So I was 24 when I started Clean Harvest.
I had no clue on how big this company was going to get.
As you can imagine, I was interested in starting a
business. I had been working in the
environmental space prior to that.
I left Northeastern University to actually work full time in
the environmental industry. My boss was a former Boston
Patriot football player and I really enjoyed working for him.
And tragically he died of a heart attack at 46 years old.
And because of that and changes that were happening after he
passed away, I decided I want to go off and kind of do my own
thing and never in my wildest dreams that I think we would
ever grow to the size that we're at today.
Welcome to the Environmental Transformation Podcast, where we
bring you interviews with industry leaders, climate
champions, sustainability practitioners, EHS, and hazmat
professionals making an impact in their businesses today.
Each leader solving complex challenges and delivering
solutions within their areas of expertise.
I'm your host, Sean Grady, and thanks for joining us today.
Before we jump in, make sure to follow us on your devices and
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for our newsletter and e-mail announcements.
Now let's get started. Welcome to the Environmental
Transformation podcast. I'm your host, Sean Grady, and
today's guest is the former CEO of Clean Harbors.
He's now the Chairman of the board.
And Alan Mccab, he's the founding member of Clean
Harbors. He's founded the company in
1980. I established Clean Harbors in
to become one of North America's leading providers of
environmental and industrial services.
They're probably the largest in the country at this point with
revenues over a $5 billion. So this key, this man is a real
entrepreneur that started from just basically four guys and a
truck. So I'm really excited to bring
Alan on the show today. And you know, Alan has grown
Clean Harbor steadily over the years, over 4 decades really
through M&A and acquisitions of over 60 companies.
And he's really become one of the leading, you know, providers
of these services. He's his organization is over
20,000 people. He's got over 10,000 vehicles in
his transportation fleet and network, over 700 locations and
service centers and 100 permitted waste facility, which
is amazing. And I think another interesting,
you know, tidbit about Alan that maybe some of you don't know,
but he was on Undercover Boss and I really thought I saw the,
the, the episode on Undercover Boss.
And Alan, you did a fantastic job of getting in there and
getting your hands dirty and see what it is on the front lines.
We're going to talk about that in just a few minutes.
But the one of the reasons we're here to talk today is about your
book, a great book called Doing the Doing.
And I want to share with our listeners that book and and you
know, the insights that you gave in that book.
And so, Alan, welcome to the show.
It's great to be with you and thank you very much for having
me. Absolutely.
I mean, when you look back, you know, back in when you founded
the company in 1980, was your ultimate vision to always become
like the largest environmental industrial services provider in
the country? Or did that kind of vision
evolve over time and you know, as you kind of grew with the
regulatory landscape and whatnot?
Talk a little bit about that if you could.
Sure. So I was 24 when I started Clean
Harbors and I had no clue on how big this company was going to
get. As you can imagine, back then it
was I was interested in starting a business.
I had been working in the environmental space prior to
that. I left Northeastern University
to actually work full time in the environmental industry and
my boss was a former Boston Patriot football player and I
really enjoyed working for him and tragically died of a heart
attack at 46 years old. And because of that and changes
that were happening after he passed away, I decided I want to
go off and kind of do my own thing.
And never in my wildest dreams that I think we would ever grow
to the size that we're at today. Wow, I'm sure it's been just an
amazing journey or a ride, so to speak, up and down.
I'm sure there was some roller coasters and ups and downs and
valleys and high peaks, mountain tops.
When you go through this growth of this company, if you could
maybe talk about a few of the major events that occurred that
helped catapult Clean Harbors to become what they are today.
And what were the, you know, highlights of some of these big
events in your life? Sure.
Well, you know, initially when we started out, we were doing
emergency response work and a lot of tank cleaning and other
environmental service type work here in New England.
But Recra had just kicked in in 1980, you know, and this was a
result of a lot of the Superfund sites that were showing up.
And if you remember back in the day, customers would have their
barrel recycler take their waste away back in the 30s and 40s and
the barrel recycle, the barrel recyclers had more interest in
the barrel than they did what was in the waste, right.
Years and years of kind of handling waste that way resulted
in a lot of locations around the country really creating huge
problems like Love Canal. And so we hit the ground just
the right time in 1980 because customers were now starting to
be held responsible for things that happened years and years
before. And so they decided that they
really needed to set up their own environmental departments.
They really needed to focus on who is doing the work that they
had doing. And so, you know, being new and
and not having any negative history and kind of the new
organization out there to offer these kind of services, we
really hit the market right and. You, you guys were at the right
time, at the right place, right? Yeah, absolutely.
And I would say that the RECO regulations are really what
drove our growth. But more importantly, we
followed what our customers needed, right.
And so early on, GE was my biggest account and GE was also
figuring out how to stop doing business with a lot of these
other players and like shrink the number of suppliers.
And they said, look at if you want to continue to be one of
our supplies, you got to grow and you got to expand.
And, you know, they had plants in Ohio, they had plants in New
York, they had plants in Arizona.
So we really grew as a result of our customer demands forcing us
to grow. And it was just so exciting back
then. I mean, that's great to hear
because you know, and and I guess maybe it with a little
trepidation, you're like, yeah, I got this client.
