CTSSolutions' thread v.FinallyBoughtATruckAndItFeelsLikeSummer

[CTSSolutions]

Well, I'm not sure if you guys are sick of bumping this thread with walls of text or not...so here goes!

My real job decided they didn't need me tonight (they do this all the time...it's one of the reasons I want to quit working for someone else all together or at least find another job). So in order to keep my sleep schedule on track while working 3rd shift I spent the night in my storage unit trainwreck breaking down all the computers I have aquired over the last week.

I think I could have done okay if I didn't pay for the computers...but I did...so things aren't looking so hot. I broke down 18 towers. Took me about 4 hours. They were the first towers I have ever busted down so there was a learning curve for sure. I was getting pretty fast towards the end of the night. I didn't break them down completely. I simply made it so the bulky, annoying shells could go into the truck and to the yard today. I kept all my hard drives, floppy drives, CD/DVD drives intact for later processing (if any...I need to call around and see what I can get for them whole. I broke a couple of them down and they're too tedious for my liking).

I ended up with 10 CPU's out of 18 towers. Not happy about that. Wouldn't have been half as bad if I didn't pay for them. I paid $2/tower expecting them to be unmolested. That wasn't the case. But now I know when I pick up from that guy that I need to pop the covers on every one and pay accordingly. I also only ended up with 12 sticks of RAM out of 18 towers. Not happy about that either. Finger cards were also missing out of some of them. Overall it would have been a pretty sweet haul if I hadn't paid over $30 for them - but I definitely got $30 worth of learning so I'm not upset about anything, just a little disappointed there wasn't as much as I thought there was.

I know I should take the time to figure out exactly what everything will net me but quite honestly on this load I don't really care. I needed some towers so I could learn the process and now I'm getting the process down. The money will simply be gas money to go get more.

I said I would bring my scale and try to figure out if buying by weight would be a good option or not. Well...I forgot my scale at the house. And I was thinking about it as well...When dealing with computer shops, they know what they have and they know what it's worth. If I tell them I want them to leave the towers alone and set a price for them they might leave them alone and take the money. If I tell them I'm willing to give them $0.15/lb then they're almost guaranteed to rip out the CPU's, RAM, and maybe heatsinks as well just because they can and they know they're worth $10+/lb.

So we'll see what happens. I'm going to talk to the shop owner I got my 14 towers from and explain how I feel about him rooting through the computers before he sells them to me. It's not gonna fly. I know he's fully capable of scrapping them himself, so if he wants to play those sorts of games he's more than welcome to scrap them himself in my book. The other guys just took the RAM, and I'll talk to them about that.

Anyways..Here's the pics. Gotta have pics.

The workstation. I got the dresser with the storage unit I paid $10 for. I decided instead of buying/building a work bench that I would just rock it until I couldnt stand it anymore. It has drawers that I've been using to help keep things separated. Not too bad if you ask me but it's only got a depth of 16" so it gets pretty tight with a tower on it. So far it works though.



Empty shells...I forgot to take a pic of the original stack of towers. There were 10 to nearly the ceiling and a couple stragglers hanging around the unit.



Aluminum heatsinks. Gonna need a lot more than that if I want to pay off my student loans with scrap money.



Bucket of shred. Unprocessed towers in the corner.



Anyone wanna watch a movie?



Here' some old school RAM I found.

[CTSSolutions]

All the RAM from the night. Weak.






Pile of power supplies. Not sure what I'm gonna do with them yet. Little bit of copper (pain to get to/unwind)...little bit of aluminum...little bit of wire. I need to call around to see what I can dump them for locally. Probably not worth the effort on my end. I know you make the MOST money breaking things down as far as they can possibly go, but if that means I'm paying myself $3/hr to break down power supplies for 8 hours then I'm going to take the $24 hit and dump them off whole.



My motherboards. Only 2 large socket a few red/chinese



Finger boards and hard drives. Pretty pathetic haul.



