Trucking company’s corporate sustainability unit gains steam

TULSA — When Miller Environmental Transfer launched four years ago, its focus was emergency spill response for the trucking industry. Now Miller offers an all-in-one solution for companies looking to implement zero wastezero landfill initiatives.

“We saw the need in the marketplace, restructured, stuck our toe in it and are going at 100 percent now,” said Miller Environmental Transfer President Todd Ray.

Ray joined Tulsa-based Miller Environmental Transfer, the sustainability and industrial services division of Miller Truck Lines, about two years ago. Since that time business for Miller’s new model of corporate sustainability programs really has taken off, leadership says.

Clients are primarily large Fortune 500 companies in 10 states. Miller Environmental Transfer currently has 40 employees and 32 trucks. Ray said the company plans to expand extensively throughout 2016 and double revenue and number of employees by the end of the year. They also plan to expand their service area.

“We’re just getting started,” Ray said.

Mike McDonald, vice president of business development for Miller Environmental Transfer, said the service works with companies to find all of the ways that the business can become more sustainable.

The industries that clients are in run the gamut, but the process for each business is virtually the same.

Miller Environmental Transfer comes in and does what McDonald refers to as a “dumpster dive,” a process that consists of visiting the company’s plant and going through all of the waste generated as part of that business’ operations.

“We’re looking for all the opportunities for a company to get more sustainable, to get rid of their trash,” McDonald said.

Company experts then develop a plan for the waste that will improve the client’s environmental responsibility, as well as its bottom line.

For example, Miller Environmental Transfer might discover that a company is discarding cardboard or metals that could otherwise be recycled and sold to generate revenue that, if it doesn’t make money for the company, could help the client break even on waste management operations.

“We create a new revenue stream with that because right now it’s an expense,” McDonald said.

Ray said the benefits for clients include product destruction, which in some cases is necessary to ensure that an item doesn’t get back on the market and harm a brand’s integrity. Other benefits include launching sustainable or “green” operations for a business and risk management for the company.

Miller Environmental Transfer also carries out the program it creates for clients, acting as a middleman to get items to where they can be recycled or getting waste to Covanta, a Tulsa-based company capable of converting waste to energy.

With Bob Kennedy joining Miller Environmental Transfer in January as manager of environmental services, company leaders say the business has become fully vertically integrated.

Kennedy, a chemist with an extensive background in hazardous waste issues, specializes in environmental consulting with industrial clients on their hazardous and nonhazardous industrial waste disposal needs.

“We should be able to take care of anything that they throw our way,” Kennedy said.