They want us to grow. They say they're going to give
us a bunch of business if I do this.
But then there's this uncertainty, like, will they
really give us that work if I do do that right?
Right, absolutely. I think it was so much part of
our acquisition strategy is like how do we open up and get into
those areas where they were so that we could service their
needs. And that's what really drove the
growth of the company and and quite frankly one of the reasons
why we went public back in 1987. Yeah, I know I I, you know,
it's, it's amazing, you know, to to look and watch the journey of
Clean Harbors and you know, as an industry professional, I've
worked with you guys over the years and senior the
acquisitions over the years and go, wow, I can't believe they
just did that or Oh my goodness, they just acquired this for
these guys are like really going after the market.
This is crazy. And you know, I think too, when
I look back, you guys also were kind of in this road, this mode
of, hey, we'll be that first responder when the emergency
happens. And and then the book, which was
great, you kind of detail kind of that exhilaration, that
adrenaline rush you guys got when you were the first on site
to win the work. And but when you when you start
to see some of the bigger events that happened like 911 Katrina,
some of those bigger events, you guys were at the forefront and
in there at the beginning. I mean, talk about some of those
events that also catapulted the growth of the company.
Yeah, absolutely. So we're that's really in our
DNA here. Our culture is much, very much a
response driven organization and the employees here love, you
know, running out the door, the bell rings, we run out the door
and we go after the events, right.
And we wanted, we want to do good things for our customers
and obviously for the environment.
And so we've really been involved with so many events
over the years. And you mentioned Katrina and
Reader, for example, the BP spill was a major, major cleanup
effort. You know, 9/11.
Prior to that, just a number of major oil spills throughout
North America that happened, whether it was Valdez up in
Alaska where we provided resources there or anything that
you can possibly imagine when there's a large response needed.
You know, our culture here and our mindset is very much
response driven. It's really about who we are.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love the name Clean
Harbors. I mean, it's like, and I'm AI
used to be a regulator way back in my early career.
And in my I started out in the Office of Water Management.
And so we were, we were the river rats basically because we
were out on the river doing the water quality studies and doing
the fish kill evaluations and things like that.
You know, this is way back in the early 90s, not as far back
as you go, but I mean, still nonetheless, it was back then.
And and so I always really like the water.
When you, when I heard those clean harbors, like these guys
get it, man. They're cleaning the water.
Cleaning the harbors is what they do.
This is like innate in their DNA.
This is awesome. Yeah, absolutely.
It's a, it's a, it's a great name.
And our logo sort of has survived a lot of marketing
departments here. You know, a lot of people look
at that and, hey, you know, maybe we should think something
differently. And it survived the many, many
different ideas that people have had.
And I love the brand and obviously I love the name.
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, exactly.
I mean, and when you think about it, when you're in this growth
mode at the very beginning in 1980, you start, I mean, Fast
forward seven years and now you're going public in seven
years. That's like so fast.
What was that like? You know, I think it's a little
bit like what's happening in the market right now with, you know,
AI, right? It was hot, environmental was
hot back then. A lot of companies were going
public and we were only a $70 million company when we went
public. We only initially were going to
raise $15 million. And at that point, I only had
$15,000 of equity in the business.
And so it was like we really needed to get some cash.
We really need to kind of get away from just having
traditional bank borrowing. And so we need to raise some
money and we're going to raise $15 million.
And then the crash of 87 happened.
And you remember in October of 87, we still decided, let's go
let. We've done all the work.
We've got all the audit work done.
We've spent a ton of money. So we subsequently raised $8
million and that took us two weeks to go out and do the road
shows all over the country to raise $8 million.
And you see companies today going public with $8 billion.
Yeah, it's crazy, right? Yeah.
It's crazy. So, but what was great about it
is it it gave us liquidity, it gave us cash.
We did a secondary offering in 88 at $15 this year.
So the stock rose and we raised some more capital and then we
were able to use our equity, our publicly traded equity to buy
other companies. So we bought another public
company in 1989 called Chem Clear and that gave us plants in
the Mid-Atlantic, in the Midwest, even in the West Coast.
And so again, part of our growth strategy was trying to figure
out how do we continue to grow to meet our customers needs and
having that public equity really helped us out.
Yeah. I mean, the when you guys were
in that growth mode, looking at like the minds that are like, I
guess being in the war room saying, OK, where can we grow?
Who's got the best assets out in the market that are suffering
that we can go and fix? And I love in the book when you
talked about you've always had this like innate kind of drive
to turn one man's junk into another man's treasure, right?
Absolutely. And so, you know, when you see
that and you have that mindset and you start evaluating these
these opportunities and these other assets that are there,
what you know, you got to be licking your chops half the time
when you're looking at these these deals.
Absolutely. You know, and we have been
really fortunate that the number of the acquisitions we've made
and we've done over 80 of them now have really worked well for
us. And I think the secret to our
success has really been to have a single platform to run our
business. So when we acquire a business,
we really put them on our platform and from a quote to
cash, you know, accounting, HR systems, customer master file,
all that kind of stuff is it's so important because we end up,
when we acquire companies, we find it so fascinating to see
how inefficient they are because they have all these disparate
systems that don't talk to each other and they have people in
between. And, and so I think we've been
able to take advantage of companies that have been not
doing well, maybe as a result of recession like the early 90s or,
you know, the 2008 Great Recession.
