Ben Rucka - How Shingles are Reducing Smog - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Ben Rucka of Malarkey. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a longterm professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews and exciting news in the roofing industry today.
Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth and I am here today with some very cool information. Something that you can use in your business and then is really groundbreaking and I'm with one of my very good friends, Ben Rucka with Malarkey Roofing Company. Hello, Ben.

Ben Rucka:
Hello, Heidi. How are you?

Heidi Ellsworth:
I am good. I'm good. Do I hear a dog in the background?

Ben Rucka:
My children are 16 and 17 and they conned me and their mother into getting them a golden retriever puppy in December. And Murphy's law, he's been sleeping all day and now all of a sudden he's barking in the background but hopefully Griffin will relax a little bit. I hope.

Heidi Ellsworth:
You know what? That's the way it is. And that's what's so cool about podcasts, it's real life. Cute golden retriever, that's awesome.

Ben Rucka:
Yes. Well, the dog was supposed to be my children's dog but it is definitely my wife's dog.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That happens a lot too. I can relate to that one. Well, okay. We're here today to talk about some groundbreaking technology that Malarkey has had a leadership in but before we get to that and really kind of start sharing that, can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and a little bit about Malarkey?

Ben Rucka:
Yeah, absolutely. I am the district manager for the Southwest for Malarkey Roofing Products. I have a team of seven roaming around Southern California, Arizona and New Mexico, kind of trumpeting the news of this innovation that we've added to our product offering, which we're really excited about and I'm looking forward to telling you a little bit about today.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That is cool. Some people may know who's listening to this but my first job in roofing was with Malarkey Roofing and I love you guys. We have Malarkey on our roof. I've got to be careful how many people I tell that but it was my very first job in roofing. And so what you're doing right now, this really in some ways isn't new, because Malarkey has always been on the cutting edge of working with 3M and their granule innovations, whether that's algae resistant shingles, whether that's what we're talking about today. And that's the exciting thing is smog reducing granules. And I like to call it smog eating granules but I'm sure that's not right, but Ben, maybe tell us about that.

Ben Rucka:
We've been playing around with this for a while and my first thought process was having a little Pac-Man, or Mrs. Pac-Man munching up the smog. Calling it the smog eater. But really, you got to give a lot of credit to our partner 3M for coming up with this coating that they've added to this granule. And really, it really is similar to a catalytic converter. And that's the big analogy I would like to share with everybody. I think if you're a contractor and you're sitting at the kitchen table trying to convince a homeowner to buy from you in one of the most difficult sales things there is, you want to offer something different. And the smog reducing granule was a Time Magazine invention of the year in 2018. And Malarkey added it into our laundry list, which I have for everybody, of innovations that we've added to our shingles over the years.

Ben Rucka:
And the way this granule works, has a special coating and basically what happens is the smog gets attached to the granule, the catalytic ions change that smog into a NO3, which is attached to the granule then basically that NO3 is rinsed off the granule, off with either rain or dew and then the granule maintains that coating and it's kind of like rinse repeat. And then over time that granule is the equivalent on a 30 square roof to planting two and a half trees, which are nature's basic filter of pulling carbon dioxide and difficult chemicals out of the air and putting them back into the earth.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And the thing that I found that I just love when I look at this is you have these granules in incorporated into a very wide breath of the Malarkey Roofing Products, right?

Ben Rucka:
Yes. Every shingle we make, we have incorporated this granule since 2019. If you buy a Malarkey roof and it's 30 squares, you're planting two and a half trees in your yard without planting those trees, which is an incredible benefit to all. And since it's in every shingle we offer, it's at every price point. We have sh we have shingles, a lot of contractors that in the olden days, we used to talk about 30, 40, 50 year shingles. And now we're talking about good, better, best. I believe all of our shingles are the best but we have different price points of shingles. And these granules are in every single shingle we manufacture and we're really excited to be able to offer the market that.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That is cool. A little bit of history going back when 3M first came out with this in 2018, really looking at that. I've always seen Malarkey is the first one to step up with all these innovations. And I really want you to share that list. In fact, let's start there. Share that list of innovations that Malarkey has worked on over the years.

Ben Rucka:
It's really, I've been with Malarkey for eight years now and when I first joined, I didn't know the history of innovation that the Malarkey's have had to the roofing industry. And when you hear this list and people say, "Well, why smog reducing granules?" Well, when I add it to the list of 14 other things here, you'll probably say, "Okay well, this makes sense." Malarkey's always had a desire as a company to do two things, A, build a better mouse trap. And that's really been a driving factor for all of the innovations that Malarkey has offered over the last since 1956. And then secondly, to follow a critical path and leaves something behind. Our president, Greg Malarkey talks about closed system and that's basically the earth. We make stuff, we're not launching it into space and getting it out of our system. We're just basically putting stuff from here and putting it over there.

