Kenneth N Niebuhr and Nicole Niebuhr, Co-founder & Secretary For over three decades, American Scrap Metal Services serves as a pioneer in metal recycling with its diverse range of offerings and exceptional service delivery. The company’s exceptional growth trajectory and prominent position in the industry reflect its founder’s—Kenneth N Niebuhr—immense passion for building a legacy in the metal recycling industry.
Though Niebuhr is well-recognized in this area of business, the journey that shaped his business acumen remains relatively unknown to people. At an age when children focus on making it through elementary school, this budding entrepreneur collected cans and sold them around town. His curiosity and knowledge grew parallelly in the years to follow, making him explore many unchartered business territories. At one point, he even joined his uncle’s business as a partner and gained in-depth expertise and experience in the metal recycling industry. Niebuhr leveraged this experience and his unrivaled entrepreneurial skills to establish American Scrap Metal Services. Today, the company is recognized as an industry leader, being the first to offer on-site weigh and pay service.
The business model was as simple as having a pickup truck with a scale attached, reaching out to electricians and plumbers in Chicago, buying metal scrap, weighing it, and paying off on-site. This approach, paired with Niebuhr’s ability to maintain strong liaison with customers and buyers like Safran Metals, helped him gradually accelerate growth and take American Scrap Metal Services to the next level. In the years that followed, the company moved from pickup trucks to box trucks, expanded its customer base, and eventually inaugurated its recycling center.
Our passion toward providing the best prices for clients along with exceptional services at their convenience paved the way for our evolution as their go-to partner
“Our passion toward providing the best prices for clients along with exceptional services at their convenience paved the way for our evolution as their go-to partner,” says Nicole Niebuhr, the Co-founder and Secretary of American Scrap Metal Services. With decades-worth experience in the metal recycling industry, the company finds itself an expert in meeting the needs of several residential homeowners, demolition contractors, electricians, plumbers, and pipefitters. It offers the most current fair market value, along with on-site pickups to clients. Whether clients have metal for a small pickup truck or a large roll-off container, American Scrap Metal Services provides exceptional, on-time pickup service. Not just that, the company can weigh the metal and pay them instantly, on-site, making the engagement more convenient for clients.
American Scrap Metal Services is also well recognized for its Non-Ferrous Drive-Thru services, where clients can drop their copper and non-ferrous metals—no matter how large the load is—at its Drive-Thru area. Dedicated to optimizing customer flow within its facility, the company has incorporated a systematic workflow that helps weigh metals and pay clients quickly without any delay. American Scrap Metal Services is equipped with a full iron yard, where it uses state-certified scales and a 70-foot in-ground truck scale to handle the varying needs of clients with accuracy. The company accepts any non-ferrous and ferrous material, ranging from bare copper wire, copper tubing, roofing copper, stainless steel, insulated cable, ACR, heavy melting steel, busheling, cast iron tin, to name a few.
“We don’t just try to push our business to our clients; rather, we listen to them as a partner, answer their queries, mitigate their concerns, and maintain a strong liaison with them,” says Nicole. This approach helped American Scrap Metal Services keep its business rolling even during the pandemic, which has changed the entire perception within the metal market. Though metals prices became highly unpredictable, the company leveraged its longstanding experience and deep understanding of the industry to answer clients’ queries on prices.
Today, American Scrap Metal Services is enhancing its in-house operations under the leadership of Nicole to align with the highly dynamic business environment in the post-pandemic era. To do this, the company is adopting some new approaches to keep employees happy and encourage a positive mindset, along with a family atmosphere, which she thinks will help in the company’s effort to boost its growth. “No matter how big or small the client’s metal quantity is, we will treat them alike and provide them the best services. And we are always there to serve you,” concludes Nicole.