So Laidlaw going in bankruptcy back in 2000.
So we really, in many cases you know that the company, but
looking back, I mean they were fantastic deals, fantastic
deals. Oh yeah, I mean, just when I
mean, we're going to get off talk about a topic a little bit
here. But I mean, I because I want to
segue into the whole safety clean situation was took the
whole, I think industry by, you know, storm and and by shock.
And I mean, it was like, Oh my gosh, they just got safety
clean. This was amazing.
Yeah, it was amazing. And you know, the first part of
that business that we bought out of bankruptcy was just some
wonderful assets. I mean over, over a billion
dollars worth of assets we got. And you know, and the key there
was we had the ability to come up with a financial assurance to
meet what the EPA needed for those plants to stay open.
And but after three years, I mean we were really starting to
cook back in 2004, 2005 and then subsequently in 2012 when we
bought the remaining safety clean the pots washer business,
that became just a fantastic business for us.
And bringing those businesses together, which was the original
goal back in the day, bringing them, bringing them together has
been the best thing I think to help both of those companies do
so well. You know, in your book there was
like there was a conversation in one of the chapters.
I can't remember which chapter it was now, but it was about the
safety clean conversation and you met with the the the former
CEO of Laidlaw who who was taking some position on you,
right denotes to you. And you kind of you kind of won
the battle on that situation, if you ask me.
Yeah, we did. We were close though.
I mean, we had publicly traded debt back then and they
evidently had had gathered up that public debt and they were
maybe looking for us to trip and fall.
And it turned out to be the other way around.
And it, it was just a, a amazing.
And you know, what's so amazing is the, the people that came
over from, from that business. I mean, yes, fantastic leaders.
Many of them had already been with that company for years and
subsequently stayed with us for years.
So the longevity of a lot of our leadership is a result of us not
only acquiring businesses with great people, but keeping them
and and really making them part of our company's future now.
Yeah, now that is that's so spot on this the recognition of good
talent like that and and then keeping them and bringing them
in. And, and because I've been
through some mergers acquisitions before and they
promise you all, we're going to let you guys, can I main
maintain some leadership roles and, you know, some, some
control over, you know, managing the business and then reality
sets and you're like, you're not doing any of that.
That's very frustrating in, in life, in business life.
But it's great when you can recognize the the, the value of
that business and maintain that and then continue to grow,
invest and fix things, right? Absolutely.
Yeah, having that knowledge of how those businesses ran and the
relationships they had with their customers was so important
to hold on to those people and, and, and we've been blessed, you
know, to to have such a great team here that stayed together
and work together for a long, long time.
That safety clean business, I mean they were used oil
recyclers, parts washers and solvent recyclers.
And while they were there picking up those products and
servicing those products, they were either one selling other
products to them, you know, parts, you know, equipment or
PPE or whatever materials and supplies.
And then they were picking up waste too.
So they would, you know, have multiple revenue streams as, as
I kind of saw the business and I was like, wow, you guys just
expanded your whole business client list by like tenfold.
With that, absolutely yeah, 300, three, 100,000 customers, you
know, many, many of them small companies, you know, that were
on a subscription that we went out to every, you know, 12 weeks
and provided that POTS washer service.
But as we continue to expand the kind of services to meet those
customers needs, right, we just keep growing and growing and it
was fantastic. That's crazy.
Just amazing. You know, in your book Doing the
Doing, you know it speaks to the dedication and execution of, of
the work. And you know that you've done at
Clean Harbors. But, you know, beyond the
literal meaning, what is the core philosophy or principles
you believe that has been the most, I guess single greatest
driver of the of the success of Clean Harbors?
I think it's our focus on people.
I think knowing that our that our workforces our number one
asset and I think the entrepreneurial spirit that we
have here, the responsive culture that I mentioned earlier
is so important. You know, the, but I think
what's really been important is people could grow in this
company as we grow. And so my, my original 4
employees stayed here for 40 years and it was just an amazing
opportunity. And many, many, many, many other
people grow inside the company. And when you're, when you're
growing, you provide so many opportunities for people.
And it's great that they don't have to leave to go, you know,
grow in their career. They could move into a different
part of the company. We could educate them, we could
get them, you know, degrees, we could provide them training.
And because we really felt that the longer we can keep our
employees, the safer we're going to be #1 because, you know, we
know that safety is most impacted by young new employees.
So that's really going to improve our safety.
But it's really going to provide sort of that, you know, mature
workforce that really understands who we are and and
what kind of services we offer. So that was really, really
important. Yeah, that's great.
I mean, that continuity you're able to continue to manage and
grow with, you know, employees Plus, I mean, it's, you have to
admit it's, it's probably a big cost savings too at the end of
the day, you know? Oh my God.
Yeah, onboarding a new employees and the HR and I mean Oh my
goodness, today is it's way bigger than it ever was when you
started in 1980, I'm sure. Absolutely it must.
It must cost, I'd be guessing because I don't, I don't know
the exact number, but it's probably $15,000 to bring an
employee on now with all the training and you know, medical
and all the things. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, well, you know it.