CPU's. Can anyone help me with the big one on the right? It came out of an older Gateway. It had a heatsink on the processor itself where that white contact goop is in the picture, but the processor wouldn't come off the board. I didn't want to break it without asking first. Does the whole thing go in for CPU weight or do I have to cut it or what? Any info would be great.



This was the only casualty of the night. Also the only time I bled. Not bad for 4 hours of work.



Shred going to the yard this morning. The dryer is full of random shred from the storage unit/tonights teardown. I learned the "get on the roof of your cab for best results" technique from DevinTheScrapper. It certainly works well. It's 6:15am and the yard doesn't open until 8. Dunno what I'm gonna do until then... Probably browse SMF and become jealous of all the sweet hauls you guys have dragged to the yard.

Not pictured is the mini fridge that's on the truck as well. Devin must be taller than me.

[foobar]

the large cpu with gold fingers is called a slot processor. They should be arround 10/pound as you have it. the one with the gold cap botom looks to be a 486, and worth about $5 alone.

I don't think you did too bad, buying those computers. You would need to do the math, but I would guess you doubled your money at a minimum, and likely better. Just ask yourself if you are willing to lose the future loads. But then, I do this more as a hobby, and not trying to replace my normal job.

[CTSSolutions]

the large cpu with gold fingers is called a slot processor. They should be arround 10/pound as you have it. the one with the gold cap botom looks to be a 486, and worth about $5 alone.

I don't think you did too bad, buying those computers. You would need to do the math, but I would guess you doubled your money at a minimum, and likely better. Just ask yourself if you are willing to lose the future loads. But then, I do this more as a hobby, and not trying to replace my normal job.

Right on, thanks! The one with the gold cap has an aluminum heatsink on the other side I couldn't get off without fear of snapping it. I did get a little giddy when I saw that solid plating . I'll take more pics of that one today after I wake up and see what you guys think.

Doubling my money isn't bad on paper but when I consider the time I put into this load....its pretty bleak. From phone calls to pick ups and breakdown I'm probably pushing 8 hours of my time. 8 hrs for $30 isn't what I'm going for lol. But as I said, I'm learning and knowledge is valuable asset to have.

And to answer your question - no, right now he's the only guy that's come through with more than 3 computers out of the 25 phone calls that I've made. He does have access to e-waste/towers. I would like to keep him as a supplier of mine, but i need his employees and his son and him to stay out if them if im going to pay $2/tower. I can definitely see us butting heads in the near future over this.

When I picked them up and was talking to him the last thing we talked about was basically me saying "well since you stripped the RAM and CPUs out of these...is there even $2 worth of scrap left in these?". And he said of course there is, there's all the wire from the supplies (he kept saying ICW goes for $1.50/lb and I kept correcting him to $.95/lb because I had called my yard the day before), and aluminum is $.60/lb (closer to $.45...) Etc etc and assured me that I would make good money without the RAM and CPUs. I'm going to have to convince him to leave the goodies in the boxes or scrap them himself. Or give them to me for free so he doesn't have to deal with them after he takes the CPUs and RAM. We'll see how it plays out.

[CTSSolutions]

I forgot to post pics of that shred run. Nothing exciting at all but here they are anyways.

I turned over 150,000 on the way to the yard. Here's a last glimpse of being young



Came home with this....was really hoping it would be a full tank of gas. No such luck.

[CTSSolutions]

I went back out to the storage unit today to figure out for myself if breaking down power supplies is worth it.

I took 3 power supplies and broke them down in 26 minutes. let's call it 30.

I started with 9 lbs 6 oz. worth a whopping 94 cents. The only yard that I currently know of buying power supplies whole is paying .10/lb



It broke down as follows:

Shred 3lb 7oz @.05 = $.17
Low yield wire 1lb 6oz @ .60/lb = $.82
Low yield boards 2lb 1oz @ .10/lb = $.21
#1 Copper 4oz @ 2.00/lb = $.50
Copper bearing motors 8oz @ .15/lb = $.08
Aluminum heatsinks 10oz @ .42/lb = $.26

Totalling $2.04 broken down.

So I made $1.10 for 30 minutes of work. And I have a bigger mess on my hands. No thanks.

