Saturday was the Merchants Bank sponsored "Shred It" truck day. People started lining up at 11:30am I was told. I left home at 12:09pm and got in line at the corner of Broadway and North Street. The line went up to the alley behind the church, went through the alley, turned left at the alley across from the entrance to Merchants Bank on East Street, and then two traffic lines were formed to drive to the truck. I was surprised at all the cars waiting in line. In just a couple minutes after I got in line, there were about eight cars in line behind me extending down North Street.
Many brought trash bags full, and many brought boxes and boxes full. I had two tote boxes full. I finally got my file cabinet cleaned out. My mother was a paper saver, even though seven years was the standard back then. I found her tax returns from 1971 to 2004 inclusive. I was a little surprised, but not shocked. All her Medicare bills and bank statements were also disposed of. I also had many years worth of old papers and bank statements. It felt good to empty more than two drawers of that old file cabinet.
The line moved along fairly well and when it was my turn, I opened the back of the truck and one guy took one tote and another guy took the other tote, handed them to the worker in the truck, and all the papers were dumped into the shredder. You could hear the grinding of the shredding motor from well outside the truck. When I finally drove out of the bank parking lot, it was 1:00pm. 
Wilma Coulter from the bank, whom I've known for many years, told me that the Shred It company charges $200 per hour for their services, and it was Merchants Bank's gift to the community to have the truck available for two hours so people could have all their personal documents shredded in an attempt to avoid identity theft. I know I counted at least 50 cars in my vision as I made it through the line, and they had another hour to go after I left.
I think the effort to get people to shred their documents was a great success. I hope they do it again. I have a few more file drawers to clean out for next time!
1 comment:
We have a free shredding day close to me it was amazing to see just how much paper work was shredded at the end of the day. I think we filled over 3 trucks in a 8 hour day. I was amazed just how much paper work people were bringing down to the car park. One person took down a hold van load of paper. It must have been around 15 bags of paper.
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