You discuss in the book Trials and Tribulations and can you
share some important or how important it was for you to have
a mentor or mentors that were helping you throughout the tough
times when you were growing the business?
I really liked in the book how you kind of were able to reach
out and find a few of those those gentlemen that really
helped you in certain ways to help you educate yourself more
or or just understand the business better.
I mean, talk about that, if you could, about how important it
was for you. Sure.
Yeah. And I think before we went
public, I had I'd gone back to Northeast and to get my MBA and
I met a professor there who really helped me a lot going
through school while I was still running the company and still
raising four children. It was a tough time, right to
all those things. And he was a fantastic man.
And I asked him to join our board and he became our our
first board member. He became our lead director.
And subsequently for 30 years, he was my lead director.
Wow. My lawyer who actually helped
found the company, you know, who incorporated the company was our
general counsel for 40 plus years.
And and so those, those early folks were so critical to me
personally and also to the company's success.
But also along the way, whether it be bringing board members in
who could help with a certain area of expertise that maybe we
were struggling with at the time, whether it be regulatory
or might have been finance or it might have been, you know,
growth, whatever the issue is, I think that was so critical for
us. But then bringing in leaders,
you know, bringing in people. So when when we got to $100
million, it was very much hitting the wall.
And none of us in the company at that time had ever worked for
$100 million company. And so bringing people in that,
you know, had the experience, you know, people like Clyde
Keaton, as I mentioned, who came over from GE, for example, and
it was really important to bring people in from outside the
company as much as it was to help people inside the company
grow. So you, you know, what I
realized is that you really needed both.
You just can't have it all being an internally growth orientated
company, right? You've got to get people who
have expertise and leadership skills to come in as you
continue to see the company grow.
And obviously the first year in business we did $600,000.
This past year we did $6 billion.
You need different people. You need a lot of people.
Yeah. And a lot of people, yeah.
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I mean, and I think as you know, as ACEO as you in your position,
it may at times may have been a struggle or challenge to realize
I need to let go of the reins in a certain area of this business
because I can't do everything or that's really not my best
highest value used, but it's important.
But I just that's not my best skill.
What was that like? You know, making those decisions
to bring in the right people? It was the most important thing
certainly for me because I wore all the hats early on as any
entrepreneur does who owns the business.
But I really felt like, you know, I really focused on
technology. I really love technology and I
think I really could help the business and run better and, and
more efficiently with technology.
And I also felt it was a key differentiator as it related to
our acquisition. So building out software and
building out platforms has been something that has really been
my focus and realizing that maybe Eric Gerstenberg is a
better engineer than me and he does a better job of running our
plants. So how do we continue to develop
Eric to become the Chief Operating Officer and now the Co
CEO, right. So we definitely bring people in
and realize whether they're in transportation, they're in
safety or they're in finance, bringing those people in and,
and complimenting your skills to allow you do the things that you
really, really are good at. And that was tough to let go
when you had to start giving up all the power, so to speak,
right? But I think as an entrepreneur,
you know, that's one of the things I learned is that you've
got to surround yourself with people that are better than you,
especially in the areas that might be your weak spot.
Yeah. Now that makes total sense.
I mean, and then I guess that's just one of those Vince in the
in the journey. You can just go, I have to do
this or we're not going to be successful as or as successful,
right? And, and I think you do it to
take one for the team almost right.
Absolutely, yeah. You know, when you we talked
about, you know, building the team and, and acquisitions and,
and, you know, as you guys were growing and, and it your growth
has been heavily linked to the strategic acquisitions like
safety, clean, hydrochem, PSC, those types, you know.
But how did you and your team evaluate the unique, I guess the
financial or the operational or the regulatory risk associated
with integrating these massive companies?
And then what was your personal like risk threshold that you'd
be like, OK, these are some high stakes decisions.
I yeah, I'm going to go or not going to do, you know, passing
up, you know, tell me maybe walk a little bit through that and
how that happened or what you guys did evaluate.
You know, I think early on we had worked with a couple of
consulting firms and Mackenzie was one of them that that helped
us integrate some of the larger acquisitions we made.
But over the years we really developed a great playbook on
both doing pre acquisition as well as post acquisition, right.
So how do we evaluate and do all our due diligence and how do we
integrate the businesses after we've made a decision to go
forward with it. And I think over the years,
Brian Weber, who now heads up our M and A group is really
honed that playbook and we've set up an organization, an
internal organization to do that.
And, and so I think we're really, really good at it.
And I think I actually brought on one of the key McKenzie
partners who's been on our board now for 10 years and has done an
awesome job for us after he retired from McKenzie.
And it is something that we really do well.
And I don't know if anybody doesn't any better from people
who've told me. And so I think that playbook has
been, you know, sort of a critical thing.
I think the decision about finally making that ultimate,
you know, go or no go decision. We really evolved the board.
You know, we really got their feedback and we really
collaborated with them. And we in 40 plus years of being
chairman of the board, we have never had a, a decision by the
board that wasn't unanimous. And so look at if we're going to
make a vote and someone's not feeling comfortable about it,
well, we're going to continue to work on, you know, what are the
issues here? How do we solve your, you know,
your uncomfortableness with something that maybe we're
contemplating here. So I think realizing that you
need to have the board support, you need to have your leadership
team support, but ultimately when you do make that final
decision, it still could be gut wrenching, right?
