Turning The Everyday Grind Into A Business

marshall24ff529e57d7b4289d49dbd3b2c8a8ea3Marshall Shredding has been providing on-site document destruction services for public and private entities throughout San Antonio since 2001. The company has a fleet of seven trucks with heavy-duty shredders installed onboard so that the shredding work can be done on-site, in the parking lot, before leaving the premises.


Document destruction has become a big business in recent years as concerns about identity theft have multiplied across the country. Last year, the Better Business Bureau reported that more than 8.9 million people were victims of identity theft and unauthorized disclosure of private information.
Today there is a complex web of federal and state regulations controlling the proper handling and destruction of documents containing sensitive and confidential information.
Rob Marshall, president of Marshall Shredding, says his company takes care to stay in compliance with all laws and regulations concerning document destruction and then issues clients a certificate afterwards to demonstrate that they are in full compliance.
“Texas has some of the strongest (identity protection) laws in the country,” Marshall says. “Since 2005, the state has required businesses to secure and destroy any personal data that could compromise an individual if it fell into the wrong hands.”
Today, Marshall Shredding is one of 24 companies in Texas certified by the National Association for Information Destruction, the watchdog of the industry, and is also cleared to shred documents for the FBI, the Department of Defense and the IRS. Since its inception, the company has shredded more than 8,000 tons of documents. The heavy-duty shredders on the trucks can not only shred reams of paper, but also floppy disks, CDs and hard drives.
“Our shredders can grind up steel-belted radial tires without a problem,” Marshall says. “We can knock out about 1,000 pounds of paper in about 30 minutes.”

Furthermore, Marshall says, the company doesn’t have to worry about staples, paper clips or binders, which can jam up cheaper shredding systems.
Once the materials are shredded, they are taken back to the company’s warehouse in Selma, just north of San Antonio, and prepared to be shipped off for recycling. Marshall says the recycling market is always fluctuating so there is no guarantee that his company can always make money that way, but it still helps the community by keeping the materials out of the landfills.
“The shredded paper is used to make napkins, paper towels and toilet paper that you will find in restaurants and other shops,” Marshall says.

Medical Waste

Marshall Shredding, which employs 17 people, had about $2 million in revenues last year, up 125 percent from 2008. It expects to see a big boost in income again this year as it launches a new medical-waste disposal service. MedSharp is a new division of Marshall Shredding, which is technically a separate company, but is owned and managed by the same people. Marshall is president of MedSharp and Bill Juett serves as chief operating officer for both companies.
Juett is a former Navy Seal who was wounded in a helicopter accident in Iraq in 2003. When he left the military, he began working for a medical device company before joining with Marshall last year to help launch the new medical-waste disposal service.
Juett’s status as a disabled veteran and part-owner of MedSharp and Marshall Shredding has allowed the firms to take advantage of federal set-aside programs and increase business as a result.

“We had a lot of clients who asked us to look into medical waste disposal since they liked the way we handle document destruction,” Marshall says.
MedSharp is in the process of installing a six-foot-tall, 13-foot-long, $500,000 autoclave at its warehouse. An autoclave uses super-heated steam to sterilize anything placed inside of it. Marshall says once something has been autoclaved, it is cleaner than the trash that you would put on your curb for pickup every week.
The new autoclave should be fully installed and operational by mid-to-late August. Juett says having the autoclave will make MedSharp one of the only companies in town that can provide local medical waste disposal services. Other companies have to haul the medical waste in trucks to sites in Houston and elsewhere.
“We are the only ones I know of that are providing local treatment services,” Juett says. “That way we can avoid risk and exposure from having to haul the materials over long distances.”

Community Service

For the past several years, Marshall Shredding has been working with San Antonio Federal Credit Union (SACU) to provide a free shredding service on the day after federal taxes are due. Chris Jacobs, director of compliance for SACU, says she began working with Marshall eight or nine years ago to set up the program and it has grown substantially over the years.
Last year, four different disposal services helped to shred 93,000 pounds of sensitive documents that eager residents brought to seven SACU branches across the city.
“The community is elated when we do this,” Jacobs says. “It is a wonderful public service and something that is badly needed.”
Although the company does not charge for the shredding on that day, Jacobs says Marshal Shredding has begun to accept donations and last year it received just over $4,000 that was then donated to Dress for Success, a program that provides interview suits, confidence boosts, and career development to low-income women in over 75 cities worldwide.
Jacobs says SACU has been a client of Marshall Shredding for nearly 10 years and likes the fact that they do all the work on the premises.
“It gives us peace of mind when we can see the work done before they leave,” she says. “With a company that has to take the materials somewhere else to shred, you have to worry about their honesty and the possibility that someone could take it … and sell it.”