1. What is Mobile Document Shredding Industry
2. Type of documents?
3. Who are shredding services users?
4. What other materials can be shredded for profit?
5. Why is mobile document shredding a good business?
6. Will there be a demand for the service in my marke
7. Is my market big enough?
8. Low Growth High Growth Models
9. Equipment required to establish
10. Staff required to operate
11. Service pricing
12. Waste Paper Recycling
13. Market strategies
14. Finding out more

Pricing of a mobile document shredding service

Pricing is based either on weight of documents shredded, the size of the collection container or the time to shred the documents.

By weight of documents being shredded

This method ensures customers are charged fairly for the work performed, and that there is less chance of under-quoting by the shredding firm. A Trade Certified weigh scale is an option in an AXO Mobile Shredding Truck, and this allows the efficient weighing and printing of the weight for later charging. Weighing the documents is possible whether the documents are collected in bins, bags or cabinets.

By size of the Collection Container

This is the simplest and most transparent method of charging. To account for travel time and handling he smaller containers have a higher charge per liter of container size, however as they are emptied by the driver, small containers can be decanted into say a 240 Litre bin, and this increases the speed of collection and shredding, and overall profitability.

Time Based Billing

This is not a common method of charging, and is almost exclusively used by the Canadian based company Shred-it. While this method of billing could seem very fair in that it is based on time spent at the job, it doesn't provide any incentive for the shredding company to shred quicker, as this would reduce billing revenue. In fact with billing rates reported at up to GBP4.95 (ex VAT) per minute at the job site, and with low throughput shredding equipment, Shred-it is often perceived as a high cost service. When users of amobile shredding service are already convinced that they should have their documents shredded on-site, they will switch to a more reasonably priced service when given the opportunity.

Is collection best done

There are two options for collection - on call whereby a customer makes a telephoned/faxed or emailed request for a shredding truck to visit and shred their documents, or a scheduled service, where the customer is visited on a regular the contents of their collection container are shredded. As the scheduled service allows the shredding truck to follow a pre-planned route, this service is more efficient.

When properly sold, many clients see the benefits of a scheduled service; they are relieved of having to contact the shredding firm to request a shred, the containers are very unlikely to overflow if the time between shreds is correctly spaced and they have a regular amount billed per month. In most cases not all of the clients containers will be completely full - however clients normally see that benefits of the scheduled service outweigh the slight savings that could be made if they were to only pay for full containers. Larger clients especially should have their shredding arranged on a schedule as with multiple container locations, and often spread across several buildings communication of which containers are full and require shredding is time consuming and unnecessary.

Determining your pricing

1. AXO 408 / DAF LF 45 Mobile Shredding Truck
The revenue that can be generated per month by a fully booked truck can be determined as below. Note that the commonly used 240 liter plastic wheeled bin contains on average 60 kilograms of paper (the maximum is approximately 110 kilograms and the minimum is approximately 20 kilograms).

A fully booked AXO 608 / Iveco Euro4 can in most cases shred 1.25 full loads of paper per day. This equates to 6.88 tons of shredded paper.


Using the average weight of paper per container the number of containers that can be shredder per day can be determined, and by multiplying by the average billing per container the total billing per day is determined. Conversely should a target revenue be required, the billing per container to achieve this can be determined. Note that some mobile shredding companies can shred more than the above amounts per day by adding an additional helper to travel with the driver, by working the truck longer hours and when a regular large customer has very easy access facilities and long opening hours.

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