On-site Paper Shredding Services
What is on-site paper shredding?
On-site shredding is a mobile paper shredding service where confidential documents get destroyed inside a shredding truck at your premises.
‘On-site’ means that the shredding process gets done in front of your office building or right in front of your doorstep at home. This is ideal when you want to witness the destruction of your documents at your location. The opposite is ‘off-site shredding,’ where your documents are picked up, transported, and shredded inside a shredding facility.
Tip: Read more on how to start a shredding service business.
How does it work?
- After scheduling an appointment with a paper shredding service company, a truck with a security representative comes to your location.
- All your documents are loaded inside a mobile shredding truck on-site. The truck contains an industrial-strength shredder.
- Your paperwork is then destroyed by a shredding professional.
- Most shredding companies provide you with a certificate of destruction to verify that all your documents have been destroyed.
- The truck leaves your site with your shredded documents for recycling.
Ongoing or one-time shredding?
On-site shredding can be a one-time service or an ongoing service with regularly scheduled visits with a shred truck. But what is the difference?
With one-time mobile shredding, the destruction company visits your location once to shred your sensitive and confidential documents. After their company archives’ annual clearance, most customers choose this option, one-time storage cleanouts or purges.
When you choose an ongoing mobile shredding service, your confidential documents are shredded regularly during the year based on a contract or subscription. Commonly, the paper shredding company provides you as a customer with security containers. These secure and locked document containers are placed inside your office building for the secure disposal of confidential documents. The containers are then emptied inside the shredder truck for paper shredding.
Depending on the service company, it is possible to schedule weekly or monthly on-site paper shredding. This is called ‘scheduled on-site shredding’ or ‘recurring on-site shredding.’ But some companies also offer the option to schedule an appointment only when your security container is full.
What does it cost?
How much does on-site shredding cost? Most service providers don’t show any prices for their shredding services because the price depends on a couple of factors, such as the amount of paperwork you want to shred and where you are being located.
According to ShredNations.com, on average it costs around $100 to send a mobile shredding truck to perform the shredding at your location.
Is on-site shredding secure?
For 100% secure paper shredding, it is important to ensure that the shredding provider is NAID AAA Certified. A National Association of Information Destruction (NAID) member ensures you as a customer that the whole process of paper shredding is secure and certified. AAA Certified shredding companies are audited regularly by an independent auditor. During the audit, the auditor examines the security of the whole shredding process. This audit ensures that your confidential document is destroyed according to the highest security standards.
A certificate of destruction issued after shredding proves that you comply with regulations like HIPAA, FACTA, GLB, and other privacy-related laws.
Also make sure that:
- You will receive a certification of destruction. This document is issued at the end of the shredding process. The certificate proves that your confidential documents have been destroyed thoroughly.
- You know the DIN 66399 security level the company uses for shredding your documents.
- What is done with the shredded paper after shredding? Will the material be recycled in an environmentally friendly way?
- Are the employees screened and well-trained?
Pros and cons of on-site shredding
Should you choose for mobile shredding services or not? To help you decide we listed a few pros and cons for on-site paper shredding.
Pros:
- With on-site shredding, you can watch and witness paper shredding while you wait.
- Your documents are shredded before the truck leaves your facility.
- Less risk because your documents won’t be transported to a destruction facility, the shredder comes to you.
- You will receive a certificate of destruction from most shredding companies.
- The service is available for small amounts (few file boxes) and high volumes of paper.
- All shredded documents are recycled.
- It is faster than shredding documents with a paper shredder, so it improves your productivity.
- It saves money in the long run because no more time is wasted at a paper shredder.
Cons:
- A shredder truck has a maximum capacity for transporting shredded documents. This means that the service is not available for high volumes of paperwork that needs shredding.
- The shredder truck needs a parking space in front of your (office) building to shred your documents. This might be a problem in busy environments, such as cities.
- It can take quite some time for the security officer to shred all the paperwork.
- Shredding documents on-site is not the most discrete form of paper shredding.
NAID AAA Certified shredding services near you
Where can you shred confidential documents in your area? Find reliable and NAID AAA certified paper shredder services near you.
Locations for on-site paper shredding in your North America & United Kingdom
Find mobile shredding service companies near you:
About this page
Recycling.com is a Dutch publishing company and part of Recycling Vision B.V, located in Amsterdam.
Since 1988 we have expertise in confidential information destruction with our sister company Brantjes Data-Vernietiging, located in The Netherlands. This page contains information based on our years of experience in data destruction and paper shredding. For independent information about this topic, we performed extensive research on the type of services that other data destruction companies offer around the world to make a comprehensive and honest guide on paper shredding.
By Recycling.com/ 8 September 2020