lessons learned. by Olddude.

This thread will be about those small tips learned the hard way over a span of 60 years.

Most are just common sense, but are often times not mentioned because they seem insignificant. They are not, most are things many of us take for granted.

I spent the last week tearing down hard drives and several things came to light I took for granted.

In these times, time and knowledge are money.

Here are a couple that came to mind. I will up date this from time to time. Feel free to chime in.

1. If you are a tear down scrapper, cover your scrap. It may seem unnecessary but, rusty bolts and screws can be a time waster.

one pile of hard drives I left un covered for months until I could get to them. The total extra time I spent with rusty screws cost me at least 2 days.

2. there are several dozen different common screwdriver tips. Make sure to use the right one. it should fit snugly. Stripped screws are a time waster and money eater.

3. If using a power driver, set the torque just high enough to do the job. This will avoid stripping out the screw head or nut head. Time and money saver.

4. No matter how much she reminds you of grandma, when buying a junker from her, check it out just as well as if she were a home boy from the hood. I once had along time customer try to sell me 200 Dells each with only one ram. I trusted him, when I noticed the problem I had to call him and demand the 20 lbs or so ram. I got them but lost the customer because of his embarrassment at getting caught.

5.When buying a power driver I highly recommend the Hitachi. it is small, the batteries can last 2 days and charge in an hour. The impact driver is much faster then the drill. big time saver.

6. When using a screw driver power or not , on small screws a tip that will save you many frustrating hours dealing with stripped screws. is A. when setting the bit in the screw, a slight counter clock wise movement will set the bit properly. B. when dealing with E waste I find that 2 short pulls on the trigger cause far less problems then just boring in.

8. When buying a plastic tarp for a trailer cover or scrap cover, bite the Bullitt and spend the extra $5 or $10 for the silver, lined, heavy duty one. If you don't you will spend much more in a short time. an will probably show up at the yard on a rainy day with your load soaked, and your new blue tarp is now shredded into little 1/4 in strips held together by the bead around the edges.

I Learned the hard way......

1. Educating your yard can sometimes help make more money. Most people just take whatever the yard pays them. When taking things like power supplies, I make sure to have one or two opened up so they can see what is inside. And talk with confidence, You know what you have.

2. When making business deals and business relationships, Be careful not to over-educate them. Creating a good honest relationship is a good thing, But I made the mistake of over-educating a guy once. He asked lots of questions like "what do you do with all this stuff?" "whats inside?" Yadda yadda. And, keeping honest, I told him all kinds of things not thinking anything of it. Then, eventually he no longer needed me. It is not a good feeling when you start realizing they are learning to go around you.

3. Don't over-educate your wife either. Make sure to keep extra cash from scrapping stashed away. So when you buy tools you don't buy it with "real" money. (as we call it).

9. Living out of the cash register. very often small and micro business live out of the cash register. By this I mean all the cash goes into one pocket and out of that pocket comes the fuel bill, house hold expenses, food and every thing else. DON'T DO IT.

I fully realize this is easier said then done but, without keeping a fairly detailed but simple record of what $ go where you are likely to wake up one day with a truck repair, a great buy on scrap or other situation and find you have to pass or your just plain out of business.

Many think they are making a living when in fact they are losing money every day and only discover it when one day they wake up with no fuel for the truck and $2 in their pocket and need cigarettes or milk for the baby. It's happened to me more then once.

No matter how hard it is, put just put one penny out of every dime away before you do any thing else.

Make very sure you cover every expense before counting your profit

I see people paying .25and above for scrap computers when todays scrap value is only $8/$10 MINUS FREIGHT.

Suppose you have a bank roll of $600. Wasting or loosing the cost of one pack of cigeretts per day will put you out of business in 6 months. The smaller your business the more important this tip is.

10. If you are working on a similar product like computers ,servers, hard drives, TVs or, even cars. It will go much smoother and there for quicker if you organize your yard or work space according to the type of units your working on i.e. HPs here Dells here, Fords here, Chevys here etc.

By doing this you will be able to organize your tool needs + you will quickly gain a rhythm in the teardown process. You will be amazed when your production (income) doubles.

If first you don't succeed...try a different cuss word.

Originally Posted by KzScrapper

If first you don't succeed...try a different cuss word.

Or larger hammer.

Or take a break and hit it from a different angle. Mike.

Originally Posted by Yunkman

Olddude, you mentioned not to overeducate another person. I have a friend in the auto body business who says he trained all of his competitors who now own their own shops.


Anyhow, there IS a certain unspoken rule that even goes with scrapping. For instance, I now invite my wife along for farm cleanups. The help is actually nice and she is willing to go. When we need even more help with hand stuff, we have had another young (my wife isn't young) gal go along. They seem to inspire each other and they get alot done. I'm teaching the young gal about metal identification and she's finding keepsakes to take home. I pay them both in cash and even though the wife doesn't want anything, there's just that 'something' about being paid that keeps a person coming back. Sometimes that extra help allows me to get an extra load to the scrapyard that day.

My five competitors in this area all worked for and were trained by me.

Originally Posted by olddude

My five competitors in this area all worked for and were trained by me.

And I'm sure they thank you for that,,

11. GROWING TOO CAN BE BAD BUT, GROWING TOO FAST CAN BE CATASTROPHIC :

mrsam: Your post is both great advise and very timely. My cell phone went toes up this week. Kids were supposed to be minding the house phone for me but as I found out today they weren't. So my reaction time to my customers suffered greatly. For that my sincere apologies.

Now to tip 11 which is very timely, I expanded my buying business over resent months by leasing a building and lot in Omaha because business here has been steady but didn't seem to be growing as I expected I was probably not a good Idea to pay lease payments on a
property for 8 months while it set empty, but the location is perfect so, it seemed like a good Idea to secure it.

As I prepared to spend the month of may in Omaha getting that location off the ground My business here exploded. My bank roll was not large to start with and with the payments in Omaha and the huge increase in business here was quickly over run. It has caused communication problems with my customers that has always been my strong suit and a pet peeve of mine with others. I will over come this glitch but, the lesson here is I should have planned better.

The lesson here is stick to your business plan, be very careful before deviating from it or accelerating it too quickly.

P.S. If you don't have a business plan, make one, no matter how small the plan or your business. Even the most experienced explorer carried a compass and map into new territory.

fill mattress with $100 bills.....when its full get another mattress..........Just kidding Old dude............I agree as many have insisted that I grow send larger shipments etc I am content with my procedure and way I process my material........Sure I may make more off a load but the stress and storage fees are not worth it to me........My plan is to bank enough money so I can finish school and start my career as a drug/alcohol counselor

good on you. plan your work and work your plan.