SPANISH FORK — It was one of those "seize the moment" opportunities when then-20-year-old Ken Swenson bought a recycling business from Frank O'Brien back in 1973.
The business O'Brien started in 1946 had closed two years earlier, so O'Brien made one of those deals that is hard to pass up, Swenson said.
O'Brien threw in a $50,000 crane, then told Swenson to borrow enough money on the crane for a down payment with a little left over to get the business up and running again. Swenson did, he said, and the scrap metal business at the South Main Street location has been going ever since — until it closed earlier this month.
Five years ago, Swenson sold the business to Western Metals, which last week moved it to its yard in Provo to cut costs. The closing of Geneva Steel in Vineyard hurt the scrap metal business, he said.
"When the steel mills are struggling, we don't have anyone to sell scrap to," Swenson said.
Couple that with the dropping price of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and it's time for the scrap industry to hunker down. Over the past half-dozen years, steel scrap prices have dropped more than $50 a ton, down to $18 to $25 a ton for tin and autos and $33 to $43 a ton for steel cut down to size for the steel mills, said Jay Lamb, Western Metals' Utah County manager.
The move to Provo also cost five workers their jobs, Lamb said.
Most of the industrial scrap steel now goes to Nucor Steel in Plymouth, Utah, near the Idaho border. Other scrap is shipped outside Utah, and some goes to other countries where it is made into new products and sold back to Americans.
"Scrap helps the balance of trade," Swenson said.
The company, with eight facilities from Colorado to Nevada — four of them in Utah — processes 40,000 tons of scrap metal a month, with 25,000 of those tons from automobiles. In Utah County 4,000 tons are processed every month, Lamb said.
"That car you're driving," Swenson said, "has probably been a car 10 times."
Metal scrap can become a new metal item within a week, he said.
Swenson stayed on to run the company after selling it and now has become its traveling buyer and salesman, he said.
Jovial and upbeat, Swenson hired "lots of people over the years" and took on both private and government contracts, including shredding the steel from many of the bridges that were torn down during the I-15 reconstruction.
Most of the more than 1 million aluminum cans Western Metals collects around Utah every month are beer cans. But the cans that come from Brigham Young University are distinctly different.
"It's a noticeable difference," he said. "There are no beer cans."
The difference is in the blue and red coloring from a mishmash of just soda pop cans.
"I hear people say that Spanish Fork will be glad to see us go," he said, reflecting on how the business became a landmark over the years. But Swenson believes the business will be missed.
He has received a steady flow of gratitude from folks who are grateful he's there to clean the scrap from their property. Over the years the business has become cleaner. Waste can no longer be burned on the premises, and the driveways and parking areas have been paved.
Most Utah cities now prohibit scrap salvaging businesses from locating within their boundaries.
"When they're gone," he said, "they won't be coming back."
E-mail: rodger@desnews.com