My Take on Personal (Small Office) Paper Shredders

I received a call the other day from an individual who was looking for a replacement motor for his personal home shredder. (I won’t mention the brand but they are a biggie when it comes the producing these sorts of shredders.) At Total Secure Shredding, we don’t perform this sort of service. We provide shredding services using mobile shredding trucks or using our in-house shredder. However, it did get me thinking that there could be a lot of money in repairing these little shredders. After all, they tend to cost a lot and don’t last too long!

But I digress. For the gentleman who called, I looked up the manufacturer’s website and passed along the local INDIANA phone number that was provided. I mentioned to the caller that I wouldn’t expect too much since it looked like corporate headquarters. I have yet to hear back from this person so I guess he found what he was looking for.

But this gentleman’s call really got me to thinking about what a pain it is to shred your own documents in your home or office with one of these little personal shredders.

Before I got into the shredding business, I, like everyone else, had a little personal shredder sitting right next to my computer desk. And for the most part, it only was used every other month or so. Between uses, I would just stack all my “For Shredding” documents right on top of the shredder. In about two month’s time, I would collect a fairly substantial stack of paper. Then on one Saturday morning, I would pull off the stack of papers and spend two to three hours shredding. This included pulling out staples, shredding two pages at a time (if I was lucky), emptying the shredded paper three or four times, and then vacuuming up all the paper pieces that ended up on the carpet.

But that was before. Today I bring in all my junk mail and credit card offers to our office to shred in our industrial paper shredder – it only takes a minute. And although my intent for this blog was to be more informational then to advertise my service, the fact is, we provide the same convenience for the general public.

When you compare the price of a personal shredder to the service we provide, there is really no comparison. I performed a quick internet search looking for a consumer review of these personal shredders. The top 4 listed ranged in price from $60 to $180. And although these shredders are rated from 8 to 17 sheets per pass, the reviews said the best you could hope for is about half that. They go on to say that that translates into 220 to 1,700 sheets per day depending on the type of shredder you purchase. Of course, the more expensive you go, the more throughput the shredder is rated. I would guess the daily throughput is much less. But let’s stick with 1,700 sheets a day for argument’s sake. And let’s assume one day is referring to the amount of paper you could shred in 8 hours of work as opposed to 24 hours. 1,700 sheets is just under 4 reams of paper (there are about 500 sheets of paper in a standard ream). So if a standard case of paper holds 10 reams, it would take over 2 ½ days to shred just one case of paper. So you’re looking at over 20 hours to shred one case of paper.

How much is your time worth?

Please forgive me but here’s where I pitch our service. If you are located in San Diego, especially somewhere in the greater metro area, do yourself a favor and bring your documents down to our facility for shredding. We are located behind the San Diego Sports Arena where Interstate 5 and 8 intersect. No appointments are necessary and walk-ins are always welcome. We shred your documents while you wait and you can actually watch your documents get shredded through our viewing window. You’re actually no more than a few feet from the shredder. All the shredded paper is then loaded into one of our mobile shredding trucks, where it actually gets shredded again, and then is taken to a recycling center. There is no catch! That’s how simple it is!

But this must cost a fortune – Right? Actually, the price is only $5.95 per standard size file box.

What’s a standard size file box? Well it’s about the size of a case of copy paper. That’s right, 10 reams of paper. Remember, we were talking that it would take over 20 hours to shred this on the best rated personal shredder!

So for the $180 it would cost you to purchase the top rated personal shredder we could shred 30 standard file boxes.

It gets better. If by chance you have 30 boxes, we will actually bring our high speed shredding trucks out to you for the same low price of $5.95 per box. That’s right, don’t bring it to us – we come out to you. Of course we can’t service the whole world for this price. For mobile shredding, this price is only good for the greater San Diego Metro Area.

If you would like more information on the services we provide please check out our website at www.TotalSecureShredding.com/services.

Or please give us a call:

Locally: (619) 295-5474
Toll Free: (800) 536-4832

The point of all this is to say that there is a much easier, faster, cheaper, and environmentally friendlier way to destroy your documents.

Hopefully this helps and again I apologize for the shameless plug of our services.

Regards,

Mike