Ben Rucka:
When I think about taking my kids to Costco and seeing a mountain of water bottles, we drink that water. There's nothing wrong with that bottle in essence after the water's out of it. And so many things we manufacture in the world, car tires, another thing. Every year in Phoenix, where I live, there's a tire fire. Extremely difficult to put it out. It burns for weeks. And basically if you think about a tire, The tread's probably bad and maybe some of the rubber is dry rotted but a lot of that synthetic rubber still has uses. And yes, we've done a good job as a society trying to find some but now we've got a really kind of a secret sauce that we're really excited to talk about.

Ben Rucka:
Smog reducing granules, I'll just mention to your audience, A Malarkey was started in 1956 by Herbert Malarkey and it started out as a paper company and quickly evolved into a roofing manufacturing business. In 1976, Malarkey installed the very first random fiberglass Schuler machine in North America. We started manufacturing three tab shingles, not out of paper, that was the way shingles were made but making them out of fiberglass. A year later because that fiberglass machine that Michael Malarkey, our second generation brought over to the US was a metric machine, we were trimming that fiberglass and basically taking the edges to the landfill. We converted those three tab shingles into metric shingles in 1977 and thus began the conversion of almost every roofing product from a standard US measured to a metric sized product. Which is really incredible if you're into history.

Ben Rucka:
And then if you start thinking about progressing and just doing the right thing, Michael Malarkey found out in Portland in the early 1980s, that the landfill nearby our plant in Portland was creating a lot of methane and that methane was just basically getting burned off or launched into the atmosphere. He basically financed a pipe to bring that methane gas from the landfill to our plant and still to this day, our fiberglass mat is made with a big chunk of that methane gas from the Portland landfill.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That's cool.

Ben Rucka:
And for the state of Oregon to give them a award for investing in that process and being a good steward of the environment, that speaks to the Malarkey family's commitment into building a better mousetrap and doing the right thing. That's a long time ago, I graduated from high school in 1985 and I'm 54 years old. And then you start talking about asphalt and asphalt is a wonderful thing. It's the bottom of the barrel of crude oil. It's what ends up in the roads and shingles all across this country. And in order to make asphalt work in a shingle, you can't just take it right out of flux. You have to do something to raise the melt point temperature to be able to make a shingle. For most of our last 30 years, we've had to oxidize or pre-age that asphalt to raise the melt point temperature to manufacture a shingle. And Michael Malarkey went over to Europe and found out that there were a couple chemicals you could mix with that asphalt to raise the melt point temperature without having to put all that energy into raising the melt point temperature.

Ben Rucka:
Most contractors know EPP, so that's one of the magic synthetic polymers that you can mix with asphalt. And that's a plastic. The other one is SBS and that's rubber, synthetic rubber. You mix that synthetic rubber with asphalt, we can raise the melt point temperature of the asphalt and then make a shingle out of it. Really that's really the base idea behind the synthetic rubber. We started doing that in 1986 and came out with our Alaskan shingle. And our Alaskan shingle unfortunately has been retired but it was a three tab shingle and it really came out of necessity. We called it the Alaskan because in Alaska, there is a very short window of roofing every year. It's probably six months. Our friends up in Alaska asked us to make a shingle that we could install in colder weather.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And I have to tell you, the Alaskan is one of my favorite shingles. That shingle when I would talk to people, when I was at Malarkey and people would call in, they'd be like, "Oh, it's been on my roof forever." They love it. And on the Oregon coast, anywhere there's high winds. I'm sad it's retired but it has been such a great product in the roofing industry.

Ben Rucka:
We have sold a lot of that shingle and we have a lot of salespeople that have been with us for a long time, which is also to me, what speaks well of a company. When people want to stay and be part of a company. And it was a sad day for some of those senior guys when that shingle went away. But it was really an amazing product. And it was the very first shingle to pass Miami Dade's wind requirements in 1993. That's on my list as well. There was a short amount of time after Hurricane Andrew, after every roof blew off. Somebody down there figured out that Malarkey Alaskans wouldn't blow off. We were shipping shingles from Portland, Oregon, all the way to Miami, Florida for a short, brief time, until we figured out that the freight was probably more than the shingles. But anyway, it is a nice little claim to fame.

Ben Rucka:
And then that technology of modifying asphalt really led to the next thing on my list is our Legacy shingle. 1997, we put that SBS technology into an architectural shingle. And that architectural shingle has really been part of the expansion of Malarkey from west to east. One day, and this is again, you guys can edit this out if you want but this is kind of, Malarkey's got these lore of stories that I've heard. One day, our president Greg Malarkey is sitting in his office in Portland and a major insurance company calls up and says, "Hey Greg, we tested all these shingles. Do you know that the Malarkey Legacy is the whole only shingle that can pass a class four hail test?"

