A big part of why Billy Dietrich purchased Central Disposal and Harley Hollan Cos., two Oklahoma waste management companies he acquired in 2022 to establish Superior USA Waste, a holding company based in Shawnee, Oklahoma, was the complementary nature of the businesses.
At the time, Harley Hollan operated a construction and demolition (C&D) transfer station in Tulsa near Central Disposal’s CenterPoint Landfill in Prague, Oklahoma. From day one, Dietrich had a plan to expand the Harley Hollan C&D transfer station to accept municipal solid waste.
“Adding a disposal option for Tulsa-area municipal waste haulers was a key part of our vision to build a leading solid waste company in Oklahoma,” says Dietrich, Superior USA Waste CEO. “This permit modification will allow local municipal waste haulers to save time and fuel every day compared to driving to the local landfills, and it will make our overall operations much more efficient.”
Dietrich says he worked with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality for six to eight months to get the solid waste transfer permit it needed to expand the Tulsa facility from a C&D-only transfer station to one that could accept municipal solid waste (MSW).
Sixteen months after the acquisition of Harley Hollan, Superior secured the necessary permits, and by May 2024, the MSW transfer station was operational.
“Outside of C&D and those types of materials that we were running on the roll-off side and industrial side, we also run front-load commercial out of that Tulsa location,” Dietrich says. “Owning our CenterPoint Landfill in Prague, we thought it was an opportunity to internalize the waste, and that’s exactly what we’re doing with the MSW.”
“Adding a disposal option for Tulsa-area municipal waste haulers was a key part of our vision to build a leading solid waste company in Oklahoma.” — Billy Dietrich, CEO, Superior USA Waste
Retrofit process
Before the acquisition, Harley Hollan ran the facility for more than 10 years as a C&D transfer station/material recovery facility that processed wood, rebar, concrete, cardboard and other C&D materials.
Superior spent close to $2 million to retrofit the facility with new equipment and get it up and running, Dietrich says.
The existing facility was quite large, which was beneficial as Superior did not need to expand the footprint or to adjust traffic patterns through the transfer station.
“The facility had been set up in a way that we didn’t really need to [make] any changes, aesthetically, to the building. [The former owner] did an excellent job prior to us getting there the way it was set up and the way it is functioning,” Dietrich says. “All we did was retrofit some of the areas in the back where we dump the solid waste.”
In anticipation of handling MSW, Superior USA Waste purchased a new 270 MH material handler from German manufacturer Atlas to help load transfer trailers and installed a new leachate containment tank, a large unit that had to be built specifically for the transfer station.
“There were very few things that we had to do to make this operational. It was just the process we had to go through to get it permitted and open,” Dietrich says. “Nothing happens as quickly as you want it to.”
Since Superior took over the transfer station in September 2022, the Tulsa facility has increased tonnage substantially, Dietrich says.
Expanding the transfer station has allowed the company to eliminate using other outside disposal sites and to transfer a majority of its solid waste to the CenterPoint Landfill.
While the transfer station primarily handles Superior’s waste, the company does allow some smaller third-party haulers to dump at the facility weekly, Dietrich says.
Superior primarily shreds recovered materials and, coinciding with the transition to MSW, purchased a $1 million Tana Shark electric shredder from Lubbock, Texas-based Tana North America, which became operational in September 2024. The facility uses the Shark to shred materials to create alternative daily cover.
“We’ve seen a reduction in diesel fuel … and downtime associated with [the electric shredder],” Dietrich says.
The Harley Hollan facility also uses a low-speed, high-torque, single-shaft waste shredder from SRS Equipment Inc., Quebec, called the Terminator, to process C&D debris.
Acquisitions strategy
Acquisitions have been a central part of the growth strategy for Superior USA.
Operating under their original names as part of the Superior USA family of businesses, Central Disposal and Harley Hollan continue to offer residential, commercial and industrial roll-off services; recycling; transfer station operations; and MSW landfill disposal to the central Oklahoma area.
“It goes back to local people serving local people. We don’t have the ego that we want to throw a Superior name out and put it on a truck,” Dietrich says. “We want to operate as those local companies and businesses who have done an excellent job over many years and continue to provide that same local quality service.”
More recently, Superior purchased Sue’s Recycling and Sanitation, a Vian, Oklahoma-based company providing residential, commercial and industrial waste management services. Sue’s operates MSW transfer stations in both Vian and Eufaula, Oklahoma.
As with all of Superior’s acquisitions, the original Harley Hollan ownership team still operates the transfer station business in Tulsa.
“At each of those locations, we still have the [former] owners operating,” Dietrich says. “I think that screams volumes to the culture of the business that the entrepreneurs are still involved.
“If you asked 99.9 percent of the people within this business, ‘What’s the hardest thing to do?’ it’s to continue to have entrepreneurs come and work for you and continue to build your culture.”
Superior is always on the lookout for more acquisitions in the Oklahoma area, Dietrich says.
“I’m into the quality of the acquisitions, not the quantity,” he says. “We could care less about the number of acquisitions we do. It’s the quality of those acquisitions … and that we fold [them] into our business mix and continue to extend our service areas.”
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