Kinda frustrated about their power supply price. They stay pretty close to Rockaway's (they're only 150 miles away and update their prices online daily) pricing on most things. Rockaway is paying $.20/lb on them and my yard is paying $.10. If I could get $.20 for them I'd almost be making money leaving them intact!

That's all for today. Broke a sweat for $1. Learned to leave them alone. Gotta catch some sleep before work tonight.

Happy scrapping bros.

[CTSSolutions]

I was hoping the next time I visited this thread it would be with great news of phone calls and heavy hauls.

My truck is leaking oil. Pretty bad.

I haven't run a real diagnosis yet, but it looks like its coming from the oil pan gasket (wet all around). Some of you may be thinking "no big deal, yank the pan, replace the gasket, get on the road". That's what I thought too...until I looked at what the wonderful engineers at dodge did to the front end of that truck. I'm either yanking the motor, or I'm completely dropping the front suspension to fix this.

Not happy about it at all. I guess I know what I'm doing in the morning.... Buying some GUNK scrubber, some oil dye, and going down to the local self serve car wash. I'll clean it all up under there and add some oil dye. Get under there with a blacklight and see what's really going on.

Not looking forward to the outcome of all this.

So much for a $1000 truck. It's gonna turn into a $1000 truck + weekends upon weekends of my labor

[Mechanic688]

And to answer your question - no, right now he's the only guy that's come through with more than 3 computers out of the 25 phone calls that I've made. He does have access to e-waste/towers. I would like to keep him as a supplier of mine, but i need his employees and his son and him to stay out if them if im going to pay $2/tower. I can definitely see us butting heads in the near future over this.

If you start quoting what they can or cannot do with their computers then you'll lose them in a hurry. Your there to serve them, not the other way around. They'll pull what they want and you pay them for the rest. Or maybe go flip burgers for $8.00 hr.

I'm sorry but you make it sound like everyone owes you for your time.

[mthomasdev]

You seem to be fairly new at this, at least computers in general. You haven't figured out what things are worth, but you're buying from people. And I might add, people that are giving you a line of bs. If this guy was R2 certified as he said, you he be selling stuff to you, not knowing where it is going.
sounds to me like you need to do more research before you buy anymore.

[CTSSolutions]

If you start quoting what they can or cannot do with their computers then you'll lose them in a hurry. Your there to serve them, not the other way around. They'll pull what they want and you pay them for the rest. Or maybe go flip burgers for $8.00 hr.

I'm sorry but you make it sound like everyone owes you for your time.

I understand that. I would prefer computers whole...that's not going to happen with computer shops because they know what's valuable and what's not. I'm okay with that as long as I'm not overpaying (which I feel like I am now). As far as flipping burgers...I have a full time job, though I'm looking for a better one, and holding down two jobs isn't an option with the way my job schedules overtime. That's why I want scrapping to be done on my spare time, but only if it is profitable.

No need to apologize. I can see how my attitude could be interpreted that way. It's not that I feel that people owe me for my time - I feel that I owe myself for my time. If I'm going to do something with my spare time for profit, I want it to be profitable. Sure I like scrapping, but I like it mainly because there is a reward waiting for me at the yard. I know some people on here do it out of sheer love and quite frankly I'm jealous of that mindset. With the debt situation I have put myself in, without a reward I feel I should be spending my time in something that is profitable. Right now I'm figuring out if scrapping more seriously than I have in the past is worth my time.

I don't mean to come off as arrogant, but after 5 years of college, the debt it put me in, and working as many hours as info at my full time job, i do feel that my spare time is worth something.

You seem to be fairly new at this, at least computers in general. You haven't figured out what things are worth, but you're buying from people. And I might add, people that are giving you a line of bs. If this guy was R2 certified as he said, you he be selling stuff to you, not knowing where it is going.
sounds to me like you need to do more research before you buy anymore.

Those are all fair assessments. I am new to e-waste, and computers in general. I grew up on a computer, but never tore them apart/upgraded/modded them. I have been doing homework and I do know what most things are worth on paper. I'm now putting in the time and sweat make those numbers more understandable/logical in my head.

