Adam Weitsman grew up in Owego, New York, surrounded by scrap metal yards and a family business that dated back to 1938. It was part of daily life, not a career decision. After high school, he left for New York City to do something different.
He studied at Long Island University and NYU, and later took courses at Harvard. The classroom wasn’t the main focus. The art world was. In the early 1990s, at twenty-three, he opened his own American Folk Art gallery in Greenwich Village. He was buying nineteenth-century weather vanes, trade signs, and stoneware from estate sales upstate and selling them to collectors in the city for ten times what he paid. He spent the next several years learning how people assign value to things, often before the rest of the market catches up.
That idea stayed with him.
In the mid-1990s, he came home. He launched Upstate Shredding in 1996. The early years were hard. He took a $10 million loan for a shredder that initially sat idle. He got into financial trouble in 2003. He paid a $1 million fine. He served eight months at Otisville. He came out and rebuilt. In 2005, he acquired his family’s original company and merged the two operations into one. Today Upstate Shredding spans more than fifteen locations across New York and Pennsylvania and is one of the largest privately held scrap metal processors on the East Coast.
His work is built on systems. Efficiency, consistency, and scale.
Outside the business, he is a serious collector of American stoneware and contemporary art. He spent two decades building one of the most significant private stoneware collections in the country and donated the entire 500-piece collection, valued at $10 million, to the New York State Museum so it could stay in public hands. He owns four restaurants in Skaneateles. The Krebs, Elephant and the Dove, Hidden Fish, and Clover’s Cafe. All of them donate their net profits to charities supporting women and children in Central New York.
His path shows that sometimes the biggest opportunities are the ones nobody else is looking at.
What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?
Early. I start with the numbers from the yards. Volume, pricing, how fast material is moving. That tells me what’s real before I talk to anybody. Then I check in with managers across locations. If something is off, we fix it that day. Staying close to operations is what keeps the day productive.
How do you bring ideas to life?
Small first. When we expanded, we didn’t just build wherever. We looked at where trucks were losing time and put yards closer to the supply. If a change improves flow on a small level, we scale it. If it doesn’t, we don’t.
What’s one trend that excites you?
Digital assets and Web3. I got into Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks early. It reminded me of buying folk art in the 90s. People don’t understand it at first, but value is already forming. That’s usually when I pay closest attention.
What is one habit that helps you be productive?
Consistency. I check the same core things every day. Numbers, operations, flow. It keeps the decisions grounded in what’s actually happening instead of what people are telling me is happening.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Slow down. I used to move too fast. The better decisions come from understanding the basics first.
Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?
Scale is overrated if the system underneath it doesn’t work. A smaller operation that runs cleanly is stronger than a bigger one with problems. Most people chase the size. The size is the easy part.
What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?
Look for where time is being wasted. In our business, it was trucks driving too far or material sitting too long. Fix that before you do anything else. The improvements compound.
When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Go back to the yard. Walk through the operation. Review the numbers. Most problems are operational, not theoretical, and standing in front of them makes that clear fast.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
Placing operations closer to the supply. We had trucks making one trip a day when they could have been making three. We opened facilities in better locations and increased volume without adding more trucks. The system got more efficient without getting more expensive. That decision, repeated across fifteen locations, is most of how the company grew.
What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?
Early on, I expanded without consistent systems. Each location ran differently. It created inefficiencies that compounded. I fixed it by standardizing processes across every yard. The lesson was that structure has to come before growth, not after. Anything you build on a weak foundation eventually shows it.
What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Local scrap aggregation hubs. Small collection points that feed into larger processors. It cuts travel time and improves efficiency across regions. Most of the inefficiency in the industry comes from material moving too far before it gets processed.
What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?
ERP and reporting tools like Scrap Dragon, plus internal dashboards. I use them to track daily volume, pricing, and performance across every location in real time. If you can’t see the numbers, you can’t run the business.
Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. and The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Both show how real systems and industries get built over time. Slow, ugly, and consistent. I also listen to How I Built This for different perspectives on how operators actually grow companies.
What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?
American Factory on Netflix. It shows how manufacturing actually works at the floor level. Operations, people, systems. That’s always been the interesting part of any business to me.
Key learnings
- Growth comes from fixing inefficiencies, not chasing scale.
- Strong systems create consistency across locations.
- Value is usually found early, in places nobody else is looking.
- Staying close to operations leads to better decisions.
- Small improvements in process drive most of the long-term result.