Q&A: Jeffrey Zwirsky on giving scrap yards more exposure to buyers

Even if your scrap yard already has dependable buyers, others may never have seen your material and would gladly bid on it. Reaching them takes work, though: you have to gather the photos, weights, grades, and sale terms buyers need before they'll make an offer. Catalytic converters complicate things further, since assay terms, treatment charges, and metal lease rates make their final value hard to predict.

I caught up with Jeffrey Zwirsky, founder and president of SMASH, to discuss how the platform gives sellers more exposure to buyers, why converters are so tricky to price and document, and how technology can support the relationships the industry runs on.

Slone Fox: How did you get into scrap?

Jeffrey Zwirsky: By luck, really. At 18, I cleaned grocery stores in the evenings for my uncle's business and worked through a temp agency during the day. The agency found someone who needed a driver, so I drove him to a customer in small-town Saskatchewan. He bought catalytic converters. I kept in touch and started driving him across the Prairies once a month, then across Western Canada. Eventually he taught me how to buy and sell scrap.

I began cleaning out garages and auto shops, taking their steel and buying things like aluminum rims, wheel weights, and converters. I bought a few more trucks, then reached a point where I needed to expand or do something different. That's when I met Dan and Josh Chisick. They gave me the opportunity to run the converter business at Industrial Metals, and I was fortunate to grow alongside the company. 

With their support, I helped grow the converter business from roughly 1,500 units a year to about 2,500 a month, while also helping increase our steel and non-ferrous customer volume by approximately 30,000 tons a year. It was a team effort, built on hard work, honest pricing, and transparency.

SF: What experiences or frustrations during your time as a buyer led to the creation of SMASH?

JZ: I built SMASH to give sellers more exposure. I'm not trying to destroy their existing buyer relationships; I want to add to them. A seller may have good buyers already, but there are other buyers who have never heard of that yard or seen its material. Giving those buyers a chance to make an offer can help the seller see what their material is really worth.

Buyers need good information to make informed offers. This is real money, and the offer is only as good as the material details behind it. I kept seeing how much time it took to get photos, weights, grades, and sale terms organized and out to buyers. SMASH helps a seller put that information together and share it in a clean, consistent way.

SF: Can you walk me through what the average transaction looks like for a yard?

JZ: It depends on how involved the seller wants to be. An auto recycler might have a bin of aluminum rims. They can palletize and weigh them, then give each pallet a unique package ID in SMASH. Once they have enough material, they can create a sale with the SMASH AI or through the sales tab, set their terms, and invite bids.

When an offer is accepted and the sale is finalized, SMASH sends confirmations and generates the sale paperwork, including the invoice, packing list, and bill of lading. We can help arrange freight if needed. The buyer checks the material in when it arrives, either through its own process or with SMASH's receiving tools. Payment goes directly from buyer to seller under the agreed sale terms.

SMASH gives sellers more exposure, plain and simple. It will not be the right fit for every sale or every yard. For the ones it helps, we can organize the material, put it in front of more qualified buyers, and make the offers easier to compare. 

SF: Why are converters so difficult to value and trade?

JZ: Every converter model is made up of different materials, but to most people, they look like rusty pieces of metal. They can be bought by the piece or sold through an assay, but there is no simple way to know the final value you will get. You can't simply weigh a load and check a market screen.

Treatment charges, metal lease rates, and hedging make assay terms hard to follow, and all affect the result. Over the years, I built my own systems to estimate what was there before a load left Industrial Metals. Many sellers don't have that information, which makes a result difficult to question when they disagree with a processor or refiner.

SF: How does SMASH document converters, and has theft changed the requirements?

JZ: Converter theft has made clear source records more important for legitimate recyclers. SMASH can record each converter separately, connect it to donor-vehicle information and photos, and produce an identifying tag. That makes the work faster than copying the same details by hand all day.

The legal requirements vary by location. Minnesota, for example, requires a detached used converter to carry its removal date and donor VIN, or an alternative marking that law enforcement can immediately link to the VIN. The marking must be permanent. SMASH can help staff capture and organize the information, but the yard still has to apply the marking and keep the records its jurisdiction requires.

SF: What if a seller misrepresents a load?

JZ: We vet businesses using the platform, and a new seller has to earn buyers' trust. If a shipment does not match what was listed, the buyer can document the discrepancy, and it has to be resolved under the sale terms. That may mean rejecting material. This is already a familiar issue in scrap trading. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel; we are trying to make the process clearer and more efficient.

SF: How does SMASH benefit Canadian yards, and what role do U.S. buyers play?

JZ: In my experience, yards in different regions work very differently. Some remote recyclers are extremely organized; others have never had a system that gives them a clear view of their inventory. I do not want to force every yard into the same process. SMASH can complement what they already do, or help them build more visibility from the ground up.

Some yards still track inventory on paper or spreadsheets, so it can be hard to see exactly what they have. SMASH helps them organize packages, see who created each one and when, and ask the AI about their inventory. It can also put Canadian sellers in front of buyers and export markets they might not have reached on their own.

More qualified buyers means more offers and better price discovery. A Canadian yard should have the chance to see whether a U.S. buyer values a particular grade or load differently, then decide whether the offer works after freight and the other sale terms are considered.

SF: How do you balance digitizing a relationship-driven business without losing trust?

JZ: Relationships are everything in this industry. You cannot digitize trust, and I would not want to. SMASH is a tool to help those relationships grow. Competition and consolidation are putting pressure on yards, so I want them to have a better view of their material and more opportunities to sell it. The goal is to help them thrive, not just survive.

SF: In your opinion, what will scrap buying look like in 10 years?

JZ: I expect more consolidation and more automation, especially as AI becomes part of everyday yard work. Every time you handle material, you have a chance to add value by sorting, identifying, recording, or preparing it better. I think yards will become much more efficient and may run software tailored to their own operations. I hope SMASH can be part of that growth.