When Should You Hire a Professional Shredding Service?

It can be difficult to make the call to hire a professional shredding service, especially because shredding paper is a straightforward process. Shredders aren’t overly complicated or costly either. For example, the Bonsaii 6-Sheet Cross Cut retails at $49.99 and is a great inexpensive shredder for home use. For heavier business use, the Bonsaii 12-Sheet Cross Cut retails at $99.99 and works well for most small-to-medium firms.

I recommend any shredder similar to those two for the basic, small-quantity shredding that most households or businesses encounter. However, when volumes get greater, it’s time to consider a shredding firm.

The problems with shredding at high volumes

Before I had the idea for my shredding business and went down the shredder rabbit hole, I was helping a family friend navigate shredding sensitive files she had stored in banker’s boxes, using a good household shredder. It would overheat on me frequently because of the high volume, and that’s when I had the idea: why not get another good household shredder and double the productivity?

It was the right idea until they both overheated on me at once. That’s when I realized what I was doing was not effective and required a pivot. Fortunately, I was looking for a purposeful business opportunity, and ended up purchasing the Aurora AU220MB commercial shredder at $378.10. This machine is great; it can do 220 8.5"×11" sheets at once, hold 8.5 gallons of shredded material, and has a higher security grade (P-5) than the average household shredder (P-4). However, it also takes up a lot of space, requires prep time, and truthfully isn’t a great investment for one-time or short-term use.

In short: shredding at high volumes requires a high-volume shredder.

So, why hire a shredding service when I can just buy a high-volume shredder?

The answer: time and cost savings.

Shredding is a lot more than just throwing paper into a machine and calling it a day. It requires proper sorting to maximize efficiency, and that can take just as much (if not more) time than actually shredding. If you don’t have the time (or patience) to tackle a high volume of papers, it can be dreadful, and that’s when it seriously becomes worth hiring a shredding firm.

Additionally, the cost of a shredding service, even for many banker’s boxes, is often a lot less than buying a commercial shredder and shredding yourself. Drop-off and pick-up shredding firms charge between $0.80 and $1.50 per pound, while mobile on-site shredding (typically done with a shredding truck) can be about $175.00 one time for up to 10 banker’s boxes. Off-site is great for flexibility and low disruption, but lacks visual verification (which is sometimes necessary because of industry regulations or company policy). On-site provides the destruction at your doorstep, but requires specific scheduling, has higher minimum fees, and can be very noisy.

Let’s break the cost down:

• One banker’s box is approximately 30 lb.
• Off-site: at a price of $1.00 per lb shredded, 10 banker’s boxes is $300.00.
• On-site: 10 banker’s boxes is roughly $175.00.
• To break even (on price alone), you would need roughly 378 lb (~12½ banker’s boxes).

Summary

• Buy your own shredder if you don’t have a lot of documents or paperwork.
• If you have a lot of paperwork and time, consider buying a commercial shredder.
• If you have a lot of paperwork but lack time, consider hiring a commercial shredding firm.

Thanks for reading. If you’re based in or near Fairfield County and are interested in learning about our offerings or have any questions, please contact us.