Scrapped out my aluminum for the year

[fistfulladirt]

136 lbs, just under a year's worth of odds n ends.

old sheet 58# .39c
old cast 50# .40
extruded 8# .54
irony shredder 20# .10

total $48.94

 

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[Dakotademon7]

Not a bad haul. I used to be into it but I don't have a truck now to haul scrap.

 

[mlayers]

you are getting $200 a ton for shredder steel we only get $90 a ton

I am guess this is the scrap tat u have dug

 

[fistfulladirt]

you are getting $200 a ton for shredder steel we only get $90 a ton

I am guess this is the scrap tat u have dug

Well, the "irony shredder" was cast aluminum. First I've ever heard of that term. I think it's the yard trying to squeeze (rip off) customers. I know some folks aren't happy with this yard and the prices. They also separated some of my extruded as cast. The guy in line before me left with his load of scrap, I don't think he was too happy.

This scrap was random eyeballed finds, for instance along the roadway, picked with permission from dumpster, etc. Scrap prices are way down mostly due to China's and US's slumping economy. I normally cherry pick when detecting, believe it or not I sometimes pass over dimes and cents, so I don't dig much scrap at all.

 

[pepperj]

Irony aluminum is any alum. that won't be cleaned on the shear. So lets give you an example, break a screen door apart no glass left, it still is slightly irony alum. There's the steel screws, zinc die cast corners, older doors had steel, then there's the gaskets from around the glass, cast or die cast door handle, the screen. So if it all was separated there would be all these different parts and at different prices.

The good yards will purchase a screen door at .20-25 cents a lbs. and clean the door themselves in six-ten cuts (that depends on how fussy the shear operator is or has been trained), shear off the corners and the handle leaving the clean extrusion, the rest is going into the shredder pile. The irony alum. would be sold to China, or to a local shredder and they would separate the metals or sell the shedder fluff (mixed non-ferrous metal) to China.

IF it was easy it would have done-that's scrap 101

 

[fistfulladirt]

Irony aluminum is any alum. that won't be cleaned on the shear. So lets give you an example, break a screen door apart no glass left, it still is slightly irony alum. There's the steel screws, zinc die cast corners, older doors had steel, then there's the gaskets from around the glass, cast or die cast door handle, the screen. So if it all was separated there would be all these different parts and at different prices.

The good yards will purchase a screen door at .20-25 cents a lbs. and clean the door themselves in six-ten cuts (that depends on how fussy the shear operator is or has been trained), shear off the corners and the handle leaving the clean extrusion, the rest is going into the shredder pile. The irony alum. would be sold to China, or to a local shredder and they would separate the metals or sell the shedder fluff (mixed non-ferrous metal) to China.

IF it was easy it would have done-that's scrap 101

I doubt that there were even one oz. of iron in my scrap of 136 pounds total. I take everything apart and am very meticulous, no gaskets, screws, nails...not one bit. All aluminum. I should have taken the "irony" back home with me.

 

[pepperj]

I doubt that there were even one oz. of iron in my scrap of 136 pounds total. I take everything apart and am very meticulous, no gaskets, screws, nails...not one bit. All aluminum. I should have taken the "irony" back home with me.

If that's the case change yards, tell it how it was to anybody that would run metals into them. It doesn't take long for folks to start driving past the gate of the place. Unless they're the big boy in town, and folks line up just because they like to rub shoulders with them, boot lickers.
In the case of yours if there was only like you said an once of iron it's still dirty Period. My brokers had a ZERO TOLERANCE for dirty (any foreign metal, material) in the alum. except for a little dirt, or greying of the metal. I would enforce this with a ZERO TOLERANCE with my staff. If they missed something and I got the metal returned, or a downgrade from the broker they heard about it, if they didn't comply it was good bye.
What we would do is separate the minor problem and if it was a case of a few minutes on the shear to clean it up then I would take 5-10 cents a pound to clean up the problem or you got it back.
I really had a hard time in the mid 90's when I opened up trying to stop the old scrap yard mentality of I screw you because I got screwed. I treated everybody the same that walked through the gates, educated the ones that would leave things unclean, unsorted, and with a little guidance they would make more money, I had less work to do, and that made me more money in the end.
Another thing is the scale issue are the scales checked on a regular basis? How do you know? Does the yard post the report? I had my electronic scale checked 4 times a year and I posted those up for every customer/ministry to see there was no BS going on with the weights. The small 5x5ft indoor scales just stand on each corner then in the middle all 5 should be the same weight. If not there's a load cell problem and I would just say thanks but no thanks and walk.
It's sometimes the case where one yard pays this crazy price for say copper, every yard works on a margin, if their price is too far out there then they're making it up screwing with the weights.
Long drawn out reply-but it just burns me arse to hear of companies that just screw a little guy over, and they get away with it.

 

[Davers]

You sound like my kind of dealer.
Was gonna go on a big rant about the local Scrap Scene.
but
In the last year or so All Aluminum has become old Sheet OS/ with rare exceptions.

Funny we sell all the cheaper alloys (Steel) to China they buy it back as POC Items at Wal-Mart.
Davers

 

[pepperj]

You sound like my kind of dealer.
Was gonna go on a big rant about the local Scrap Scene.
but
In the last year or so All Aluminum has become old Sheet OS/ with rare exceptions.

Funny we sell all the cheaper alloys (Steel) to China they buy it back as POC Items at Wal-Mart.
Davers

You sound like my kind of dealer.
Was gonna go on a big rant about the local Scrap Scene.
but
In the last year or so All Aluminum has become old Sheet OS/ with rare exceptions.