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yes, I was there.

Ben Rucka:
The way Greg says it, he goes, "What's a class four hail test?" And so the rest is kind of history and we've had this shingle that's been made out of synthetic rubber and it's great for people in hail markets but there's not too much hail in, let's call it Los Angeles, California or Vista, California or San Diego California. He has always, and the Malarkeys have been on a mission for a way to bring the benefits of a class four modified shingle down to the everyday price point for the rest of the country. That's really where the up cycling comes in. All throw in Scotchgard in 2003, for anybody that wants to know, we've had Scotchgard algae resistance since 2003. In 2015, all of Malarkey's plants were given a green circle certification for waste diversion. The company's very proud about that.

Ben Rucka:
In 2015, we started making a mid level shingle, a 40 year shingle called our Vista polymer modification. And in the next year, we kind of really came up with the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe. And this is one thing that I really like to talk about because when I talk about synthetic rubber, when you buy it off the shelf, it's not cheap. And so we've been searching for ways to bring the benefits of that synthetic rubber down to the masses. And we started playing with polymers that used to end up in the landfill. What are those polymers? Synthetic rubber from tires. Now people say, "Are you guys chopping up tires and putting them in your shingles?" I'm like, "No, that's not really the way it works." We have vendors that go through the tires, pull out the treads, pull out the steel belt, sort out any of the dry rot and rubber. And they give us basically almost a brand new synthetic rubber in a pellet form that we're able to incorporate into our mixing process.

Ben Rucka:
Same thing with the plastic bottles. There's companies that go around collecting all this recyclable material and there's lots of different plastics. If you ever look at different plastics, they all have a number on them. We are using certain versions of that plastic to mix in our shingle blend and we came up with the next formulation of asphalt and that's really been a big winner in my world, the Highlander NEX 241. It's a great shingle. And to me, contractors I want to thank you for installing them. I don't think you would keep buying them if the shingles weren't meet the expectation you have from Malarkey Roofing Products. And so we're excited to keep offering them to you.

Ben Rucka:
And then lastly, adding the smog reducing granule, good gracious what a complete green offering for a shingle. And this has been really not someone sitting behind the curtains like the Wizard of Oz coming up with this. This has been revolution by evolution and trial and error and all the experience of all those years coming up with the shingle and now to be able to offer this smog reduction feature is an amazing, amazing achievement and it we're really excited to share the news about it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. It's just, it's so groundbreaking. And thank you so much for going through those innovations because when you really look at it that there's recycled material in there, the algae resistance, all the SBS and the polymers. It really does lead up to that big picture with kind of that frosting on the cake of the smog reducing granules, really making this something that not only helps homeowners, protects everything but also is two trees, two and a half trees for every 30 squares. That in itself makes such a huge difference. What are you hearing from contractors? What are they saying about it?

Ben Rucka:
Well Heidi, Malarkey contractors love Malarkey and there's survey after survey after survey, contractors once they use our stuff, they want it. And if they can't get it at one place, they'll find out the place to get it. And I love our Malarkey contractors. Our Malarkey contractors that are near and dear to our heart, they've embraced this and they have appreciated the ability to participate and help us plant a million trees. And that's really the mission we're on with 3M as well. They have their own initiative for planting trees. But since every roof that we're selling equals two and a half trees, we're going to get there.

Heidi Ellsworth:
That is cool. Can you share where you're at on that journey to a million?

Ben Rucka:
It's probably somewhere between 45 and 50%, depending on who does the math.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Oh great.

Ben Rucka:
And I'm sure the goal's going to go up because you got to have a new goal. But regardless, we're really proud of it and we want to leave a better place for the next generation. I'm really part proud to be part of the Malarkeys. They're always talking about leaving something behind and it's been awesome for me personally to be a part of it.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. I love that. One of the things that I'm curious about too, is when you're talking about the next generation, the up and coming gen Zs and millennials are very passionate about buying products that are sustainable and that also actually have an active part in reducing or helping with climate change. It seems to me that this has to be something that you're seeing a lot of great feedback from homeowners, especially young homeowners. Any stories? Or what are you hearing from that point?

Ben Rucka:
Well, I think all of us want to leave something better behind. In my house, I'm kind of the person that runs around and makes sure that we're recycling everything we should recycle. And I think if you're asking me what our building owners are saying, they're like, "Why don't I know about this already?" We have had a tremendous effort on social media to spread the news. All of our sales staff is spreading the news day by day. And if the choice is buying a roof that can save 350 water bottles and five tires from the landfill or not, if there's no difference in price, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you do it?

