Mobile Shredding vs. Shredders

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e frequently have people calling up and asking if we provide a shredding service. When we respond with “no, we only sell the shredders themselves,” people start to wonder why. Since we already have the shredders, why not use a few of them and start a mobile shredding branch of the company? The quick and easy answer is that we specialize in providing secure destruction of your data and pride ourselves on customer service. Mobile shredding simply is not secure enough for us, nor should it be secure enough for you.

You may be inclined to think that a shredding service would provide the same security as owning your own shredder. Either way, your documents are getting shredded, so how could one be better than the other? The difference lies in the chance for mistakes. If you trust your sensitive documents to a shredding service, this means that the shredded paper will remain in their shredder, to be disposed of by that company. There is always a chance that these shredded documents could fall into the wrong hands in transit or not be disposed of properly, and the threat of others accessing your private information is very real. Similarly, some documents can fall by the wayside during mobile shredding appointments and fail to be shredded. This is a huge security risk which could be avoided if your documents never leave your building.

We have to admit, mobile shredding can seem convenient. Most of the time a van or truck with a shredder in the back will come to your location, and in other cases you will have to go to its location, but overall it makes accessing a shredder relatively easy. What’s even easier, though, is having your own shredder in your building. You won’t have to schedule an appointment or wait for the occasional community shred while your documents just keep piling up; all shredding can be done in-house, on your own time, making the process much easier and faster than if you used a mobile shredding service.

Mobile shredding has a smaller cost in the short term, as the fee you will have to pay each time you rent the service is nominal in comparison to the price of an office shredder. If you regularly go through paper like a typical business or office does, however, purchasing a shredder will be more cost-effective in the long run. When you have to constantly hire a shredding service for your documents, the costs will add up and quickly surpass the cost of the shredder. Choosing to purchase a shredder for your company will be a larger upfront cost, but your office shredder will pay for itself in a little while with the time and money you’ve saved by forgoing a shredding service.