Sure. I mean, I mean, especially when
you know maybe potentially you're taking on environmental
liabilities for some of the assets.
And it's like did I do I have enough due diligence to to
determine the real amount that I think I'm going to have to take
on, right. And that's got to be tough.
It certainly is. And I the, the thing that I
always looked at is that's the business we're in.
And so if we're acquiring a business and all of a sudden
some environmental liability pops up, whether it's a off site
Superfund issue or maybe they're they have some problems on one
of their sites that we're picking up.
That's our business. We we felt really comfortable
about taking on those kind of risks.
You know, some of the other risks become even greater of a
challenge for us obviously that are out of our control.
But I think, you know, we've done a good job here and we've
had a good track record. I think so too.
I mean, you know, when you talk
about being in this business and, and the importance of
building a solid team around you, you know, how important was
that to build and you know, for the scaling of your business?
I mean, I think we've touched on in the previous conversations
that that we just recently had, but you know, what specific
strategies did you employ to foster say like employee loyalty
and Co cohesive culture over the four decades it's really helped
you grow this business? Well, I think again, one of the
nice things about being a public company is you've been able to
share opportunities of growth and financial wealth and, and
growth with, with a lot of your employees, right?
They could, they could get stock options, they could buy some of
the shares, they could be given performance based share
programs. And so I'm there's nothing that
makes me more happy to see some of our leadership here really
doing well for themselves because the stock is appreciated
and they hung in there with us. They might not have been the
highest paid, but they got stock and they got performance based
awards and that. So going public and having that,
you know, sort of liquidity for them, that was an important part
of of keeping people here. We did lose a number of people
over the years as you would any business after 45 years, right.
I'm proud to say that I think my last count is we've had 20
people leave to become CE OS of other companies.
Yes, I thought that was amazing stat actually that you, you
mentioned that when we met a couple months back at the EI
Digest, a conference in San Diego.
I thought wow, that is really impressive.
You know, you get some quality people that work for you that
now started their own businesses or went to go run other
businesses. Exactly.
Yeah, and you hate to see them leave in many, many examples,
but in some cases they've come back after we've maybe bought
their business, after we acquired them, that they went
off. Yeah.
But that that Clean Harbors alumni is strong out there.
And I always proud of myself in the fact that we can.
You were an important employee while you're here.
When you leave and go off, we want to maintain that
relationship and be able to go out and have a beer together
still. Right And.
So. I think that relationship, you
know, this is a very small community, people in our
industry, and it's nice to maintain those relationships.
Well, you know, now they can become partners with you because
you know, and invariably, you know, all these companies, they
might be able to do most of the things, but they can't do
everything. So everybody needs partners.
Everybody needs partners. We need partners today and
absolutely. Yeah.
Well, you know, you touched a little bit on technology and
I'm, I'm a little bit of a technology geek myself in the
sense that he's back when I was running a consulting business
for waste management and selling services.
And I used you guys, as you know, vendors to deliver the
services for our clients. We had to develop our own
software too, and we released our software back in 2012 and
then it kind of grew. And then we're like, we got to
modernize this thing. We got to make it better.
In 2018, we started to redevelop and make it a cloud solution.
And, you know, everybody who was wanting to be a differentiator
realized the data, you know, was the big thing.
And I always said he who holds the data holds the work.
That's so true. I mean, right and you know, you
can get into that and, and maybe talk a little bit about your
interest in, you know, you created the wind system there at
at Clean Harbors and how that really built out to just build
your whole platform. Absolutely.
So when today is over 750 applications and it basically is
the supporting software for our entire business.
We have a, a CRM and we also have all of our financials in
Oracle, you know, with HR and finance, GL, all that kind of
stuff. But when is everything around
waste tracking, invoicing, quoting, contract management,
you name it. And, and I think your point is
we have the data. We have a massive amount of
data, not only data that we've generated ourselves, but also
through our, the acquisitions we've made, we've kept that data
and we have an on Prem data center.
And one of the things that we're really doing is mining gold out
of that data. Now we're building Co pilots,
we're building agents, we're building assistance, we're using
the classic machine learning. We're also using generative AI.
We're actually kind of creating your own clean harbors GPT to
talk to that data. And so I wish I was 40 years
younger because I, I, I look at where the, where the technology
is going and I say, this is so much fun and this is going to be
life changing for companies and for people.
And, and that's why I stayed on as a, as a technology officer
here, you know, while I stepped down, I just find it to be
amazing technology that we can continue to employ here and do a
better job of servicing our customers.
Well, and that's, that's a great, you know, kind of a, a
segue from the, the big daily day role and into, you know,
kind of like a passion role, a passion play role, right.
Absolutely. That's just kind of gets you
still something to stay connected.
You're still involved with the business, but maybe not so at
the top all the time and and and now you still have a big impact.
I think it's still an amazing segue there for into the
technologies. I'm because technology is
changing. I mean E manifest is still not
been cracked. I mean, as effectively as most
as EPA would love to see it and most service providers are still
struggling to, you know, have a good communication back and
forth with that. And I think the whole, you know,
transportation logistics side of that whole equation is the big,
you know, kind of let down because nobody has really
figured out what's the most efficient way of just doing
everything electronically. And it's still a challenge.
