking over you when you're when your last last day comes. I mean, how you treat how you how you've treated everybody and responded. I to me it's like the most important thing.

Al Levy: Mm-hmm. That is a great characteristic. at at a certain point I know that you started sort of a secondary business related to MetroSite and the cell towers that you were building out around the fabrication of many of those parts that you were using. And can you tell us about how that came about and and and why?

Scott Ledford: Yeah, around two thousand late two thousand one, two thousand two, the business was still pretty young. We were living in a little small house that I'd built and it had a attached a garage or workshop, if you will, and we were just having a hard time getting products, pieces and parts specific to to that industry. We was having problems getting them in a reasonable time to match our workflow. So I decided to try to start making some of those parts myself. And ended up I wasn't too bad at it and could could could make everything that that I wanted. And that kept growing and then I started I was doing it at night just myself and supplying the company what I could and we'd still have to buy supplements, but then I ended up putting some employees in there and had them start learning how to do it and and making the parts. And then it just got to a point to where, you know, it was maybe this needed a To go ahead and morph into a full blown s business separate of the construction side.

Al Levy: And you're I'm sure when you started you were making a lot of these parts by hand. but I've seen a little bit about how you operate today, it looks like there's been a big evolution in the manufacturing of those parts. Is that safe to say?

Scott Ledford: It was it was heavily labor intensive on the front part. all the machinery that we had was extremely manual. There was no CNC, there was no nothing. It was just manual and guides and jigs and stuff that I would make in order to to you know, 'cause the products had the parts had to be reproduced at a pretty pretty close tolerance. So you couldn't just put holes wherever. It had to be right. So I'd make jigs and stuff and try to work my way through that. And then it just got to the point to where I felt like it could be more. Me and my wife was sitting in the office talking and I said, you know, I I think that I can wholesale these products out to some of our suppliers. And she was she was on the she was concerned that we would disrupt our relationship if they knew that we were making the parts too. And I felt like it was worth the chance to take. I felt like it there was a way to back out of it if it didn't, you know, upset in any way, which it didn't of any anybody that we dealt with. It never upset any. So we had that little short conversation. Well, I just turned around in my chair and I just dialed them right then. I didn't wait. I didn't postpone it. I didn't study about it. I just caught and was basically told that we was making the parts and that, you know, liked making the parts and wanted to make more parts. Really didn't want to get in a competition with really didn't want to have sales staff out there in competition with really just soon supply them our whatever we could capacity wise. And I'd say within a just a few days we had our first PO from and we still make parts for to this day.

Al Levy: Well, I'm sure your experience with all the cell tower build-outs really helped you understand the nature and importance of those parts and you probably saw ways in which you could produce them better or as as good, if not better. so it would seem to me that you probably had a really strong understanding of what was needed and and how to deliver a great product.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, I understood the use more because we were we were installing them, b basically producing them and installing them. So we could make little tweaks to to their maybe to their designs, and then we would try in the field. If they worked well, then I would just share share it with the with them. So that like they were getting some free R and D and which benefited both of us and they would sell more product if we make this little bit of a Tweak to it, then it was superior to maybe what something somebody else was simp selling similar and it just helped drive those their product lines and which would end up help driving our sales as well.

Al Levy: Yeah, that's a great value add. that idea of sort of replication and iteration and just always making it a little bit better and a little bit better every time and eventually I'm sure there were labor savings to be had which probably benefited the whole ecosystem and so great to be at the point of entry with those with those parts.

Scott Ledford: Yeah.

Al Levy: Well good for you. That I mean, in the end really at that point you were running two businesses and my assumption is two separate crews and just

Scott Ledford: Two yeah, everything was separate. The only thing that we shared is that some of the people that worked in the that I had with that point when we we built up to where we had actually AR people and AP people and data entry people and all that kind of stuff. And once we got up to that point, some of those roles would share between companies and the APAR would kind of share roles. The data not so much, but the other Folks can so we try to use the synergies between the companies the best we could, which is is a nice in concept, but it's it can be very challenging. Mm-hmm.

Al Levy: Tricky. Yeah, no doubt. well, one thing led to another and it over time it looked as if you couldn't stop at two companies. you had more going on in your head, more ideas, more opportunities. how did how did that evolve?

