Sequel to the Watertanks

Patriot I got Norfolk/Va Beach north of me, will see if any large yards around there that can help ya out. Maybe some of the folks in that area will chime in tho before I do. I know we have a several members from the Chesapeake/Norfolk/Va Beach area here.

If they don't chime in, I'll try an track ya down some info. All I know is they get a lot of ships there military an cargo.

Other then that..if you include cooler fill ups, I'd consider a season move.

Sirscrapalot - Silly putty is awesome.

The Sir moving to cold weather. Is hell freezing over? Your cooler will freeze, but I would love to have you. Maybe you can replace the water you carry in your cooler with antifreeze.

Patriot, you have an exciting year ahead of you..!

You may want to consider getting a shear to help. Productivity is key but safety is a big deal too. The shear could pull large chunks out of the site to where the burners could safely cut it down to chunks that can be loaded. The entire shear could be leased, or you could get a big trackhoe and just lease the shear attachment. You will need to consider how to load gondola cars, too. Another trackhoe with an orange peel grapple or similar would be pretty useful. I understand that it can take some skill to load a car to load limit with scrap--it is surprising how you can easily underload a car, and that will cost you big time in freight charges. 250 tons is about 2-1/2 carloads, so you would need to be able to process and prep the scrap for the week and do the final carloading in about a day to avoid demurrage charges.

Depending on who you make a deal with, you may also consider stuffing sea cans with scrap rather than railcars. There are sea can loaders that you can prefill with scrap to within lbs of load limit and then push the scrap into the cans. The other way is to load the cans with a bobcat and grapple bucket.

Sounds pretty exciting-like you are looking at taking down a plant of some sort. Is there any opportunity to part out stuff and resell for better than scrap? Opportunities to separate out non-ferrous? (You mentioned electric motors, but is there any plant wiring? electrical controls?)

Looking forward to learn more as you are able to post it!!

Jon.

Sounds exciting indeed! I'm interested in lending a hand!

This is when the whiskey comes out Patriot. Beer freezes.

Sirscrapalot - Doesn't really mind the cold, but if that's all he can complain about life is good.

Wow, that's a lot of iron! The shear is a great idea and would be a big time saver on a project this size. I agree that you're going to have to buy at least one excavator for moving stuff around and loading. I've used grapple and bucket with thumb and either will work great.

Do have someone check this project for radiation before agreeing to it. I've seen paper mills with heavy iron like that where no one around here would take it.

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

Patriot, you have an exciting year ahead of you..!

You may want to consider getting a shear to help. Productivity is key but safety is a big deal too. The shear could pull large chunks out of the site to where the burners could safely cut it down to chunks that can be loaded. The entire shear could be leased, or you could get a big trackhoe and just lease the shear attachment. You will need to consider how to load gondola cars, too. Another trackhoe with an orange peel grapple or similar would be pretty useful. I understand that it can take some skill to load a car to load limit with scrap--it is surprising how you can easily underload a car, and that will cost you big time in freight charges. 250 tons is about 2-1/2 carloads, so you would need to be able to process and prep the scrap for the week and do the final carloading in about a day to avoid demurrage charges.

Depending on who you make a deal with, you may also consider stuffing sea cans with scrap rather than railcars. There are sea can loaders that you can prefill with scrap to within lbs of load limit and then push the scrap into the cans. The other way is to load the cans with a bobcat and grapple bucket.

Sounds pretty exciting-like you are looking at taking down a plant of some sort. Is there any opportunity to part out stuff and resell for better than scrap? Opportunities to separate out non-ferrous? (You mentioned electric motors, but is there any plant wiring? electrical controls?)

Looking forward to learn more as you are able to post it!!

Jon.

Sawmilleng,

Thank you for the insight. I would love to use a shear, but some of the metal is nine stories tall. Some of the metal will be cut for prepared so it can be moved by hand and other pieces will be block and tackled and winched to chutes to slide down to ground level. A track hoe with a grapple would be an advantage to load the box cars. Good point about under loading the cars.

Yes there is tons of electrical wire, controls, etc. Just about every type of metal you can imagine. I will not have time for the details for these items and hoping someone on the forum would be interested. Thank you for the suggestion about sea cans, I do not know anything about them and will be investigating. I also need to research gondola cars as I have no knowledge of these.

Thanks Jon.

Originally Posted by Pnutfarmer

Wow, that's a lot of iron! The shear is a great idea and would be a big time saver on a project this size. I agree that you're going to have to buy at least one excavator for moving stuff around and loading. I've used grapple and bucket with thumb and either will work great.

Do have someone check this project for radiation before agreeing to it. I've seen paper mills with heavy iron like that where no one around here would take it.

You have posed a great question about the radiation. I was fore warned about this and waiting for answers. That is why I said no promises in the original thread.

Thank you.

Patriot, I'm in Virginia beach we would have two yards large enough to handle something like this. Both have rail and water/barge access to the intercostal water way and Chesapeake bay. They are right across from one another in Chesapeake va. Sims Metal Management (757) 543-2006 and Onesteel Recycling(757) 545-1500.

Good luck.

Thank you Tincankeith. Your information is greatly appreciated. Good luck this year.

Patriot,

I worked in a pulp mill and the only radiation sources were contained in a sensor that detected wood chips in a metal chute. I think they worked like an x-ray source, with a little match head sized chunk of radioactive goop inside. They used multiple sensors around the place and they all were well documented and warnings were all over the place. So the current owner of the site should be able to deal with these items. But make sure your contract has words to protect your backside.

Another large metals firm is Schnitzer Steel. Many of the yards around here ship to them. They are probably a direct competitor of Sims, and have yards right across North America. Here's the location map from their website.

Hope this helps,
Jon.

Sims is a worldwide company, one of the largest, you might be able to talk to a regional person instead of a yard person with this much material.

Along with SIMS and Schnitzer the third big scrap company to talk to is EMR. EMR ships over a million tons of scrap a year just out of their Camden, NJ operation.

EMR has locations all over the country including 3 locations in North Dakota and 2 in Minnesota.

EMR


I think that you would get the best result by negotiating a volume deal with one of the 3 major company scrap yards closest to you and let them use their own logistics to move the metal further down the road/track/river.

Camden is big on metal scrap, no dought. He's right about them being one of the biggest around. Ship loads go out at two other locals also.

eTack is right, selling to a mill is going to be the best option if your shipping by rail. Off the top of my head I think even caterpillar would buy something in that large of quantity at their IL engine plant.