And is it's, I think they're well meaning, but I still feel
like it's going to struggle to really be what they envision it
to be. Yeah, absolutely.
I think I actually think industry is probably a little
ahead of EPA in that regard. And you know, the investment
that the government needs to make in their platforms is not
kept up. And you know, if we want to
build API is directly with our EPA friends, you know it, it
takes a lot of work to get those kind of things done.
They don't have Microsoft probably in the background
helping them design the interfaces and and all the APIs
that you need to integrate with every company who needs to do it
and create standards for Clean Harbors and every other service
provider. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. So true.
Yeah. No, that's great.
I mean, you know, another, another differentiator or I
think something that's been on the horizon that everybody in
industries kind of, you know, enamored by, which is P Foss,
right? I mean, think about, I mean,
this is like the hottest topic. It's the new frontier of the
environmental revolution, so to speak, that we, I mean, climate
change is right there too, but this is the biggest thing that's
hottest that's in the industry. Now.
How's Clean Harbors addressing the regulatory impacts
industry's facing? And how do you think that you
know what, how big's the potential market for this for
service providers like Clean Harbors?
You know, from what I can see it's it's going to be a big
market and I'm not sure whether it would be bigger than the PCB
market that was back in the 70s if you remember, but very
similar. And it's sort of a different
aspect to clean up, right, Whether it's cleaning up water
on site and removing P fast from the liquid phase or it's
removing the solid materials and bringing it to A an incinerator
like one of our, you know, hazardous waste incinerators to
destroy the P Foss. I think we and I think the
industry is really well positioned to serve EPA and
serve the public. And we got to getting these kind
of contaminated sites cleaned up and removed and and remediated.
So I think it's a wonderful opportunity and I think the
technology is available. We've proven with DOE that we've
got the technology to destroy the PFAS in our plants and we
hope that the continued regulatory framework will be
created to to really turn that that whole cleanup effort on.
Yeah, Yeah. No, I think so.
I think EPA still trying to evaluate some of the new limits
that they recently set last year and now the new administration's
kind of pulling back a little bit saying we're going to
reassess and I saw there's certainly.
Uncertainty on where things are going, you know, right now it
seems like, but a lot of people are very cautious and concerned.
And I think the framework of where PFOS sits in CERCLA is
kind of one of the biggest challenges a lot of people are
struggling with is just because wow, this could be anybody could
be pulled into a CERCLA situation when they really don't
have responsibility for it. And and so I think if it went to
RECRA or created its own P Foss regulation, I think that would
be the best situation. And moving forward, I don't know
where EPA is going with it yet, but I think that some of the
topics we are talking about on the podcast on a regular basis.
Sure. And I think that I think it's
needed, it really does. That framework is needed and I'm
hoping that, you know, the regulatory agencies will
continue to create that framework that'll make it so
that everybody knows what the playing field is going to look
like. Yeah, I mean, like, you know,
landfills who accept waste, they didn't generate the waste.
They're just storing it. And now all of a sudden they
potentially could be Superfund sites because, you know, it's
it, I mean, it's where does the compliance, you know, really
land? And I think that's the ambiguity
that's out there right now. It still needs a lot of clarity.
Yes, they agree. Well, let's talk about
Undercover Boss because I think that's a great story and I think
you went through a really interesting experience there.
And maybe you could talk a little bit about that
experience. But you know, you know, what was
the most surprising impact or most surprising or impactful
lesson you learn from the day-to-day realities of your
frontline employees and, and maybe how did you take that
information and make subsequent decisions at your executive
level? It was a great experience and
you know, as much as I thought I knew our employees because I, I
spent a lot of time in the field and traveled all all over to our
plants and, and knew many, many employees over the years.
When I got out and started traveling with some of the
drivers or working with some of the field supervisors on some of
the projects they're working on, it was eye opening.
It was, it was surprising to hear maybe how they thought
about corporate, how they thought about leadership, what
their issues were, you know, and it was, and I didn't believe any
of them recognized me. So I, and I thought I did a
pretty good job of disguising myself there to, to that.
And, you know, so I, I think, you know, our people work
incredibly hard. And in one event, I was inside a
tank with a woman who did that every day.
And it was in Chicago and it was extremely hot and, and she was
cleaning rail cars out as part of her job and really
appreciating the facilities that she had to work in and maybe the
lack of a locker room for a female employee nearby.
And, you know, you started really seeing first hand things
that our employees were challenged with, whether they
were out in the field or they're actually working in one of our
plants. And, you know, driving with a
truck driver there isn't anything better than driving
with a driver. Boy, you're going to hear
everything that you probably don't want to hear, but it was a
great experience to handle to hear feedback directly from one
of our drivers driving up and down the highway here.
I'm sure there was some of moments that probably weren't
caught on tape that you got to hear some, you know, unvarnished
direct conversations, and I'm sure that was very impactful for
you as well. It was and, and also to see how
maybe supervisors interacted with our employees too, you
know, how did, were they treated with respect?
