New York Paper Shredding: Quotes from Local Providers

The hard part of shredding in New York City is rarely the shredding. It is getting a truck, or a cart of boxes, from a New York freight elevator to a curb that is already full. Ask any office manager in Midtown who has tried to book a mobile shredder for a Tuesday morning. The building wants a certificate of insurance first, and the loading dock has a window of a couple of hours. The driver cannot idle where the traffic agents are watching.

Start with the building, not the provider

Before you collect quotes, call your property manager. Most commercial towers in Manhattan have rules about vendors: when the freight elevator can be reserved, which entrance carts must use, and what paperwork the shredding company has to show before anyone gets past the security desk. A good provider will already carry the insurance paperwork and can send it the same day. A bad one finds out about the rule at the loading dock.

That is why off-site service tends to win in the densest blocks. Locked consoles sit under desks, and a driver collects the contents on a set day and wheels them out through the service entrance. Nothing parks on the street for long. Mobile shredding works better in outer-borough buildings with a driveway or a lot, where a truck can sit for an hour and you can watch the paper go in.

Who is shredding in the five boroughs

Law firms and financial offices in Midtown and the Financial District produce the steady volume. A case ends or a deal closes, and a dozen banker boxes come out of storage. Hospitals in New York and the many small medical and dental practices across Brooklyn and Queens handle patient records that fall under HIPAA. Accountants clear out client files every spring after tax season. Property managers and co-op boards deal with old lease files and board records. City and state offices have their own rules for how records are kept and destroyed, so if you work with a government agency, ask your records officer what is required before you hire anyone.

Then there are the moves. New York has a constant churn of tenants, with leases ending and offices shrinking into smaller floors. A one-time purge before a move is the job people request most.

Past the river: Newark, Jersey City and the rest of the metro

The metro stretches across the Hudson. Jersey City has a large cluster of back-office operations near the waterfront, and Newark has its own downtown towers along with warehouses near the airport and the port. Paterson and Elizabeth carry smaller practices and auto shops. A provider based in Brooklyn or Queens does not always cross the river without a trip charge, and some trucks are licensed or routed for one side only. Ask where the truck starts its day. A provider with a depot in northern New Jersey is usually the better quote for Newark and Elizabeth, while one based in Long Island City or the Bronx will price Manhattan more sharply.

What the quote should say

Whether the price is per banker box, per bin, or a flat monthly fee for each console.
The truck minimum, since a small purge can cost nearly as much as a full truck stop.
A certificate of destruction for every pickup, with a date and a serial or container number.
NAID AAA Certification, which is the industry audit program. Ask to see the current one.
Insurance paperwork your building will accept.

Also ask who touches the paper. Some providers use their own employees who have been background checked. Others subcontract the route. In a city where the paper in your bins is a client's tax return or a patient's chart, you want to know which one you are getting.

Lease ends, moves and the sorting problem

Plenty of New York leases end on the last day of a month, and tenants tend to discover their records the week before. Co-op boards and small law firms in Brooklyn Heights or Downtown Brooklyn are the usual offenders. If you are leaving a floor, put the shredding date a few days before the move-out inspection, not on the same day, so a delayed truck does not cost you a deposit.

It also pays to sort. Old catalogs and annual reports that are already public do not need destruction. Regular recycling takes them. Everything with a name, an account number, a signature or a medical detail does. In a purge priced per box, a box that is half junk is still a full box on the invoice.

One purge or a standing schedule

If you have only a few boxes, a community shred event run by a bank or a city council member may do the job for free. Anything bigger than that, or anything that will keep happening, is better on a schedule. A standing arrangement usually works out cheaper than a string of one-off calls, and it ends the habit of stacking paper in the supply closet until the fire marshal complains. Medical offices and law firms usually want weekly or biweekly pickup. A small accounting office might be fine monthly, with an extra visit after tax season.

Hard drives and backup media are a separate item. Federal rules push businesses to dispose of personal data securely, and state law often adds to that. A laptop that goes to the curb is a bigger risk than a box of paper. Ask whether the provider destroys drives, and ask for a serial-numbered list afterward.

One more thing people skip: read the contract for the renewal clause. Some scheduled service agreements renew on their own for a long term, and a company that downsizes in Manhattan can end up paying for consoles in an office it no longer rents.