I hate scrappers!
 

Had half of an aluminum trench box stolen off my job site the other day.:rolleyes: They really are animals, and the scrap yards will scrap their own mothers grave marker without a second thought.

We had a lot of trouble with them after Irene, they were cruising around in their beat to death pickups, grabbing peoples stuff!:mad:

I deal with one guy who's solid. A disabled ex marine. He'll come all the way out here and pick up my scrap. There are some scumbags for sure, but you have to give credit to many of them for the work they do. Times are tough, it's a job that needs to be done.

Last week a guy was arrested for trying to steal a cattle guard for scrap. He had a truck with a hoist to lift it off the ground, but was caught by police. Then there are the guys with the battery powered cutting tools that go after truck catalytic converters, since the trucks are higher off the ground.

My wife and I scrap on the weekends...but only grab that which is on the curbside, NEVER private property. There's 8 homes that have our number and call us when they have scrap metal for us. There are also 3 small companies that do the same.

We scrap as a side income of a clean out company we own. We have 4 realtors that call use to clean out foreclosed properties. We scrap the metal, trash the trash, and sell the antiques we pick-up. The company has done well in the 6 months we've since we started. From income being paid from the banks, to the revenue from the scrapping and selling of antiques, we've been able to generate just over $20K so far...and the year has yet to end! I've taken to transporting many antiques to SW Ohio to sell there as the willingness to pay a higher price is greater there.

Not all scrappers are guilty of theft...but a high number of them surely are.

That's an awful lot of work for $20. ;):)

Had a guy just recently steal a parts car that was wheeled outside waiting for another scrapper. :rolleyes:

Second time thats happened.

With metal prices what they are, it sure isn't a surprise. Personally took down a pair of rusted out lower control arms, hubs and rotors and they gave me 50 bucks for that.

Just a few months ago, they gave me 50 bucks for an entire van load of metal, not just a few heavy parts. Getting to be big money.

The scrappers that crack me up are the copper thieves that occasionally get fried trying to steal electric lines.

It depends on how far you can stretch it. LOL

It was supposed to read $20K...it's fixed now.

I figured. :D

That sounds like a pretty decent gig for some extra cash!

I thought you guys said SCRAPERS.


lol

SCRAPER BIKE - Trunk Boiz (Final Version) - YouTube

They had some live fire exercises that were going on in Taiwan, IIRC. Between volleys of fire, kids would run to the target areas and pick up the scrap metal. Not all come back due to unexploded ordinances that suddenly got triggered into being live or if the next volley came crashing down.

Sux, my neighbor mentioned just yesterday, his fuel door on his old Ford PU was open when his wife got home. Thieves are out and about.

My cars are garage kept.

I do a lot of auction signs that are made out of aluminum. These signs get used over and over again and get dinged on the edges. About once a week a scrapper will come by and ask if they are scrap, I say NO. I have started keeping them inside my shop now. :D

Theres a professional team of scrappers that are riping copper wire off of highend restuarants and such around the north side of Houston ,they go for highend electrical users ,restuarants are the no 1 choice.The hit the roof or get to the back and begin their destruction.$2k to 3 k is what was estimated at the small corner store down from my job.

It's a problem everywhere. While I'm not one for "bigger government," it sure seems like if ever there were a sector to more rigorously regulate, it would be the scrap metal businesses. If those folks weren't buying (or were held accountable for buying stolen property), there'd be no market for the stuff. Sure, it would be hard to prove one way or another is everything that came in were stolen, but much of it is pretty obvious. I talked to a scrap business owner about this once. He said he could pretty easily tell who was hauling in stolen materials.

I took my (late father's) old P/U to the junkyard on Sat. 83 GMC Sierra. V-6 Stretch bed. 72k miles all it had. Rusted nearly away tho.
Like the Corvair, Unsafe at any speed.:rolleyes:

Scrap value was about $0.11 per lb. $310.50.


http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...MCPU100811.jpg

Note the junker sitting next to it!:cool:;):D:eek:

A guy I know was going to open up a free meal center for hungry people. Thieves had a field day. Biggest heist was an 800 lb aluminium access ramp.:mad:

MAYVILLE - For the eighth time in nine months, thieves have stolen metal from The Free Meal Center (TFMC) on Route 9 in Burleigh. The robbery happened either Sunday or Monday night, April 24-25.

According to Douglas Jewell, chairperson of TFMC's board of directors, "This time was especially painful. The thieves made off with a 24-foot aluminum handicap ramp that was to be used as the front entrance to the soup kitchen." The ramp, with aluminum handrails, weighed about 800 pounds, including heavy chains and padlocks which bound the two 10-foot and four-foot sections together.

TFMC asks that anyone noting suspicious activity behind the facility on either of those two nights, or a truck carrying the aluminum ramp, to contact the Middle Township Police at 609-465-8900.
http://www.capemaycountyherald.com/article/crime/mayville/72049-access+ramp+stolen+meal+center

That's what I thought at first, but I was thinking of this kind of scraper:

SCRAPER CATERPILLAR 621B - YouTube

We had a pair of those at FOB Wilson that were constantly springing air leaks, and six of them at the AT in West Virginia that I went on last month. They're terrible machines. The brakes are lousy even when they work right, they have no traction (note the dozer pushing the one in the video), and they're easy to roll over it the operator isn't careful. Add to that the fact that every government owned one I've seen was a 1985 model with an iffy maintenance history (at best), you have yourself a real pile of junk.