That's the main reason I was so willing to pay whatever shops wanted to get a truckload of towers. I wanted to know how fast I could break them down and how much effort it takes to earn a e-waste dollar.

The $30 I have into those 18 towers doesn't bother me much. I learned I can rip down 18 computers in about 4 hours. That leaves me with intact HDs and disk drives with boards on them. Yesterday I learned power supplies, in today's market, are not worth my time to break down. These 18 towers and the small amount of money were well worth the things I learned.

I do think you are right about paying blindly in the future. I need more concise numbers and I need to pay for whats there - not what I think is there.

About the r2 cert...like I said about that guy...he is weird and kinda rubs me the wrong way. He did have towers for me though so I'll give him that. Time will tell his real story.

[Mechanic688]

There should still be $5.00 to $9.00 worth of value in those even tho their cherrypicked. I look at getting every bit of value out of them. If you make 3 to 5 times the money paid then your doing ok. If you come up with a nice looking case then you might even be able to sell them instead of .05 a lb scrap, I'll take $5.00 ea any day.

[CTSSolutions]

Lol this truck just keeps getting better and better!

I took my gf to the movies tonight. On the highway I heard an exhaust leak. A big one.

Get to the theatre, watch the movie, come back out after the rain stopped. Checked underneath and couldn't help but laugh.

**** this truck. It's going on CL tommorow.







Considering im in the truck for the $1050 purchase price, +30 for wipers, +10 for stop leak +50 for a muffler + tax, tags, and registration for $109 its going up on CL for $1500 and we'll see what happens.

I've never liked dodge. This sealed the deal. I won't be another one anytime soon.

[ResourcefulRecycling]

Can't blame dodge on a rusty muffler. Blame that on buying junk vehicles and using them for work

[Grayson97]

Its just like a chevy 5.3. Unbolt the front cross member and take the pan down. Look higher up first thpugh always start looking for oil leaks at the top as it drips down. Its a 1000 dollar truck. You get what you pay for. Aint dodges fault the muffler rusted off.

[grouchyolddude]

I was able to do the filter, but it wasn't easy. For the extra $10-15 in labor, I'll farm that one out!

Our 1992 was a 3.9L with the 5 speed and 4x4. We got 21 MPG on the highway at 60 MPH- about 19.5 with the rack on (Empty). I think 22 is doable. On our truck, the left wiper stopped working, because the gear was a little stripped. I advanced it one tooth. It now goes off a little on the top, but it's always worked. Plus, windshield wipers in Wyoming? Come on!

That rack was an Omaha Standard- you should be able to find some pictures of it. These are my other photos. The rack was a lot nicer five trucks ago- I built my own rack for my last two trucks- this one was just too modified. It was originally a livestock rack, so it was very heavy. We've hauled a few hundred hogs in it- it was a well-built unit.




The 239 is just a 318 with two cylinders missing- it's a great engnine. Take care of that truck, and it'll last a while.

I was thinkin qhen I saw um.. "Omaha standard fold downs". grew up with a set!

[CTSSolutions]

Well...been very very busy at work and haven't had much time to do any scrapping. Or anything besides work and sleep.

I still run my craigslist ad every couple of days and got a bite that really broke my heart today.

I live in a place that I cannot hoard scrap. Hell, I parked in front of my house for 3 days and got a ticket for leaving my car there for more than 48 hours. There's not a lot I can do from home. My partner has a little bit of room but not much. We have a pile of scrap building but its nothing to write home about.

The guy called me and said his dad has a project Corvair truck he's working on. I guess parts are hard to come the dad ended up buying 4 of them on eBay. He got one in and took what he needed off it. Now his barn is full and he has another corvair truck coming Monday. They need the first one out of there by this weekend. I had to tell him no because we don't have a car hauler/truck to pull it (my buddies tranny is acting up and my v6 Dakota isn't pulling a car trailer + a 2900# truck.). He said okay..thanks.

