Rail road tracks

Originally Posted by ScrapmanIndustries

Did you just email them or talk on the phone? I know an area where the tracks i was talking about got piled up along with all the spikes tie plates and switcher machines. Along with countless other stuff. Ive been thinking about getting it for awhile but i try as hard as i can to not take stuff without permission if i know someone lays claim to it. Its more over grown with weeds now than when i first stumbled upon it and i lost my three bigger trucks but its deffinately something i could handle if i got a hitch on my newer taco. I got torches and grinders and woul probably get a cut off saw with how much ****s there if i could get it.

When I lived in the lower mainland BC I dealt exclusively with Amix Salvage and got to know the CEO, The Harrison scrap deal the full story, was originally my find, which looked to be abandoned logging equipment mostly marshaled into one localized area.

I tracked down the owner who had at one time operated a full blown logging camp on the shores of Harrison Lake, the site now known as Lineham's, who incidentally assisted me with information enabling me to track down the owner of the equipment I was after.

The old guy now in his 80' wanted $25,000.00 big ones up front, which was very reasonable but for a kid in his twenty's not going to happen. I could have gone to Dad bank but the price on interest free money comes at a high price.

Anyhow I festered on the Harrison scrap it always in the back of my mind a year or so later made a trip to Edmonton to visit wifes family. hooked up with an old friend and over drinks of home made brandy laid out the Harrison deal, complete with demolition and transportation plans right down to cost and profit.

Six months later Nick from Edmonton makes a BC trip to meet up with Henry Larson the old scrap owner who drove us up the lake in an old short wheelbase land rover, me being the youngest sat in the back over the wheel wells what a horrible ride.

By the end of the day a deal had been made, cash exchanged hands, Nick went back to Edmonton seemingly to forget about the scrap for another couple of years, Then I get word that he sold the scrap to another Alberta guy who turns out to be a smart dude. He gives Nick $5K with a promissory note to pay the balance upon removal of the scrap.

The new guy gathers up a crew , equipment and trucks then heads towards BC, at the first weigh scale they come to on entering British Colombia they find out they do things differently here, the trucks by BC standards are not road worthy. It was a check mate situation trucks could not move forward or even go back into Alberta.

With the fines and impound fees the new guy tossed in the towel.



But the charade is far from over, the new guy and Nick have an agreement that the later tries to have the courts to enforce but the original bill of sale holds water, Nick loses the court round. The scrap hoard sits idle a few more years.

Another round in court, due to the lapse in time with out the terms of the bill of sale being fulfilled the courts rule in Nicks favor which it turns out is no simple matter as he now has to hire the Sheriff's dept to make a rip into the Harrison site to post seizure notices on every piece of scrap at three different sites. Because I'm living in BC have been asked by Nick to proxy on his behalf to show this uniform around.

Scrap sits for two more years before Nick makes a deal with Amix which is cash and a gravel truck located on Vancouver Island which is a story in itself.

Amix is a large company with trucks river tugs and barges, thiey embark on a plant to bring a barge up the Fraser River then head up the Harrison River which brings them onto the lake, only problem is the barge is much to wide to transverse a railway bridge at the mouth of the Harrison.

This water route if they had pulled it off would have been a money saver for sure but now they have no other option than to use trucks and let me tell you it's a long rough ride into the site, Amix by now had perhaps lost money on this deal, they cleaned up the main site leaving other bits scattered further beyond behind. Things like old Adam;s graders, cats and logging winches.

Once I discover they had left stuff behind I contacted Ed Jackson the CEO of Amix, he gave me the remainder of the scrap putting it in writing, one thing I've learned over the years you can never count on scrap prices. At the time I had acquired control over the remaining scrap the price had dropped to $20.00 a ton.

All I had was a cool piece of paper that could have ended up costing me a world of trouble had Forestry demanded a clean up as I was now legally responsible. Luckily for me a year or so later scrap prices rose again to an appreciable level, I loaded up my truck with several bottles of oxygen and my trusty old Harris cutting torch and made the long drive into the site only to find everything was gone.

The watchman at the logging camp told me all about a scrap guy than had come in about six months earlier and did a big clean up.

A day in the life of a scrapper gone bad.