Our businesses are all about serving customers, but in today’s world, the relationship between clients and the operations that serve them has evolved far beyond tradition.
2024 goals shaped by growth, quality equipment and ESG
Today, success is built on an evolved relationship where smart businesses innovate to meet customer preferences and embrace their feedback to drive innovation and strategy.
At the start of 2023, the team at Ironclad Environmental set a long list of goals and a promise for a big year of growth and success, driven by our commitment to our customers. We hit the ground running — and we delivered on our promise.
Last year, we achieved a record financial performance, with EBITDA growing by over 2.5 times. We achieved a world-class safety record with industry leading TRIR ratings. We added roughly 250 new members to our dedicated team of industry experts, all of whom were proud to deliver the most reliable waste management assets and solutions in the industry on a national scale.
Of course, none of this success would be possible without our valued customers, which is why our first step toward growth was understanding what they truly wanted. We spent a great deal of time speaking with and surveying our client base and we got some terrific insight.
The good news is customers like working with Ironclad as well as Adler Tank Rentals, a business that we acquired in February 2023 and folded into the Ironclad family. But our clients weren’t shy about wanting more equipment, more locations and more services.
What was the beauty of this feedback? Ironclad was empowered to do something about it. In fact, we were ready to roll.
A commitment to quality
In previous iterations of this organization, our team was a small but vital piece of a much larger business puzzle. But when Ironclad became its own operation, we became the main character. We now have expanded access to resources and the power to choose how to allocate and invest those resources to best serve our customers.
2024 goals shaped by growth, quality equipment and ESG
Hydrotesting
We wasted no time committing to investing in our fleet of assets, improving the quality of our equipment and rolling stock. In less than a year, we’ve refurbished 4% of our entire fleet. That’s no small feat, and we plan to continue charging ahead with that work in 2024 and beyond, ensuring that we have the most reliable assets in the industry. Customers can have confidence that the assets they receive from us will deliver reliable performance.
We also invested in streamlining the way we operate our business and the way in which our clients engage with our business. We did two enterprise resource planning cutovers in 2023 and are now proud to run on the RentalMan-integrated solutions platform — a tool our customers told us they know, trust and prefer. It may sound like a small change within the vast scope of the industries we serve, but if we can eliminate even a small amount of friction from our clients’ daily lives, we’re going to work to make it happen.
Making growth an ongoing priority
Our 2023 acquisition of Adler significantly transformed the size and reach of our organization, positioning us as a leader nationwide. We’ve got more locations, more team members and a stronger network of assets. But there’s always room to grow. In late December 2023, we acquired DenBeste Water Solutions, a California-based waste management organization with a stellar reputation in both service and asset quality. As we welcome them into the Ironclad family, we’ll be embracing their roughly 4,000 quality assets and eight locations — making Ironclad one of the largest providers on the West Coast, with a fantastic base of customers.
DenBeste, like Ironclad, is built upon the idea of family. For over 40 years it has operated as a family-run business, with a leadership team consistently reinvesting in the quality of assets and services provided to its customers. We’re proud to maintain that legacy and expand it as part of our own at Ironclad.
Making sustainability and ESG a business win
Sustainability is embedded in who we are here at Ironclad. Every time we deliver an operable asset to an environmental jobsite, we’re protecting the environment and our clients from risk and harm.
Renting an asset is the epitome of sustainability. With our nationwide network of locations, we’re able to maximize an asset’s life cycle. In the process of water testing our assets on a national scale, we recycle millions of gallons of water daily, preventing unnecessary usage of this precious resource.
Our process of converting and refurbishing boxes and tanks to achieve top performance is inherently sustainable. By minimizing the demand for new equipment, we contribute to saving millions of pounds of steel that would otherwise need to be manufactured and transported to meet the needs of our industry partners. Our refurbishment projects are performed near our existing locations, thereby minimizing the environmental impact associated with travel and hauling.
It sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s still worth shouting from the rooftops: When we commit to sustainable business practices, our customers win, our shareholders win and the environment wins.
Beyond the sustainability in Ironclad’s DNA, we’re pushing ourselves to do more in the world of ESG initiatives. Ironclad’s board now includes an ESG committee, which will enable us to put more muscle and effort into our commitment to grow a better kind of business. We’re eager to keep our community posted as these projects progress throughout 2024, from additional sustainability initiatives to committing to more diverse vendors and partners.
A company culture committed to our clients — and each other
Ironclad would be nowhere without its incredible team, and the successes we’ve achieved this year were not only executed by them but shaped by them.
As we expanded throughout 2023, it was important to maintain the familial feel that powers Ironclad. For that reason, the leadership team and I were mindful not to tell our team what kind of company the bigger and better Ironclad would be. We didn’t want to be top-down leaders. Instead — just as we asked our customers how we could better serve them — we asked our team members to tell us what kind of company they wanted Ironclad to be, and we turned to them as we shaped our new mission, vision and values.
This was more than an exercise in team building. This was about harnessing the best of the incredible talent we already have within our organization. When our team tells us they want to be a customer-centric business that’s known for quality, service and safety, we’ll follow their lead and empower them to make that goal a reality. They helped to define our identity, and we’re proud of where our journey has led us, together.
Did we have struggles during 2023, a year that challenged just about every business on the planet? Without a doubt. But with the support of our employees and a mutual trust between every department and our leadership team, we were able to achieve so many goals. We’re not a team to sit back and worry. We control what we can control and move forward with a problem-solving mindset that our clients know they can count on.
Charging forward
As we move through 2024, our customers can expect more from Ironclad. We’ll be launching three new locations by Q3 and expanding our services, which will turbo-charge our offerings in the waste hauling space in response to the additional demand expressed by our customers. And of course, we’ll continue to grow our team and our fleet, becoming even better positioned to meet clients’ needs, no matter where they are.
We’re reliable, dependable and trustworthy. That’s our Ironclad promise — one we’ll never break.
For more information, visit ironcladenvironmental.com.
