Caglia Demolition and Recycling Company

Nathan Caglia, a general manager with Caglia Demolition and Recycling Company (CDRC), estimates that his company recycles between 75 to 90 percent of a jobsite’s waste, which is typically carted off to a landfill.

Common construction and demolition materials include lumber, drywall, metals, masonry (brick, concrete, etc.), carpet, plastic, pipe, rocks, dirt, paper, cardboard or green waste related to land development. Of these, metals are the most commonly recycled material, while lumber makes up the majority of debris that still goes to a landfill.

Fresno-based CDRC works on projects up and down California’s Central Valley, from Bakersfield to Modesto. While CDRC was founded only recently in 2008, Caglia has a lifetime of experience working with waste products. “My family has been involved in waste recycling since 1939,” Caglia says. “We owned a landfill that we recently closed in 2007, and in ’93 we started a concrete and asphalt recycling facility. Times were getting tough a couple of years back, so we added demolition as a way to diversify.”

A Network of Recycling Businesses

Caglia’s family owns CDRC and has been involved with companies that have been helping Fresno stay beautiful for years. In addition to CDRC the family also owns the Cedar Avenue Recycling and Transfer Station and Industrial Waste and Salvage. Family patriarch Frank Caglia taught his seven children the value of resource conservation from a very early age.

The family’s landfill, Orange Avenue Disposal, has always participated in Keeping America Beautiful (KAB), which is a nationwide nonprofit that combines education with hands-on stewardship to make America’s communities cleaner, greener and more livable. The company also offered services to keep Fresno clean as part of the Fresno Beautiful campaign in the ’60s. Years before Earth Day, Orange Avenue Disposal provided free admission on April 22 for one truck load of litter to be dumped.

Collectively, the Caglia family businesses employ between 80 to 100 personnel, making it one of Fresno’s largest employers dedicated to recycling and waste management. “I grew up in this industry,” says Caglia. “Ever since I can remember my family would take me to the job, and though I probably was just in the way back then I always pitched in to help.”

Extended Expertise

The crew at CDRC already has a wide range of experience and can offer its services in building demolition [demo], land clearing, concrete sawing and drilling, excavation, on-site crushing, high-side trucking and concrete debris boxes. The company also works with underground construction specializing in sewer, storm drain, water and irrigation.

According to Caglia, a job is a job; he says that the company will work on projects as small as concrete removal in a bathroom up to large municipal or private jobs worth up to $1 million. “We went through a period where things were slow, but jobs have been picking up significantly in the past year,” says Caglia. “We’ve had to double our crew size and add more management positions to keep up with the growth. I know people say it’s rough out there right now, but if you aren’t afraid to look for work, it’s there.”

In recent months CDRC crews have participated in several high-profile projects. “Every demo project is interesting in its own say,” expresses Caglia. “We’re currently working for a redevelopment agency downtown on several projects, but just finished the demolition of the old Fresno Unified School District maintenance facility. We demo’d it and brought it back to the yard to be processed.”

Occasionally the materials that CDRC recycles are so valuable that the company is able to offer its services for the unbelievably low price of free. “We worked a large demolition project at a feed lot that was a year’s worth of work in the Firebaugh, Calif.,” explains Caglia. “At that time 100 percent of the scrap was put back in, and we got all of the concrete, wood and steel. We were able to do it for just the scrap value and at no cost to the owner.”

What started as a way to offer additional services to clients and to help diversify during a slow economic period has turned into a profitable and growing portion of the Caglia family’s business. Opportunities are continuing to grow, and under Nathan Caglia’s watchful eye Caglia Demolition and Recycling Company will continue to represent all that the good about the green building trend.