Consolidated Resources Incorporated awarded ‘Top 50 women owned business’
Consolidated Resources, Inc., an industrial recycling company, was founded in 1990 by Linda Surath Rockwell. Ms. Rockwell developed a business plan that focused solely on the industrial marketplace. She has been in the metals recycling industry more than 20 years, starting her career in Chicago and moving to Phoenix in 1988.
Linda concentrated on assemblers, fabricators, machine shops, and production facilities in the aerospace, automotive, and industrial equipment industries. Linda stated, “By working directly with the business owners, shop foremen, plant supervisors, and purchasing managers I was able to customize programs to each shop’s individual needs. I found the one thing that all these management people really wanted were reliable service and dependable reporting.”
Ms. Rockwell has designed a detailed system of record keeping that allows a company to follow their material from the moment it is picked up through final payment, with all processing steps in between. According to Linda, “Our customers really appreciate the openness and honesty of our approach. We develop a mutual trust with us knowing the materials they produce are reliable commodities and they know that the weights we report and the prices we pay them are exact. It is our goal to become an extension of a company’s management team, allowing us to coordinate their recycling program.”
Consolidated Resources built their facility in Glendale in 1996. Currently there are 22,000 square feet under roof, with ample outside space for storage and expansion. Materials are weighed heavy and light when the trucks arrive, and as individual loads during processing on a pit truck scale and platform scales. These instruments are calibrated quarterly by their scale agency and certified annually. The facility is built on concrete so there are no ground contamination issues. Further, CRI uses an oil/water separator which eliminates environmental issues with any effluents from customer materials.
Linda feels that the cornerstone of the company’s success is customer service. Linda said, “There is no real magic in pricing material. All dealers basically have the same outlets and get the same range of return. We have done a great job in finding higher returns from vendors over the years because of our knowledge of alloys and specialty metals and we have developed a solid reputation in the industry. But the real reason we have the greatest number of industrial accounts in the valley is because we bring in great collection equipment to customer spec, our trucks show up when requested, reports reflect a complete history, and payments are timely and accurate.”