Scott Ledford: Well, we've we were the construction side was focused on installing generators for backup power on for the communication world. And we've done literally thousands of them across the US. and that was all kind of post Katrina, the hurricane. after that happened, then they rolled out a plan to do a shared generate generator project, which I helped design. And then once We done that then we were kind of setting in a position to to help them execute that plant. So we not only supplied or delivered and installed the generators, we also supplied kits for other contractors where they would have everything that they would need to go out and install this generator. So the customer would buy both and then just hire the laborer to go install it for any ones that we weren't doing. And that worked really well. But then it started playing out. And then It come to an abrupt end, just out of the blue. one of the major carriers just kind of shut their funding off and when it did, it kind of put us on our heels. And at that point I was like, you know, we've been traveling for years. I've got guys that's been working for me for a long time. And, you know, I would kind of quietly poll them to kind of see what they wanted to do, if they liked the and every one of them was the same response. You know, we love working for the company. We'll like Everything about it, but the traveling gets to be a lot sometimes, just being away from family and and all that. So I wanted something that would allow us to focus on keeping everybody home every day.

Al Levy: Mm-hmm. Yep. That's a that's a big adjustment, I think, per you know, in terms of the perspective of from the way in which you worked and the nature of that work, and then how can you sort of reinvent things to keep these great people employed. And working with you and but staying home with their families and so how did you approach the thinking on that?

Scott Ledford: Well, I kinda there's I have a mindset that you leave stuff better than you found it, right? That's kind of the way I s view life. I view everything that way. If I'm if I'm if I'm doing something, I want it to be better than the way when I get there. If I if I borrow a tool from you, I'll and and it's not sharp, when I give it back to you, I want it to be sharp. You know, I I want it to be like I don't want to loan something to him. He's just gonna wire it out and give it back to me. No, I wanna, you know, like it when he gets it because it comes back nice, you know, it's whatever. So I kind of apply that to everything and and I've always had a a big interest in the environment and horticulture and that sort of stuff has always been in the front of my mind. I just was never truly in a position to to be able to go down that road. And when I was Looking to try to get the guys back in, something that was just like hammering on me was recycling. I felt like recycling was something that could could make a difference and especially in rural communities. You know, larger big cities, they have those benefits, but rural communities do not. So I come up with a plan to build a recycling center. But before I could do that, I needed to understand what commodities was in this local Waste stream on the C and D side, which is con construction and demolition debris, right? So I w needed to see what that looked like. I could pull research papers on the state and different areas, but my gut told me that there wasn't accurate to what rural Georgia would be producing in comparison to what, say, you would get in midtown Atlanta. So I started the roll off first and then every day those trucks to come in In the evening, the drivers would draw up a can for me. And if it come off a construction site, they'd drop a can and before I would leave and go home, I'd get down in there and st dig down in it and see what was there, just looking and just getting an understanding. And once I got a a good picture of the commodities that I felt like I could extract from it, then I started building a plant around that. And that's when I started bringing in, you know, some different salesmen and having conversations about what their Equipment could to could benefit me, how that could benefit me.

Al Levy: I wanna go back to something you said that you had an early interest in horticulture. and I'm fascinated by that because, you know, I know that y you were landscaping and I think that probably contributed to your interest in horticulture. And you know, I'm just wondering if you can flesh that out a little bit and and tell me where that interest came from and what some of those early projects looked like.

Scott Ledford: Well, there's one man that that'll always be able to have that tagged on his shirt is that there was a I had a teacher, his name was Steve Cabe. he was my horticulture teacher. And he still visits me to this day. We still talk. we've got a great relationship and I've been I've been out of I've been out of high school a day or two there. I also it's it's been a long relationship, me and him. And so I thank the absolute world of him and his his wife was a science teacher. I had her as well. She

Al Levy: Yeah.

Scott Ledford: She very much fostered my love for horticulture in her class. And they're just a great family. But when I started taking his classes and and really started learning stuff there, I started propagating azaleas at my house. I would just take cuttings off my dad's azaias and and root them and then we'd plant them somewhere else and had Azaias everywhere. And absolutely loved everything about it. I just never could Truly get a handle on being able to have it for myself and make money at it or make a living at it. Some people do do it and do very well. I never could configure it for myself. And land was at a premium in the area that I live, land was a big issue and you gotta have some you gotta have some land to make that work profitable.

Al Levy: Mm-hmm. But it's another I mean it kinda highlights that how much you love the environment and nature and I don't know, just everything on this earth. so great that you have that connection and it sounds like you've had some gardens over the years and and raised all kinds of things, probably giving them away to family and neighbors. So even though you haven't done it for a living, you've been you've been getting your hands dirty, growing things.

Scott Ledford: I still have a little I still have a little greenhouse at my at my house now and it's all hydroponic and I like a lot I love dealing with it. It's just it's fun and it's easy and I the whole concept of hydroponic and you know, the absence of so many chemicals being applied, herbicides, pesticides, you're s you're you know, I hardly use anything in that greenhouse to control pests. I think just Maybe some nimel or something like that would be about the extent of any chemicals I'd use other than the nitrogen and and, you know, the the fertilizers that I put in the tanks. But it's I grow some lettuce and some peppers and stuff like that. And and it's just a few plants, but it it yields so much it's that I can just I'll just give it out to different there's no way that we could eat it all.

