Powell Valley Recycling would be benefiting from a bump in commodity prices if transportation and other costs weren’t going up as well.

Cardboard prices have increased in the past couple of months from $50 per ton to $55 per ton. However, at the same time, labor shortages and increased fuel costs are impacting the trucking industry and increasing the cost of freight.  

Likewise, steel prices have gone up, which increases the costs of bailing wire necessary for the center to prepare materials for shipping. 

Myron Heny, vice president of the Powell Valley Recycling Board, said cardboard prices would have to go up to $75 per ton for the center to turn a good profit on what it collects. At the current, higher prices, they are seeing a little profit. 

“We might make a few bucks depending on what company can send a truck up to get our stuff,” Heny said. 

The center works with brokers, such as Sage Recycling and Interwest Paper, which ships the cardboard to processors around the country. The companies have arrangements with trucking companies, and they coordinate the logistics to keep freight costs down, meaning PVR doesn’t know when the trucks will come.  

As with many businesses, trucking companies are having to increase their wages to fill positions. 

“There’s just not enough truckers nowadays,” Heny said. 

With fuel prices going up, the companies are adding surcharges of up to $800, on top of all their other fees. 

Before retiring, Heny was the executive secretary for the
Wyoming Solid Waste Association. He proposed they purchase their own trucks, but at the time shipping wasn’t expensive or hard to come by. 

“If we’d have done this back then, we wouldn’t be in this mess,” Heny said. 

While PVR waits for trucks to pick up its material, the center is storing it all on the lot behind the facility. Heny estimates the center has over two full loads of baled cardboard in their backlot. They have plenty of room for such storage, but the more that collects, the more expensive it is to ship it all. 

Marynell Oechsner, president of the board, thinks it’s closer to three truckloads sitting on the lot. Besides collecting material from residents, the center is now taking material from Blair’s Market. 

The grocer used to pay Rocky Mountain Recycling to pick up its bales, but with the cost of freight rising so high, it’s no longer worth having them handle the material. So, Blair’s decided it would be best to hand it over to PVR. 

“Other than PVR, we have no place to take them other than the landfill,” said Blair’s co-owner Brett Foulger.

Powell Valley Recycling has to re-bale the grocery store’s smaller bales into the center’s larger bales, but Blair’s is covering the cost of the extra baling wire. Oechsner said the bales come to the center very clean, meaning they have no pasteboard, plastics, or other materials that lower the price recyclers will pay for the bales. 

“We get the best price for our product if the bales are clean,” Oechsner said. 

The center has been holding regular Saturday hours from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Oechsner said they’ve gotten a good response from customers.

Due to issues with people throwing unusable material into the 24-hour bins, the center will still not be making those available. However, with the Saturday hours and the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday hours of 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Oechsner said people who want to drop off their recyclable materials should be able to find a convenient time to do so. 

“Everybody has an opportunity to recycle if that’s what they want to do,” she said.