Bracing for Yard Closures Due to Metal Prices

No, not I, I will survive
Long as I know how to love
I know I'll stay alive
I've got my life to live
And all my love to give and I'll survive
I, I, I will survive

Gloria Gaynor

if my local yard were to close I would just start buying from everyone myself and then retire next year as for curbco its been so busy with everyone dropping out I have had to try and work longer in the freezing cold just to get out ewaste faster to make room for other stuff its like Christmas this past week and with gas so much lower at $2.07 was $1.84 its so much cheaper to drive around. even hitting old dump spots I could not get to before it gets picked.
even more people are passing up wire I have seen now not all the cord cutting and leaving behind if this keeps up I will double my income this year just from regular scrap let alone ewaste

Just hoard stuff. I keep saying we should rent a building and stack it deep.

We can be on a episode of hoarders or something. If I had like a 30,000 SQ ft building, I would stack so much stuff that the concrete couldn't hold it.

Yep, it's slowly creeping around here... called around to a few places to see how their doing and Bodow said they might be closing by the end of February and so might Empire. Metallico said their just barely getting buy. When I called over to Weitsman just to check they said people are flocking to their yard like it's Christmas and project the same reaction when the Oswego yard is up and running. I give it a few months and they'll be the only yard in the area. Nothing's changed with them though: hours, pricing or labor's the same. They doing something we don't know about? Curbco around here stopped when NY passed the EScrap bill, which I thought was going to benefit scrappers but it actually hurt us instead. It took the ball and put it into big corporate's court.

logansryche, you said there was a scrap yard up there that is business as usual. What is their name if I may ask?

Originally Posted by sledge

Logan:
They are opening a yard in Oswego?? Where is that supposed to go? My brother in law would be thrilled.. he just did a massive clean out in Palermo and hauled to Syracuse.. Oswego Location would have netted him a bunch more profit on the gig!!

Nice! Their site lists the Oswego location at 15 West Main Street but they have locations there, Solvay(where I go), Allegany, Ithica, Albany, Binghampton, Jamestown, Liberty, Scranton, Rochester, New Castle, Hornell, and Brant.

Originally Posted by sakurtz

logansryche, you said there was a scrap yard up there that is business as usual. What is their name if I may ask?

Ben Weitsman/Upstate Shredding.

It's happening here. Our town stopped taking electronics (Of any kind) at the end of January, and we had two yards. One closed.

I've been hauling out of state, though. The only local yard left doesn't take electronics as shred.

I'm putting all of my effort on the more-than-scrap side of things. When prices rebound, so will I. I'm not leaving it behind. But, I'm not going to invest a lot of money when prices are down.

I think a lot of others are doing the same.

I am really liking the steel downturn myself. I can purchase appliance and electronics on the cheap now.

Less competition on the curbs doesnt really help with prices this low. Like i saw earlier you got 4 microwaves and a dishwasher. All together that might weigh 200 pounds. At 4 cents a pound like it is here thats 8 bucks add the gas to get it and take it in plus labor you just lost money. With prices as low as they are curbco is essentially not feasible.
Explain to me if Im wrong?

Isn't this where you dismantle to maximize your return?

Those microwaves and dishwasher may yield 200lbs of shred, but there's copper wire, motors, circuit boards and the like.

There's also selling microwave turntables and even bits of the the dishwasher on ebay if they are still usable.

Lots of stuff on SMF regarding stripping microwaves safely and other threads talking about selling the parts on ebay.

May not be a lot, but you sure can maximize what you get out of the piggies, even sell the squeal!!

Jon.

Ive always been a dismantler to maximize profit. I guess it comes down to what level your trying to be on. A guy that does it to make 20 bucks or make a living and pull 100k. I believe the abuse on my equipment and time is worth more than all money involved in stripping curbco products at this time.