Low income housing sites in NYC during the early 90's were nightmares of copper pipe thievery. The job super caught one guy hiding in a steel drum- the rotweilers that were his night time security had trapped the guy and it was the only place to hide. After the dogs were called off and before the cops arrived some of the carpenters pounded on the steel drum with hammers.

Recently a contractor I know took a bunch of scrap from a job to a yard and had to provide all kinds of info- including his drivers liscense- before the yard would buy it. He told me that the yard holds stuff for a few days in case anyone comes looking for stolen items.

We had the LEOs run a sting about 2-3 years back when copper was going for $3.78/lbs..

They took a roll of copper to the three main scrappers in the area and each one bit. One even told the UC officer that he'd have to scrape the labels and tags off the reel before they'd buy it from him.

He complied and the deal was made.

All three got nailed.

Since then, things have tightened up and rightly so.

I've dropped scrap off at two of the yards and they run you through the ringer, now, before they even let you unload a pop-top.

Bad press will straighten out the worse operators REALY FAST once the ink hits the paper.

Maybe a few stings around the country might make a few others fly right.

Won't know unless someone gets off their butts and goes for the gold. (Pun intended.) :rolleyes:

Scrappo-Americans unite!

So for those legitimate scrappers out there...what is the current going rate for scrap metal? Does it vary from state to state?

I wonder what copper is going for? I have about a thousand pounds of scrap from jobs. Maybe now would be a good time to cash in. I no longer leave large rolls of wire in the back of my truck when I have to go to town just in case.

For scrap autos, it's going for $80-$100 per 1000 lbs. Prices change regularly. I haven't taken a load of scrap in for about a month, so I'm not sure what it's going for today.

Last month, I picked up a junked Ford van off of Craigslist for $200. It didn't run and was in pretty poor shape. I trailered it, after getting the title taken care of, over to the salvage yard and picked up roughly $800. Total investment, including gas was about $260...it netted me roughly $550 for about 2 hours worth of work on a Saturday afternoon.

I segregate metals according to types. I keep structural steel apart from machine shop chips.

Each type commands a different price. Brass, bronze, copper, iron and steel bring in different prices, if sorted.

We rent a small storage place to store the scrap metals as well as the antiques. I'll probably have 3 loads to take in sometime next month, which should net me about $2500 total. Currently, the company in the neighboring business allows me the use of their forklift, so I'm able to store most of the metals in crates...which makes it easier to load.

My parents unintentionally became scrappers when my uncle up in ME passed away. His basement as well as a rail car were just stocked with scrap metal. In addition to leftovers from him machine and fabrication shop, he would collect and barter for it, then stockpile it until the price was right or if he needed money for something. He had a couple cars and a fire truck out in the back 40 as well. While the metal was stockpiled, that doesn't mean it was sorted. They spent the better part of summer weekends separating it and grading it. A guy up the street would cut up/separate any mixed metals (my uncle literally had a ton of brass and bronze valve bodies, the neighbor split them open and took the unlike metal on/off assemblies out). The same guy loaded and hauled all of the metal to the scrap yard for 20% (he actually wanted less, my father insisted on him taking the 20%).

So far the estate has netted $12,500 and there is still a rail car (including the truck assemblies, the guess is 30 tons), a couple 40 yard dumpsters lying on their sides and welded together (which was his machine shop), and a utility trailer full of copper wire left to scrap.

i would get rid of it

Also known as the law of natural selection......

I sell my junk metal on ebay for -hopefully -top dollar. i was disappointed this deal didn't do better
vintage art deco yankee turn signal switch and Arvin heater 32 33 34 ford scta - eBay (item 130581838070 end time Oct-02-11 17:55:43 PDT)

I save all the copper, brass, and alum I encounter in my work. The other day, I was at the transfer station and spied a sink with a huge faucet still attached. I was able to get it off w/o being hassled, took it home and it weighs almost 10 pounds. That's about $20 right there. I threw old faucets and supply valves away for years. It could be that someday it will be determined that landfills have more recoverable copper than many mines, per ton of material extracted.

About twice a year I take in my haul and get about $100. I have to wait a few days for the money now, an anti meth-head measure that may or may not do any good. Two trips to the place now instead of one but it's on my way.

I was unable to sell the last two cats I took out of my Bimmer, so I just threw them in the scrap metal bin at the Palo Alto recycling center, a really good one next to the former dump, closed a few months ago. They'll get the approx $10 apiece for them I can only imagine.

A couple years back, some nimrods stole a brass shutoff valve at some toxic liquid holding tank and beau coup toxins flowed into the bay - cleanup estimated in the $10s of thousands and I don't imagine it would be complete at any rate. Where's my aluminum baseball bat. :mad:

$10 bucks! my junkyard pays up to $50 bucks for some cats,others nothing,i'll have to check and see which are the good ones.

My SIL sold the cat off of my old 190E and he got $175 for it. :D

lolzer
Sanford and Son - Theme Song - YouTube

Thanks for the link jp- I need to get off my lazy butt and get that copper to the scrapper! Maybe I'll get enough $$ to buy another 240D!:D

they don't get any MB's in the yard but i know they said some of em are worth big bucks.

I took one of mine in to a yard and the guy said no one around here (Bay area) is buying them. He said it was pretty puny (aftermarket for a 2.5 liter) and only worth about $10.

I phoned a couple of other yards and I suspect he's right. Unless you're a muffler shop (or other large entity like a community recycling center) you can't sell them.

A client of mine started his Escalade up one day (about 8 years ago) and was treated to the sound of a gnarly hot rod, dude. I gather the big V-8s have big cats and an SUV is easy to crawl under.

aka: Darwin's Bacon Bits (Slogan: We fry up in our own fat!)