Scrap Metal

If your load is not sorted you will be paid the per pound rate of the least valuable scrap the dealer can see for the whole load.

I've been to aluminum recyclers where the scrap had to be unloaded directly onto scales. That's the system you'd want if you were taking in a sorted load of mixed value scrap. But today I took 8,900 lbs of the community college welding department's steel scrap to a steel recycler in Tacoma where you got weighed going in and again coming out and got paid for the difference. That would be the worst way to have to deal with a mixed load of scrap.

Without knowing anything about the system where you are going to take your aluminum, I can still almost guarantee you that it would be to your advantage to find out more about it before you go there with a load of scrap that you'd rather not take back home again.

All the best, Stan

I think the load I took sold as #1 unprepared and brought $68 per ton. I was disappointed because I'd gone to quite a lot of effort to keep painted metal and other less valuable scrap out of it and I considered it to be primo steel. The head of the department felt we had gotten a good price, however, and I remember hearing him mention something about quite a bit of it being over three feet long. There was no way to hide that fact, though. The first scrap I loaded this morning was two pallets which each held a complete forklift hoist assembly and forks. Companies in the local community donate some pretty amazing scrap to the college.

On a different note, the activity in a full-scale industrial scrapyard is really interesting. One of the guys who inspect and classify the load told me to pull off to one side while they brought a magnet to unload my scrap. He didn't know that the stakebed truck I was in was also a dump truck. For just a moment I almost didn't tell him because I wanted to see the load get taken out with the big magnet. The other thing that I think is really cool is that they use big boom cranes with those clam shell grappling devices on them to move the dumped scrap into higher piles (40' high, I'd estimate) and then pick up one of those concrete barriers like you see used to make temporary walls along freeways to use as a kind of impromptu dozer blade to move the dumped scrap to the bottom of the pile. I watched another one of those clamshell things load a triple trailer rig with shredded steel, then pick up a giant ball of cyclone fencing or wire (I was to far away to see it clearly) and use it like a whisk broom to sweep spilled scrap off the roadway after the truck left. It's a dirty, nasty, horrendously noisy place, though.

All the best, Stan

Unfortunately thieves are now stealing copper wire to sell. One public service place has been hit twice and the thieves even took a neutral wire from a live circuit. Guess they figured the ground wire was wired in correctly. When the business opened the ground couldn"t properly carry the load and caused much damage from low voltage or something or other. Several computers fried was the end result. Hope the thieves sleep well at night knowing they robbed from those who serve the homeless.

Gerald J.