1st off: Welcome to the forum.
Secondly.. The answer to your question is fairly simple. They are able to ship Semi-Loads of cars at a time and get "Truckload" Pricing, we all get "LTL" or "Less than Truckload" Pricing. They deal in high volume, we are the sole truckload/trailerload pullers.
They take more risk than we do: You get a car and you buy it on the premise of it paying $240/ton, when you get to the yard.. It is $220/ton- On a 3,000 lb vehicle- you lost $30 bucks.. They bought 50 cars today.. They lost $1500 if the mill drops it $20/ton on them. More Risk=Greater Reward!
They have employees, machinery, overhead, insurance to pay for-- for an entire yard.. You and I only have our gas and time.
Regarding getting better prices at your yard: Here is how you do that. Hopefully you have a yard or yards that you frequent.. you know some of the guys that run the scale or possibly the owner. If you approach them and say I can bring you XYZ Number of cars a month.. and you do. They will increase your payout. I know guys who have agreements with the yards that if they bring in 10 cars a month- they get $10/ton more than the guys who pull in one a month. I know guys that have contracts to bring in 30 cars a month- they get about $25-$30 more a ton than scale price.. BUT they have to "put up" they HAVE to meet their quota, or the agreement gets re-negotiated!
Hope this helps!
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