When Rick Weekly was growing up, his parents always joked that he was good at destroying things. They never expected that he’d make a career out of it! Today, Rick owns and operates Affordable Shred, a document destruction company headquartered in Springfield, Illinois. “Recycling was the family business,” explains Rick. “A core part of my dad’s business was always recycled paper.” “But around 2003 or so, he noticed the demand steadily shifting. People no longer wanted to just recycle their paper. They wanted it shredded.”

When college graduation rolled around for Rick, his father approached him with an offer to take over the company’s shredding division, subsequently splintering it off from the original company and building service volume from 5,000 lbs of paper a month to more than 125,000 lbs each month. Affordable Shred is AAA-certified by the National Association of Information Destruction (NAID), affirming compliance with the highest industry expectations and ethical standards.