High Rollers Rekindle Flame with Waste Stakes

LYNN SCHENKMAN

Financiers Eyeing Risky but lucrative investments may not have followed through with prospects in the waste-equipment market recently. But Ron McCracken, president and CEO of Easley, S.C.-based RJM Waste Equipment Co., says that's about to change. A private investment firm, Frontier Capital, Charlotte, N.C., has funded RJM's new plant in Phoenix that will serve the Southwest and West Coast markets with the company's line of solid-waste containers and compactors.

McCracken says Frontier's attraction to his company could be a harbinger of positive turns in the fiscal future of the waste-equipment industry.

“Venture capital usually doesn't come to this industry,” McCracken explains, adding that it has been approximately three years since the investment community began consistently turning down opportunities in the waste equipment business because of a limit on capital expenditures among large, public waste companies.

McCracken has been in the waste industry since 1988, beginning with his work with the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Industry Associations (EIA). He launched RJM in 2002.

“We're an experienced team in a brand new business,” he says. “We are re-acquiring the profitable market share … and our business plan has been validated by the marketplace.”