Al Levy: Just really efficient, huh?

Scott Ledford: Very, very efficient at per acre over anything else. Yeah.

Al Levy: Yeah. Well, I love the systems that I've seen out there. there's a company in Vermont that I got to tour that was doing some vertical hydroponics with lettuce and I was just amazed because it was a building with a lot of height and everything just went straight up and you know, there was only a few feet between, you know, sort of one elevator of lettuce and the next one and it was just fascinating to see the density and the You know, the various stages that the lettuce were in, in that facility.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, the one I like the most is the the float tanks for the lettuce. It's they're great. They're whoever come up with the ideal is is kudos to him because or her or whoever. But you basically at harvest you're taking like it's everything's staged, right? So today is harvest day. And so you take fifty plants off for harvest and you package them.

Al Levy: Genius.

Scott Ledford: Well then you go back to the front of the line, front of this it's looks like a big lazy river for lettuce. And you that you go back in there and you you put fifty more plants in there and you just push and the water allows it to push right around. So the next harvest is setting right at the packing area, ready to go again. And this is like if it's a sixty day cycle, then that whole length of that thing is d broken up into sixty parts and that's all you can it'll only produce one sixtieth of its capac every day. So it's Pretty pretty cool setup and it don't use much water and it's typically done indoors with artificial light. So the days so I'm saying sixty days. Sheep those guys may be doing it in forty five in that environment. So it's very efficient. But it's really cool.

Al Levy: Probably the happiest lettuce in the world that just get to float down that lazy river and and grow. Yeah. So so that history that you have and that passion for horticulture and plants and and your passion for the environment and finding ways to give back sort of all led to this idea of a recycling center and

Scott Ledford: That's right. That's right.

Al Levy: And it sounds like you had some experience just understanding what the flow of construction materials and debris were, but at some point you were like, I'm I'm gonna give this a go.

Scott Ledford: Yeah. So we we done all the grading for the facility with our own people. We didn't hire any of that out. The only thing we hired out was to have the concrete poured and the buildings erected. We handled all of our electrical in s in-house with our own staff, which was a made it a very efficient. And then the design was based around robotics, which some people Don't agree with robotics. They don't think they're as efficient. Some people think that they're great. I'm on the great side and I have my reasons. they worked very well for me. they learned very well. if you if you done your maintenance, they learned what they were supposed to do and they would continue to do it and they wouldn't forget. They showed up every day. The maintenance on them was very slim. So I enjoyed every bit of that. And had I not done that at the beginning, timing wise that was falling in During the COVID era. And so travel was very restricted with the the robots was manufactured in Finland and the technicians from Finland couldn't get here. So we were trying to FaceTime with technicians in Finland that couldn't speak English very well and trying to communicate to get these robots working. Ultimately these two fine people from Finland went into a thirty day quarantine.

Al Levy: Man.

Scott Ledford: Past that, come here and work for two weeks and got me fully functional, and then had to go back into quarantine for another thirty days before they could before they were able to go about their business. And the sacrifice that they made to me was just that was I'll always be thankful for it. And they were super nice, very knowledgeable, everything went went great. But the system was was made to where you could

Al Levy: Wild. Okay.

Scott Ledford: You could fill this this system even if the robots wasn't working. The system had a capacity that would hold. And if you wasn't in a position to fill, you were in a position to empty the system through the robots without any input material because you had storage that would last you probably four to six hours and processing. So it was pretty efficient from that standpoint that I could run it either way. With that caused additional challenges. So we'd come up with a lockout tag out system for that that we're very, very proud of. That that when you shut any part of the system down, individual would have to go, one individual with a key would have to go in and put a key in and release the lock and then turn on whichever side of the system or the whole system of whichever way you're running it and to get it back going. And with that, there was, of course, alerts and stuff like that. But my point of telling you this is that. That's something that's being adopted by other recyclers because they seen how how much safer it made that, you know, if you're sitting there and your a recycling line shuts down a lot because you'll have things get hung up, because it's all different shapes and sizes. just different reasons you have to stop it. And you have to start and stop it many times throughout the day. Well, if you've got somebody trying to clear a a breach and somebody else Goes in and just hits the button and starts it, then somebody could get hurt very easily. So this eliminated that. So it's look, we didn't have any problems with it and we used it for form and function. So it we didn't have any issues with anybody ever getting hurt while doing that.