He got back to me an hour later and said "if I deliver it will you take it?". I called my partner. We have no where to put it. Seriously breaks my heart how disorganized we are right now. I've been working like a madman at work and haven't been much help, he's a full time plumber and also has been spending every weekend working for a guy who flips houses.

I know a lot of you probably want to scream at me through your monitors right now, so let me also offer this excuse...I'm leaving tomorrow for a wedding. If this were to happen it would have had to be tonight and its already 6pm. If I wasn't leaving tomorrow I would have made some phone calls and found somewhere I could leave this thing until I got back and go from there.

I don't know how much money I just said no to. Probably more than I want to admit. I know there were parts on that truck I could sell for more than scrap. Not sure how many as its already been stripped of what the buyer needed but I'm sure there's something left. Not to mention 2900# of vehicle weight at $.05/lb.

I'm thinking I just said no to an easy $250+. If not a lot more after I sold everything I could off it.

Not a good feeling guys. My partner and I have decided to have a sit down the weekend after I get back from the wedding. We need to get our stuff straightened out. This isn't the first time ive had to say no to easy money, hopefully it will be one of the last.

[DakotaRog]

Yeah, you need a place to stash stuff if you're going to run a CL ad. I know rural land is at a primo price in your county but maybe you can make a deal with an Amish farmer that has a little extra room on the side of a tree patch or an old building they're not using. I've heard they like taking money from the "English" for what they think are "silly" things. Are there any Amish scrappers??

[CTSSolutions]

Yeah, you need a place to stash stuff if you're going to run a CL ad. I know rural land is at a primo price in your county but maybe you can make a deal with an Amish farmer that has a little extra room on the side of a tree patch or an old building they're not using. I've heard they like taking money from the "English" for what they think are "silly" things. Are there any Amish scrappers??

Well my partners dad has a few pieces of land that are unoccupied. We've been talking about getting him to rent us one for months and have yet to seal the deal. It's perfect though, plenty of space and a 20x40' concrete pad we could easily put cars on for stripping/torching. It's a matter of getting permission now. We're going over next weekend to cut up a boat he wants to disappear to prove we're serious. He also wants a roof put on part of the buikding and that's fine with us if he provides the materials. It's all just coming down lack of time/communication right now and it really showed its colors yesterday.

I'm packing my stuff right now for the wedding fiasco - gonna be out of town for 4 days so there's not much I can do right now. I'll come back and go right to my full time job until the weekend.

As far as finding a spot to hoard - the amish would have no qualms about taking our money. But I have been holding off on it because of my partners dad's spot. We should be able to get in there for 6 months free if we cut the boat and build a roof. Nothing out of our pockets except time and sweat. Not to mention I doubt anything woukd go missing off that property. I would be rolling the dice leaving money for the taking on a stranger's farm.

[CTSSolutions]

And to touch on Amish scrappers. Lancaster County is known well for their amish community. What people don't know is that over the years Lancaster county has become more and more commercially amish. We have "amish giftshops" and "amish tours". From what I can understand, in the olden days it was strictly forbidden to make money off the amish name. Over the years, especially in Lancaster County, the rules have laxed. Every chapter of amish has the rights to make their own rules and the rules around here would probably never fly in other parts of the country.

So yes, I'm sure there are amish scrappers. The farmers around here in general waste nothing. Although I've never seen a horse and buggy go across the scales at the yard, I'm sure there are plenty of amish guys tossing piles of steel onto their neighbors trailer and getting a percentage when he comes back.

Farmers in general are very industrious people...you know that Rog, they're not about to let dollars leave the farm without compensation.

[CTSSolutions]

Sorry I've been away fellas. Busy busy I guess.

Work has me hating my life, scrap has me discouraged about spending more money, court has me fearing for my future, blah blah blah

Got paid $10 to pick up a lawnboy and troy bilt weed whacker that was 2 miles from work on my way home. Sold the mower for $75 3 days later.

The hustle fire is starting to burn in my gut, but everything else is dragging. I need to get myself to a shrink and get my head straight. Just a lot going on right now.

Hope everyone is doing well.