Funny we sell all the cheaper alloys (Steel) to China they buy it back as POC Items at Wal-Mart.
Davers

Was. I got into the business by just and after 13 yrs of 85-100hr weeks I got out, because I wore out basically. I've sold over a local scale and they try to play games until I just say that I'd owned my own yard-all the games stop.
Yes to your statement about selling the goods to China as they need the metals for producing the goods that we all buy back. Cheap labour, high demand, fair price.
Back around 2000 there was a article written about the scrap industry in one of the large daily papers. It showed a staged picture of the workers around piles of shredder fluff, sorting the metals into baskets. I say staged because the masks are clean, uniforms clean, gloves too clean, my own broker says the photos are staged as he owns one of the sorting plants and it just isn't like this.
View attachment 1173215

The point being is that in China the shred could be sorted for $80 a ton, where as in Germany the price was at the time $120 a ton by machine. The workers in China were paid $250 a month at the local yards to sort the metals, and when these facts were discussed with customers some would scoff at the lowly wages paid. I'd gave them the simple facts as these. Farm labour/owner yearly wage $300 a year, now they make 10 times that amount. I'd ask the customer if I paid them 10X their current wage what would they do? Most replies were they'd lick my boots for that wage. The one thing that the customer hadn't considered is that at any given time there's millions ready to take your job and that is a given fact of China, labour is cheap and very replaceable, and that makes for a very loyal work force.

It comes down to our insatiable appetite for cheap products.

Davers do a rant on scrap yards/business as it's always good to air the dirty on corruption that still goes on in the yards today.

 

[Davers]

Could not open your link for some reason.
but
I def, get your point.

I have voiced my opinion on local scrap yards a few time here since I first started TN.

I type way to slow & my mind is 10x faster than my fingers.

I hit the yard only 1 or 2 times a year now but during the building boom in my area + In 2001 I married the daughter of an electrician .Used to go 1 or 2 times a week esp after BB#1 hit $1 a pound by the time it got to $4 + a lb, There was/Still is (tho it's more regulated now) so much theft & Corruption going on . I lost most of my builders & Copper Connections.

Funny How many times I went to the yard & there were people unloading loads of Brand New Pipe 8 -12 foot sections of it 50-100 pieces at a time. & The boxes & spools of wire that were brand new.
Crazy It was Obvious I was stolen.
I wonder who bought all those Catalytic Converters that were cut off by the hundreds in my area & all those Cemetery
Bronze Vases .. Then the Air Conditioner Craze. You Know what I mean.

One good thing is , I don't see old car batteries dumped everywhere. Heck I picked up hundreds of them .lol

Have a Good one.
Davers

 

[pepperj]

When I got into the buying of scrap I had a list of folks that would hold their copper till they got the $1 a pound, then turn the clock ahead 10 yrs and it was $4 and all hell was breaking loose in the amounts of thefts that were taking place. It was so hard to make the call of saying something was stolen or not as I had one large electrical/contracting company that would scrap out every bit of wire at the end of a job, new on the spool, some had 5ft off a 1000ft roll, they scrapped everything as they just wrote it off and started new on the next job. Good for resale, and it would of been bad if I had ever had called them thieves on the first load that I received. I usually dropped a secure bin off at their job sites to protect the goods.
Then there was just plain stupidity, truck full of new material, along with all the tools from the job boxes and they'd play dumb like it was all theirs and they had fallen on hard times, yup the phone call was made in those cases.

Basically it comes down to knowing what you have, and have it clean and sorted out, to demand the highest price over the scales.

 

[wildman4910]

It irks me the fools that show up with an unsorted mess at the scales.
All my scrap is torn down, clean and sorted, I don't want to spend 20min trying to sort there and hold up everyone else.
this way I leave no money behind, the local yard here only gives 40% for unstripped wire, why anyone would leave 60% of that behind is beyond me.

You are correct, the yards that jerk you around font stay open for long, we had one that called all aluminum cans as wet, and only wanted to give you 30% of what they were worth, clean, dry, crushed can no less.
Soon as he hollered wet, I told him never mind, I'll go elsewhere.

 

[cyberdan]

It irks me the fools that show up with an unsorted mess at the scales.

The yard I go to wants to do the sorting. At the beginning I sorted but they still picked up and looked at everything. I only do computer scrap and brass and copper bowls & platters.

They seem to be fair priced (better than the local competition) but the plastic bins that have their tare weight written on the sides have holes in them and I know the full tare is put into the computer.

 

[pepperj]

It irks me the fools that show up with an unsorted mess at the scales.
All my scrap is torn down, clean and sorted, I don't want to spend 20min trying to sort there and hold up everyone else.
this way I leave no money behind, the local yard here only gives 40% for unstripped wire, why anyone would leave 60% of that behind is beyond me.

You are correct, the yards that jerk you around font stay open for long, we had one that called all aluminum cans as wet, and only wanted to give you 30% of what they were worth, clean, dry, crushed can no less.
Soon as he hollered wet, I told him never mind, I'll go elsewhere.

There's the uneducated and then there's the fools, a big difference between the two when they show up with the scrap unsorted. The first one just doesn't know the difference and nobody has shown them, the second example has been shown a few times and they're really too lazy to sort it out but still want the high $ for their goods.

Is the 40% for the total weight of the wire or on the recovered weight?

Single strand house wire is approx.72% recovery rate. The price for copper is $2.50 lb on clean #1, that give you $1.80 net value per lb from the insulated wire. So if the yard is giving 40% on total weight or $1.00 lb for the insulated that gives the gross margin of $.80 for processing. That means if they're big they might have their own means to process the wire, if not they will sell it to an exporter, or to a broker which in turn will sell it to an exporter or copping mill. Remember every time something is handled there's a cost for doing business and the price dictates that. Small wire gets a hit as it's recovery rate is lower, bulkier, time consuming to process.

If a person strips their wire they should get Millberry if shiny bright, that is a 2-5cent premium over #1 did you know that?