You know, where they supported, you know, because I was just
sitting on this on the sideline might be at the dock and, you
know, wondering, you know, where is the supervisor here?
Oh, he left early today. He always leaves early.
And, you know, hearing little tidbits and things like that was
sort of interesting, you know, but it was, you know, it had a
little bit of downside to it. And that was, is that people
realize how approachable I was in there.
And I started getting reached out by a lot of employees via
phone and e-mail after the episode aired.
And, and even today, unfortunately, people want to
skip the chain of command and they want to reach out to Alan.
And hey, I remember you on Undercover Boss and you helped
out this person and wondering if you could help me out.
And so fun. Yeah, I know.
Well, I mean, you know, it's, it's good to be the, the
people's CEO. Right.
Absolutely. I mean, and I think, you know,
some of the changes you made, were there anything, you know,
like you said, the women's bathrooms did you, you know,
implement a lot of these like things like we have to fix this.
We can't just let them not have you know, the the utilities they
need. And you know what?
We'll talk a little bit if you could do some of the things you
implemented as as a result of Undercover Boss.
Yeah, I think we, we came back and really talked a lot about
the feedback. I used it and by the way, they,
they reached out to me a couple years before and wanted us to to
do it. And it just didn't have the time
at the, at that, at when they asked, but we ultimately agreed
to, and we, we circle back together as a team and sort of
brought all the feedback together and said, you know,
hey, these are some of the things that we should be
thinking about here. And I think putting out an
employee survey and trying to get more feedback.
So now we have a regular broad employee survey that kind of get
employees feedback. And we've, we set up, you know,
some employee resource groups. You know, we have 7 employee
resource groups now set up to, you know, have the, you know,
employees who want to do it themselves, but they want the
company to support them at the same time.
So I think there was some really good things that came back from
that. And I think we all had a, an
appreciation of how hard our team members work.
But I think having that direct interaction with them and
bringing that message back to the executive team, I think was
helpful. That's great.
I mean, seeing you go on that,
would you recommend other CE OS of large service organizations
to participate in something similar to this?
I got to imagine it's very beneficial.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
And I've watched a lot of those other episodes, you know, and I
find, you know, watching them is is brings back good memories
also. But it also kind of says, you
know what, this this guy is really having an opportunity to
the otherwise wouldn't have to be able to kind of be out there
and and do what he's doing without them saying, oh, that's
the boss I got to I got to hide what's really going on here.
Yeah. I can't be, you know?
Yeah, I can't. I got to be protecting myself
here, not giving the real story. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah, you know, when I was reading the book, it was great
book, by the way. I really loved how you prefaced
a lot of the chapters with some major events or regulatory, you
know, dynamic that's just catapulted your, your
organization or that was really helpful to see your journey of
how things were tied to each other and how the company grew.
I I really appreciate that in the book.
But one of the chapters I want to touch on is, is chapter 30
and it's your leadership book. I mean, it's your leadership
chapter in the book and there was a couple things there that I
thought was great. So you reflect on some of the
qualities and skills and make a good CEO and some of the ones
that you possess to help. Grow your company and I wanted
to. Read a few of these and just get
your take on them. OK.
So one of them was there's no shortcut to excellence.
Another one was, I believe another great quality is that
that makes a good leader is curiosity.
And another last one, it's another one here that I thought
is great is I believe one of the secrets of success to be able to
grasp the complications, the implications, the subtleties of
your business, to be able to take it back, break it down to
its most simplest things. And like this is how you know
you do it. And I think if you could talk a
little about those three thought those three items, if you could,
that would be interesting. Yeah.
Well, I'm a business process guy and I have always kind of felt
back when we started initiating business process re engineering
probably in the middle 90s, that understanding sort of your
business and all the different processes that go into it and
understanding how to break down all the barriers that that get
in the way of a business performing better.
And so I, you know, I think I'm one of those guys that really
drives efficiencies. Technology is an enabler of
that. But more importantly, I think
getting the right people in the room and trying to understand
the business process and trying to, like I say, simplify the
problem and break it down into manageable pieces so that you
can attack it and, and make make an improvement in that business.
So I think that was really, I think an important skill that I
have and one that I think is used throughout the business
even today. You know, we released a big
software package last night and I'm I walked down and challenged
the checked in on the team that's doing a lot of the phone
calls for people calling in on the hotline and how's it going?
And everybody's like high 5 and excited and, and I know that
we're impacting thousands of people with that release that we
did last night. And so I know that those are the
kind of things that really excite me about making the
business run more efficiently and breaking it down into small
bites so you can eat it. I love that and that that kind
of leads into, I mean, that's kind of following up and you're,
you know, being curious and, and understanding the complexity of
things. But the other one that I really
thought was there's no shortcut to excellence.
I mean, the bottom line is you have to put the time in to be
good at what you're doing. Yeah.
And I think Dan McCarthy, as I mentioned as my lead director,
my force lead director, I mean, I, I learned a lot from him.
And one of the things is there's no shortcuts and what whatever
it is, there isn't shortcuts to be taken because in the long run
those are going to come back and bite you.
And I think our focus on safety and empowering any employee to
shut a job down and anytime if they feel like it's an unsafe
condition, that to me is excellence.
