As the 2011 busy season draws to a close, economic and environmental factors are aligning to encourage more liquid waste carriers to add grease trap service to their business plans.

First, tighter regulations across the country are forcing the restaurant industry to take its waste streams more seriously. Consequences for ignoring required grease trap service intervals are serious and health departments are more diligent about inspecting these businesses. For that reason, the vast proliferation of local and chain fast-food restaurants are less likely to slack off on necessary trap maintenance.

At the same time, continued high fuel costs are rekindling a market for processing and extracting as much power as possible from yellow and even brown grease. Businesses that create grease, pumpers that clean the traps, and processors looking for new sources of raw material are beginning to see the value they recognized in these wastes in the days of $4 gasoline pump prices in 2008. Only this time, waste fuel entrepreneurs are more convinced the high prices are here to stay.

Providing grease service presents its own set of challenges as well as emerging opportunities. First, processing and disposal of the byproducts that have no value can be a red herring. Many municipal treatment plants, faced with dwindling capacity and aging equipment, are turning away more exotic waste streams or increasing dumping fees enough to take away a pumper’s incentive to haul anything but septage.

Handling grease also can create issues with a truck fleet. Pumpers who can’t co-mingle wastes either need additional vacuum trucks and drivers to handle the different workloads or face rising labor costs as they juggle pumping jobs involving incompatible loads. Taking on these logistical issues can be a big enough hurdle to keep small business owners from diversifying into new, lucrative areas.

With all of these issues swirling around, we wanted to feature a few companies that have made grease a cornerstone of their businesses. That’s what we did in this issue of Pumper. We hope that glimpses into the inner workings of two grease haulers will give all pumpers a better understanding of the potential economic upside and the inevitable disposal challenges they could face by making a similar diversification play.

 

Grease Masters

John and Pam Remstedt, founders of Grease Masters in St. Louis, decided to pump grease and nothing else in 2006. As they told writer Ken Wysocky (“Taking it Personally”), they doubled their revenues every year for the first four years of business. And their grease specialty has opened the doors to much lucrative associated follow-up work cleaning drain lines.

 

Renegade Oil

Gerald Pezely started Renegade Oil in Salt Lake City, Utah, horsing barrels of yellow grease onto the back of his old pickup truck 30 years ago. The backbreaking work paid off, as he’s built the one-man, one-truck operation into a collection and processing business that employs 16 and handles millions of gallons of grease and other wastes. In our profile story (“Guardians of Grease”) Renegade vice president of sales, Dennis Brunetti, tells writer Scottie Dayton how Pezely set up and maintains the operation.

 

WHAT’S YOUR NEXT MOVE?

Have you added grease traps to your service menu? Will reading these success stories motivate you to consider your diversification options? If you have a comment or your own story to tell about handling grease, drop me a line at editor@pumper.com.