Ben Rucka:
And so I think our society is questioning that on almost every level, how do we incrementally change things so that we all leave something behind? And I think that is what I see in the younger generation pushing the limits and making it maybe go a little bit faster. Change doesn't always happen as fast as we would like. I would love to have my hover car and just be able to fly from Phoenix to LA myself. But I think there are a lot of companies that are pushing the envelope to the extent they can to make things better.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Yeah. Yeah. And you definitely are. And Malarkey definitely is. And getting the word out there, we're so proud to have Malarkey on RoofersCoffeeShop, on Ask a Roofer, which is our homeowners site, talking about this and working with 3M to really get that word out because it is. Unless people know about it and really understand that first of all, recycled materials they're saving things from the landfill. And second of all, granules that are smog reducing, that is huge. Any insights on what's next? What are some of the other things coming up?

Ben Rucka:
There's a lot of things that are potentially out there. I don't really have the keys to the kingdom on of what is exactly next. But I do know that I work for a company that has always embraced change and improving things for roofing contractors. You see a lot of people talking about a zone. I don't think I mentioned that earlier on. One of our claim to fames most shingles have a nail line. The average house has got 8,000 nails in it. And I like to ask people, "Is it okay if I misnail 10% of your nails on your shingles?" Is that okay, Heidi's? But it's only 10%. I'm 90% good.

Ben Rucka:
Again, kind of a legend, Greg our president, one day I figured out that this is not easy to nail shingles with the nail line. And in 2001 we figured out a way to make an inch and a half nail zone. And really proud of that. And contractors that have installed our shingles, see that their guys have a little bit of wiggle room to make sure all those 8,000 nails are in the right place. And so what I would say to you is I think from my chair, we're constantly getting people coming to us with ideas for improvement. I think the one thing that I like about Malarkey is that they take a lot of time and vet things out. Do I know that we'll probably have a couple things coming down the pipe? I think we will but again, it's kind of incremental and it's got to make sense. We don't want to do something that's going to make the roof not last or put our contractors in jeopardy.

Heidi Ellsworth:
And one of the things that you all have done so great and watching Greg Malarkey over the years, Malarkey is always doing it first. And so like you said, everybody may be talking about the zone but that started in 2001 with Malarkey. Now with smog reducing granules, you were the first ones to have algae resistant shingles. Ben, how awesome to be able to sell this and really sell it down in LA where it's so needed. I guess I'd love for you to kind of, we're coming to the end of this podcast, but just kind of share what you're seeing in your own area with municipalities or different places and their acceptance of the smog reducing granules.

Ben Rucka:
There is tremendous interest in green technology across the board and from governmental units, from school districts, from homeowners, just wanting to do better, do something, leave something behind. That's the way I like to describe it. I think as more information gets out there, I think eventually others will follow along into this process. 3M is a huge company. I think that eventually people will have to do something. And there's always the early adopters. That's kind of where we're at. We've been the early adopter of things and having a partner like 3M gives us a lot of peace of mind. Because I don't think 3M would bring this out unless it was thoroughly vetted and works. Just a little bit of a peace of mind for contractors that we're not talking about something that's just kind of, this technology has been vetted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. This technology has been endorsed by people like Climate Resolve.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Wow.

Ben Rucka:
Some of leaders in endorsing technologies to improve our environment. I do think eventually, others may or may not join but it's fun to be part of one of the leading edge companies and to be one of the early adopters of this technology. And if I was a contractor and I was talking at the kitchen table about shingles and shingle technology, this is something I would certainly bring up because it certainly can make a difference if the more people that participate. And again, there's no upcharge, virtually no upcharge compared to comparable products. I often think of if it was me, why wouldn't I choose this? And as a contractor, I think you can differentiate yourself with this technology and all the other innovations that I've mentioned in the Malarkey shingle offering. And we're here as a sales team ready to support all of you contractors in the marketplace. I'm grateful for you letting me talk to you about this today, Heidi, and share the news. And hopefully, we're going to get back to normal at some point and see each other all face to face a little bit more.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Exactly. Exactly. Well Ben, thank you. I love how you presented this. I love how showing how all of the innovations have come together into this amazing product that's making such a difference. And thank you. Thank you so much for spending your time with me today. And I can't wait to see the next thing that comes from Malarkey because I tell you what, it's always something cool.

Ben Rucka:
Well thank you so much, Heidi. I really enjoyed it. You be safe and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Heidi Ellsworth:
We'll see you hopefully at the next Western States or IRE or somewhere in the West Coast. You take care and I want to say thank you to everyone who's listening today. Thank you so much for being part of this podcast. Please check out all of our podcasts on rooferscoffeeshop.com under the read, listen, watch section of the navigation. And of course you can always listen to our podcast on your favorite podcast channel. Please subscribe and get notifications so you never miss a podcast. And I want to invite all of you to keep coming back because we've got some great new podcasts coming on and this one especially has really been near and dear to my heart. Take care and we'll see you on the next Roofing Road Trip.

Heidi Ellsworth:
Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the rooferscoffeeshop.com.