And I think, you know, it's like, how do we measure the near
misses? How do we measure confined space
entry safety permits? How do we measure things to make
sure that every employee goes home every night the same they
came in, You know, so that safety is such a critical part
of our company and not cutting quarters is so important for
that. Well, and just helping people
understand that they actually do have the power in their own
hands to do a stop work, right, even at the entry level, like if
it's unsafe, I'll stop work. We will stop and listen, right?
You will stop and, you know, figure it out.
I mean, I think empowering employees is that's a real
important piece there. I'm glad you mentioned that.
That's, that's really good. Yeah, I, I thought that was
really great that that's that chapter on leadership and and
some of the skills and there was a few other ones in the book.
I'm not going to go through them all because I want people to
read this book. It's a fantastic read.
Another chapter I was inspired by was your chapter on giving
back. And, you know, if you could
share with us why it's so important to help others and why
you set up the Mckim Family Charitable Foundation to help
others, you know, give a little bit of background on why you did
that and why it's so important to you.
I think first I've been blessed beyond, you know, my wildest
dreams financially and and and personally with four beautiful
children and 11 grandchildren. I, I, every day, I count my
blessings and, but I also realized that not everybody is
as fortunate as me. And early on I got involved with
different organizations that, you know, had needs and I wanted
to be helpful, whether it be in a small way or a large way to,
to support them. I also wanted to give back to my
alma mater. I wanted to give back to Mass
Maritime for their wonderful programs there that creates so
many wonderful employees of ours.
You know, hundreds and hundreds employees came out of the
maritime Academy. And and so there there's in my
mind there's a real need for people who are successful to
give back. And if, if they don't give back,
then what are they doing? You know there's only so why?
Are we here? Why are we here Not we're here
to help one another. And you know, whether it's a
local hospital or it's a local food pantry, if we have
capacity, we need to help, right?
And I, I, and I wanted to instill that into my children.
And that's why I created the Family Foundation because I
wanted my 4 kids to be part of that.
And when I pass away, I want them to do that.
I want them to, you know, run that foundation and and and make
good decisions and and help others.
Well, I think you're doing just an amazing job with that.
And, and I couldn't be, you know, more proud to just say I
know Alan Mckim and thank you for for doing that.
I mean, it's, it's, it's amazing.
And you know, you, you can tell your Christian faith is just
immense. Putting together a terrible
foundation like that and, and giving to others is just really
the true essence of humanity and what we do in life and what we
should be doing. You know, I, I went through the,
the final postscript. You know, it's like the 10
lesson learned for, you know, entrepreneurs trying to get into
the business, right? And they're really 10 here.
I'm not going to go through all 10, but I just want to mention a
few of them. And you could just touch on a
couple, but one is safety. We've been talking about safe
being first, right? Safety's first.
Second one was cash is king. And you know, and then the third
one was raise money when you can, not when you need to, It's.
So true. It's so true.
You know, like that's one thing that I have regrets about early
on when, when I was running the business, when I was starting
the business, I, I only had $15,000 invested in the company
and I really was borrowing on receivables and living hand to
mouth. And I wish that I had maybe
taken on a partner or brought more equity in and because then
when I really needed the equity, maybe it wasn't the banks
weren't willing to lend. I was too over leveraged.
And so I think that was just one of the things that I always look
back and say maybe those first 10-15 years in business might
have been a little bit easier if we had a little bit more cash
and had not been so tight running to the mailbox every day
to get, you know, paychecks covered.
Yeah, right. I like #5 it said.
Build a strong professional advisor network, have a great
legal team, a good banking, a good accountant and a good board
of directors, right. Those are some like key ones
there. And I think that's great words
of advice and be willing to take risk and fail, but obviously
don't fail too often. But you got to be able to do
that, right? Absolutely.
Yeah, and the book was amazing. I think anybody who's in our
industry, in the environmental industry needs to read this
book. I promoted it on my monthly
newsletter that I do for the podcast and sends out to a
couple 1000 people that's on my list and I get it out and, and
share with, you know, what's what's the latest episode?
Who's on the horizon? Do kind of a NEWS UPDATE for the
month, what's going on. And then I always do a book of
the month, and I highlighted your book this month.
Oh, wonderful. Thank you very much for that.
You bet. It's really a tribute to the
employees here at Clean Harbors and you know, I've been blessed
be because of them. Oh, I can, yeah.
Yeah, it's great to. It's great to have you on the
show, Alan. I really appreciate your
willingness to take my invitation to come on to the
show. I think you are an amazing
individual, an amazing leader in our our business.
You are kind of like one of the Mount Rushmore of the
environmental business leaders in my mind when I think about
who's grown this business to where it is.
This is great to have you on the show.
I really appreciate you. Thank you very much for having
me and I really appreciate your kindness.
Thank you. All right, Alan, well, we're
going to get this out episode out here in the next week and
it's going to be great. And feel free to share with all
your friends and your network. I appreciate it.
And I'll give you, I'll give you some feedback by e-mail, if
that's all right, along the way. Absolutely, 100%.
I would love it, absolutely. Thanks for listening and
watching the show. If you enjoyed.
The show then please share it with your friends and Co workers
on social media and tell somebody in person.
Thanks for being with us, ET Nation.