Al Levy: Okay. That's amazing. That's quite a track record. so this really was state of the art, not just in terms of the robotics, but also in terms of safety and you know taking care of your employees. so you must have been very proud of it. It sounds quite unique and and really groundbreaking in many ways. But I understand you suffered a essentially a catastrophic disaster, if you will, and and busining business ending scenario. You wanna walk us through that?

Scott Ledford: Sure. Yeah. So about three miles from our facility there's a a large lithium ion battery manufacturer. And they had sent about six hundred of these lithium batteries concealed in a load of trash that got dumped at my facility. And we got dumped out. We didn't see it. We didn't see in it. There, you know, these They're they're only about the size of a l a legal envelope and a maybe a quarter inch, three-eighths inch thick, but they're about the size of a legal envelope. And so when they hit, they they card. You know what carding is? Where you like you take a deck of cards and you throw it on the table to kind of spread out. It's called carding. So that's what happened with these batteries. They card it out under the trash. When he dumped them, they just kind of spread out. Well, when the guy dumped it, it kind of in

Al Levy: Yeah.

Scott Ledford: Blocked the entranceway for a trailer to get out of the building. And my loader operator went to move it just to scoot it over about 10 feet to get it out of the way and kind of tighten it up a little bit. And when he done that, they just basically exploded and caught on fire. And long story short, it was four days, approximately 60 firefighters and over two million gallons of water is the best they could estimate.

Al Levy: Unreal.

Scott Ledford: It didn't they never really put it out. They contained it somewhat and it basically just burnt out.

Al Levy: And nobody was hurt in the incident.

Scott Ledford: No nobody was hurt. It was we were very, very lucky with that.

Al Levy: Boy, it's that's such negligence on the part of this company and it sounds like, you know, the worst kind because it was deliberate, not accidental. and I don't think they were fully thinking through the ramifications of that. so what a what a sad scenario really for you and everyone who worked there. To be fully fully functioning and proud of everything one moment and then to have it just vanish.

Scott Ledford: Yeah, it was a it was definitely a a kick in the shins for sure. Very t very, very difficult. Tearing it down was very, very difficult. Cleaning it all up and getting ready to build it back was very, very difficult. Once we got over that and we started seeing it come back together, it was it started easing off a little.

Al Levy: Yeah. Yeah. Very emotional. So as it started to come back together and you're getting your wheels turning and some momentum going, you then find out that maybe this isn't moving forward as you thought.

Scott Ledford: Well, we got the building back up and got all the concrete repaired from the fire and got ready to start ordering the the equipment to go back in it the second time. so backing up for just a second is that the there was obvious there was a court case. So we were in litigation for about sixteen, eighteen months. Ultimately they ended up we had caught destroying some evidence and Make misrepresentation to the judge. I told judge lies every way you want to word that nicely, it's that's what happened. And when they realized that we had evidence to support that, then they paid a judgment and and it was over. So then at that point is when we wanted to go ahead and and add start adding equipment to the building. Of course before you get the equipment, you want to make sure that your insurance was in place, right? So Nothing happens again. And we made the insurance whole. We paid back every dime that they had paid us at the beginning of the sixteen months. They got that money back. And I was thinking it's just gonna be right back where we were because it wasn't a something of our fault. We didn't we didn't cause this issue. Somebody delivered it there and and positioned it there, but the insurance company didn't see that, sit that way, and they up my premium almost Four times of what it was previous. And there was just no way that financially that I could that I could absorb that. And my only option at that point was to was to to sell it.

Al Levy: Mm hmm. Yeah, that is not uncommon in the insurance industry. It does seem like the minute you need it, then your premiums go through the roof and and it becomes very hard to continue on with that company or in that same way. and I'm sure in that environment there aren't many insurance companies that will insure something of that nature.

Scott Ledford: Very difficult. Very difficult to find that insurance company to underwrite a recycling facility. And now the data has started increasing so much because of lithium-on battery fires. not just from battery manufacturers. I mean, this mine was kind of an isolated case that I was actually able to track back exactly where and whom.

Al Levy: Mm-hmm.

Scott Ledford: The the battery come from. Well, a lot of these recycling facilities are burning across the country because they're coming from them vape pens, cordless tools, scooters, it just some of the most ridiculous things are burning some of these plants down that people are throwing in the trash. And that's a that's a difficult obstacle for that industry moving forward for sure.

Al Levy: It does seem like there's a rechargeable battery in almost everything now.

Scott Ledford: Everything, yeah.

Al Levy: So it looks like continuation of that business doesn't make sense. It doesn't make financial sense anymore. And and yet you have this employee base you care very much about, and you know, you're trying to figure out a path forward. what were you what were you thinking there?

