Document Destruction Firm Expanding

Due to client requests, a Buffalo–area company plans to add a Syracuse location.

“We’re there already,” says Kenneth Knight, president of American Document Destruction Services. “We have probably four or five accounts in the area. Our clients pushed us eastward to Rochester and now Syracuse.”

Knight is currently interviewing candidates for the general manager position. He says once the position is filled, he can begin to look for office/warehouse space, which he hopes to have by the end of the first quarter 2004. He says he plans to lease the space. In the meantime, clients will be serviced from the 2,800-square-foot Grand Island headquarters.

American Document Destruction Services uses a “witness-burn incineration” destruction program. Instead of shredding confidential data, the materials are incinerated.

“It’s the same process used by local police agencies to destroy confiscated contraband,” Knight notes. The materials are taken to American Refuel Co. in Niagara Falls, where the incinerators burn the data at a minimum of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes. Knight is currently in discussions with two incinerator companies in Syracuse.

While American Document Destruction Services has found its niche in this industry, that’s not to say there are no competitors. “There’s lots of competition,” he says, noting shredding companies. “But I think it’s more confidential with our process. There’s no sorting of nonpaper items, such as VHS or disks. The incinerator doesn’t care what is burning.” The ash is then taken to a landfill.

American Document Destruction Services currently has 200 clients in the Buffalo/Rochester areas. Clients include municipalities, CPA firms, law firms, banks, and health-care providers. Knight says he hopes to have 50 clients in Syracuse by the end of 2004. Syracuse will be the second office location for the company. Rochester clients have been and will continue to be serviced by the Grand Island location. Knight plans to expand further eastward, servicing Albany clients via the Syracuse office.

American Document Destruction Services currently employs six people, and Knight plans to hire three in the Syracuse office. The company has four security vans that it uses to pick up the confidential data during scheduled pickups. The company offers wood-laminated bins that look like office furniture, in which clients can toss their data. “Some even use it as a printer stand,” he notes. By the end of 2004, he hopes to have two security vans servicing the Syracuse market.

Knight was vice president of Modern Disposal, a Western New York landfill company, until he resigned in 1999 to start his own company. Using his own funding, he started American Document Destruction Services that same year. In April 2000, he had his first confidential-document pickup. The company opened the Rochester location in the second quarter of 2003.

The company generated $400,000 in revenues in 2003, and Knight projects it will generate $600,000 in 2004.

“The key thing in business is not to grow too quickly or it burns itself out,” he says. Central New York Business Journal