Equipment focus: DAG Mobile Aggregate Recycling

Profits are harder to find on jobsites these days, says Ron Garofalo, co-owner of DAG Mobile Aggregate Recycling.

“Years ago, if you did a job you would add up your overhead and you would have 20 percent profit on your job,” he says. “That was the way you did it.”

Now, profits related to demolition are found in places contractors previously ignored.

“You’re finding your profit on the jobsite where you threw it away before,” Garofalo says. “It’s not demolition today, it’s dismantling. You don’t make a big pile of mess. You take all the steel out first; separate and grind the wood; crush the concrete; scrap the steel.”

That’s the approach Garofalo takes at DAG Mobile Aggregate Recycling, a contract crushing company based in Lyndhurst, N.J. Garofalo has carved a niche for himself in small- to medium-sized construction, he says.

When buildings are demolished and parking lots are torn up, DAG provides crushing services and produces a 3/4-in. minus product for customers.

In many cases, DAG’s customers use the crushed product on the same site for their next construction project. They use it because dumping material from a demo site is like throwing away cash, Garofalo says.

“It works out to be one-third of the cost if they hire us with the crusher versus dumping it and buying it back as stone,” he says. “It works out to be one-third the cost because dumping rates are high in New Jersey.”

New Jersey’s dump rates have gone up tremendously in recent years, according to Garofalo. They’ve gone up so much, Garofalo says, that they presented him with a full-time business opportunity.

The opportunity was so great that Garofalo sold his paving business in 2014 to devote his time and resources to contract crushing.

Steady jobs

Garofalo wasn’t always crushing, though. He hadn’t crushed a single rock before 2005, when he first realized dumping costs were on the rise.

“I wanted a 3/4-in. minus product so we could use them for our trade,” Garofalo says. “Everybody said you need this crusher and that crusher.”

Eventually, Garofalo found a machine that could produce the product he coveted in Rubble Master’s RM 80 impact crusher. A screener is attached to the RM 80, he says, which means he didn’t need a separate machine to screen material.

“I only used the machine in my own yard,” Garofalo says. “I was by no means going to do contract crushing for anybody. Rubble Master delivered it to my yard and trained me. Based on my machine payment, I was saving $1,000 to $1,500 per month having the machine in my yard.”

No more dump fees. No more buying back material. The RM 80 represented the start of something new, but Garofalo didn’t know it at the time.

“One day a buddy of mine said he might be interested in me coming to his yard to crush,” Garofalo says.

Garofalo hadn’t considered crushing for others, but he accepted the offer.

“We had to hire a trucker because we didn’t have a lowboy trailer,” he says. “It was a difficult task the first time because we had never done it.”

Garofalo says DAG crushed material for his friend over two days, coming to an agreement on a fair price for the service. Later, another person asked Garofalo to do some crushing. Then another. And another.

“A few years passed by, and I bought a second machine,” he says.

Specifically, he bought another RM 80 from Rubble Master. DAG retired its original two crushers after several years, and it now has two newer versions of the same model from Rubble Master.

Garofalo says he plans to add a third crusher in 2016 to keep up with demand.

“We’re quite busy,” he says, adding that DAG can crush up to 250 tph with one RM 80. “We have two machines out almost every day. We’re actually going to be purchasing an HS5000 track screener. That’s another avenue of the business to separate the material.”

Business is steady, Garofalo adds, because existing customers reach out to DAG for their next jobs.

“It’s almost like we have a milk route,” Garofalo says. “We go from contractor to contractor two to three times per month.”
A normal job lasts somewhere between one and three days, he adds, but DAG has done jobs that last up to 30 days. The company’s niche is the small- to medium-sized job, though.

“We don’t want to go bigger because then we have competition,” Garofalo says. “We want to go for that little job for one or two days where somebody’s going to save money and there’s no trucks on the road.”