Scott Ledford: Yes, so so my my first option was just to sell the real estate that the recycling plant was on, sell it, take whatever I could get there and whatever I had left out of the settlement and just call it good. And then that's not the way that works. So the settlement would have been reclassified as as capital gains and would be taxed as such, which would have been catastrophic in my situation. So Financially. So I done some research and got some a some a legal opinion on it and was able to do a recommendation to do a 1030 what they call a ten thirty three exchange for c commercial properties. so then I my search had to be I needed to figure out what would classify as a light kind exchange from a recycling facility. And it was a little bit of a A little bit of a putt on the front end to try to find something, but just by chance, one of the salesmen that had worked with me on the recycling was at my at my farm and it was wintertime and we were sitting by the wood heater and we were just feeding the wood heater and just talking about stuff. We had become great friends. And while we were sitting there, he gets a call. He said, wait a minute, he said, This is about biochar. I've got to go out to the give me a few minutes and I'll Talk to this guy. I'm sitting there thinking, biochar, what I mean, charcoal, what it what is it? You know, I didn't really have a whole lot of knowledge about it at the time. And when he came back he got he got fifty questions and my my interest peaked real quick, very quick.

Al Levy: Mm-hmm. That probably turned out to be a long evening of Stokin' Wood. Yeah. well that's talk about serendipitous. sounds like it was meant to be, right time, right place, right topic. so what were next steps?

Scott Ledford: It did. Yeah. So we had some conversations with a few different manufacturers of the equipment and then I was able to or he was hooked me up with the owners of Biochar now in Colorado and we was on a plane probably within three or four days of that conversation. We went out there and walked the plant, met the owner, the patent holder, and It was definitely the route I wanted to s take because it was it was the highest quality char out there by far. the process was computer controlled, it f highly monitored, the the quality was very much repeatable. it saw small backs, so it made everything very much repeatable. from a carbon footprint, it probably had one of the lower carb most low goodness. Probably one had one of the lowest carbon footprints of any of the equipment out there. So that was that was the things that attracted to me at first.

Al Levy: Well, like everything, there's a big spectrum of low quality and high quality and everything in between. And the same could be said for how people run their businesses. And I know for you, you know, quality and delivering what you say you're gonna deliver, is everything. And I'm I'm sure you would not have even considered this or moved forward if it wasn't The highest quality process and the highest quality product potential. so it sounds like this is really a great fit. Like not only are you doing something that's environmentally oriented and and you know in line with your belief system, but it's also state of the art.

Scott Ledford: It's definitely state of the art. I mean the In comparison, there you know, there's a lot of other ways that you can achieve biochar, but every one of them has they don't check every box. Every one of them has a fault. maybe temperature driven, it may be exposure driven, it may be oxygen, getting more too much oxygen to it. So it you don't get the same pyrolysis reaction, all kind of stuff. So there's a a lot of different Process it. I I'm going to be on a call with a guy to India tomorrow and he's got a continuous flow equipment that he's marketing and so some of those may have a higher carbon content, but in doing so you lose the positive and negative charge within the chart itself. So then it doesn't bind as well. But it's not saying that they're Product, it's definitely not useless. It has its use, but it can't, it doesn't have a as broad a spectrum of of being able marketability. The marketability of that product is not the same as the product that we produce. We could go to just almost every one of these usage sectors and still be able to supply them the same product that I'm going to supply some other non-related business where theirs are going to be a lot more focused. So they need to have If you they go down that route, they need to already have that customer lined up or they won't have an outlet. They better have that market going into it or they're not gonna make it work.

Al Levy: They have to have a market. Yeah, they have to have a market. And you have the benefit of being able to cross over into many different market spaces and all at the highest levels. so that makes it a really versatile system, and a and a versatile product line. Yeah, that's amazing. well, Biochar now, you know, basically has a has a system or a process that

Scott Ledford: Yes.

Al Levy: Is is patented, is that correct?

Scott Ledford: It's a it's a patented system. they got their own patented computer and algorithms that run the the whole KIMS from start to finish. James Gaspard is the patent holder and he's been at it for probably 17 years. I think he's been making char through this system and a bunch of research and development has went through by them out there.

Al Levy: That's amazing. And so what a great partnership and opportunity for you. It's super exciting to see you at this point, this sort of launching point. and it'll be fun to come back in our next podcast and talk about the various products and uses and discover just how versatile biochar can be.

Scott Ledford: That's right. Looking forward to it.

Al Levy: All right. Well, thanks so much, Scott. I appreciate your time today.

Scott Ledford: Good to see you, Al. Thank you.