One day maybe I'll upgrade my wire stripper.

So ive done the math on power cords. I have the basic coppermine stripper . The round red one . I can make money stripping wire but with this machine time would kill me . Buying wire would be tough. Im actually giving thought to when i get out of trade school and buying coppermines $499 model which basically will strip wire as fast as i can feed it . Then ill look into buying all wire (extension cords, romex,thhn) from other scrappers and a local scrap yard. What i can do with my current wire stripper in 3 hours , i would be able to do with the new stripper in an hour or less . Estimating 30 -50 lbs an hour . All thought right now , i will watch what happens down the road the next few months.

Originally Posted by redcrossnj

So ive done the math on power cords. I have the basic coppermine stripper . The round red one . I can make money stripping wire but with this machine time would kill me . Buying wire would be tough. Im actually giving thought to when i get out of trade school and buying coppermines $499 model which basically will strip wire as fast as i can feed it . Then ill look into buying all wire (extension cords, romex,thhn) from other scrappers and a local scrap yard. What i can do with my current wire stripper in 3 hours , i would be able to do with the new stripper in an hour or less . Estimating 30 -50 lbs an hour . All thought right now , i will watch what happens down the road the next few months.

Why would a yard sell to you when they can go thru a buyer or broker and get these prices. These are today's current prices from Scrap Registery:

East coast
# 1 (88 to 92%, THHN) $2.50
#2 (58-62%, Romex) $1.52

Not much room, if any, to make money if you've got to pay those prices (from a yard) and then sell bare bright back to the yard.

Bare Bright is at $2.95 East Coast, so yards that are stripping are only increasing value by about $0.20 per pound for THHN and $0.45 per pound for Romex. Take into account there labor and overhead and even they don't make huge money stripping.