By Jack M. Willis
Journal Correspondent

When I was ushered into the office of Ken Moran, the President of Recycling Services Inc. in Alexandria, LA, and introduced myself, he arose from behind his palatial desk and stood up to shake my hand, and unfolded to easily being over being six feet tall. My very first thoughts were how well physically he matched the size of his desk, and that here is a gentleman that undoubtedly somewhere back down the line had played basketball. Was that assumption ever correct.

He invited me to have a seat while generously offering me a cup of coffee, and we began to discuss a manufacturing operation I had heard he was constructing to utilize recyclable materials. The conversation that ensued was the tale of a man that got an idea while reading the want-ads in a newspaper, and it went straight uphill from there.

Ken Moran was born and raised in Natchitoches, Louisiana, graduating from Natchitoches High School. He was athletic enough playing basketball to garner a full scholarship from what was then Northwestern State College. Immediately upon graduation in 1963 he joined the U.S. Army, and took Basic Training and A.I.T. at Fort Polk at Leesville, LA.

Upon completion of those training exercises he enrolled in Officer's Candidate School, emerging as a Second Lieutenant, and when they asked him where he wanted to be stationed for the duration of his hitch, he surprised the brass by requesting to be sent to Fort Polk. That was unusual because no one wanted to go to Ft. Polk at the time because it was the home of Tiger Land where troops were being trained to be sent to Viet Nam, but it was close to home. He was fortunate in the fact that he ended up playing basketball for the duration of his hitch at Ft. Polk.

Upon discharge from the service, he was in dire need of gainful employment, and while reading through the want-ads in a newspaper, and in doing an entrepreneurial spirit was born within him which governs his business dealings until this very day.

After doing a bit of quick research, he decided that there should be a business opportunity to be created in recycling old newspaper and especially cardboard. He stated, "I got started in the recycling business on a shoestring" and chuckled and said, "It was a very short shoe string."

Ken Moran is quick to fully give credit today to the fact that he owes a great measure of success today to being blessed, and fortunate to have had business dealings with some very good people, with a lot of integrity.

He has three companies of which he owns, and of which he is President;, they are: Ken Moran Trucking Company, Pak-Mor Manufacturing Co., and now Recycling Services Inc. which is in the process of completing construction on a new recycling plant. All of his three businesses are formulated to operate where they complement each other, performing services which aid and abet production, therefore making each of the other operations more cost efficient.

When Moran started his paper acquisition from various sources, he also began manufacturing his own balers to handle the baling processes. He went along with this process for a while, and was so successful to a point, that he was fabricating such a durable, long-lasting machine, it was actually too expensive to manufacture. So, he abandoned the baler manufacturing operation altogether, and started buying balers turned out by other manufacturers--refurbishing and using them in his operations resulting in a hefty saving in production costs.

When he began his first enterprise in 1972, he set what he thought was a lofty goal of 500 tons of baled recyclable paper per month, and chuckling said, "I thought if I could if I could ever attain that much tonnage production, I'd never see another poor day." Today he averages 19 to 20 thousand tons per month.

Somewhere along in 1978 Moran managed what he considered a major accomplishment when he landed the contract from Wal-Mart stores to purchase their baled cardboard bundles, which he uses his trucking company Ken Moran Trucking to pick up and haul the bales to paper mills in Bogalusa, Mansfield, and Campti, LA and to Orange, TX and Monticello, MS. The pre-packaged bales average about 900 lbs. per bale.

In another speculative maneuver, he founded and sold two garbage pick-up and disposal businesses, which he later sold turning a profit on both.

He went from there to the tire shredding business, by picking up literally thousands of tires across several states and shredding them to sell for recycling purposes. Because he managed the business so well, and used the proper equipment to do the job, he said it was one of the most profitable ventures he ever indulged in. And he reiterated, "I'm not bragging: just stating facts."

RSI keeps in excess of 50 Ken Moran Trucking Company trucks on the road and pays them to haul for RSI, with his drivers all being long-term employees and well-paid. His trucking company has over 100 trailers in the fleet, and about 60 fork lifts. His trucking company personally builds their own racks on the tail end of the trucks to contain the fork lifts, thus cutting production costs again. All of his maintenance equipment is cutting-edge, state of the art, and he hires the very best engineering personnel wages can buy. He does NOT believe in cutting corners.

Currently, he has just about completed a 44-million dollar paper mill which will manufacture roofing felt, plus all different grades of paper for industrial purposes. All of the materials utilized in the manufacturing processes will be recyclable materials like old card board and newspaper. No new or raw materials will be used in any of the end result products. The new mill should be fully operational by mid-2008 and at peak production should be able to produce about 500 tons per day.

Ken Moran is not content to rest on his successful business career. He's always looking for new ideas and business ventures to indulge in.

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