Not that much aluminum on modern city buses. The old GM's were built like airplanes with aluminum bulkheads and stressed skin. These buses are steel tube birdcage construction. The only aluminum is in the extruded window frames, glued on skin panels, etc., with some stainless and copper tube/wiring. Probably only about 200-400#'s on the whole bus but that is balanced by the large amount of plastic, plywood, etc.. I do believe the processor is pulling and selling the engine cores, if for no other reason than their machine may not handle them. And there are a couple of big core buyers/exporters in Chicago.
Transmissions are German Voith units. Only used in buses and no market for cores. Believe me; I've tried moving them in the past with no luck. So, only breakage weight there.
I talked to the winning bidder last week. Asked him if he would consider flipping the batch to me. He said "You know what I paid. What do you have in mind?". I offered him $1000 over his total bid, thinking he might counter at $2000, which I would have accepted. His only response was "You're not even close" and he would not put a number out there.
Two other scrap yard owners that I talked to said that there wasn't much margin for the winning bidder. I think a couple of things are in play here:
1. the buyer already committed the weight to the processor and didn't want to pull the plug on that.
2. he is making some money, if not a lot, without touching the buses.
3. he doesn't want some small-time player (me) playing "his" game. Not the first time I've run into that.
Oh well; there is another batch of buses going out next month. I'll have to try something different.
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