43,000 Lbs of Electric motors.

We have 44,000 lbs of electric motors that we have to deal with these.....Most are 15HP and up, a bunch of giants at 75HP.
Any way to know how much copper would be in this load?
Trying to decide whether I sell it as scrap electric motors or break the motors apart and seperate the copper.

Whatever we pull out would be considered # 2 copper right? in our area we get 3.55/lb for # 2


What we need to know is what perecentage of the 43000 lbs would be copper? We guestimated at 10%......any thoughts?

elect motors by me are .30 a pound. With 43,000 lbs I am sure you could get .60 a pound for them.

Some motors that are large...shops will buy them whole to fix an resell. Could be worth trying to find a shop that dose that.

A old motor is cheaper to repair than to make a brand new one....there are more shops that rebuild them than there are shops that make brand new.

This load has already been handled with machinery...Doubt there would be any rebuilding. Someone has to have an idea of how much copper on average is in an electric motor.

Just for reference, I just broke down 2 70 pound motors, and they had just under 7 pounds of copper each. So the 10% number is pretty close. I believe we got around 50% more money per motor for the labor invested in breakdown.

Take a couple of representative motors from the pile. Weight them and calculate your payment. Then dismantle those motors, seperate the materials, weigh those and calculate. That is what I would do. Then you can figure if it is worth your time to do the rest of them.

OK so 43,000 lbs elect motors X 10% = 4300 #2 copper and 38700 steel.

4300 #2 Cu x $3.30 lb by me = $14,190
38,700 lb sheet iron/steel by me .10 lb = $3,870

Total $18,060

As is at .30 lb = $12,900

So call around and get $.43 or more and don't break them down

43,000 x .43 =$18,490

And as I said I think with that amount you can get more than .43 a pound

If ya have to worry about tearing that much apart you must have paid too much for them!...Turn em make your profit and move on to more!!

Originally Posted by sjones99

If ya have to worry about tearing that much apart you must have paid too much for them!...Turn em make your profit and move on to more!!

Is free too much? LOL

Originally Posted by Ewasted

More than likely it is an export product... I can give you a number if you are interested. Can help you decide what to do. Copper Market is Hot, I know alot of guys that don't even want to touch the stuff right now for fear in steep decline... but i guess that comes and goes!

Lay it on me man.....We are speaking to one exporter now but will try another

You have $16,000.00 worth of motors and dont know what to do?..lol

I know what I'd do............ poop my pants.

Oh we know what to do dude...no worries......Sold to a local yard for .40 per lb.....What we were contemplating was tearing them apart ourselves. Since we are a land clearing and demolition contractor this is kinda new to us LOL.....We landed this job out of **** luck.....Old dude with lots of money loved the auctions...now he is in a retirement home and his sons took over and brought us in to clean up.....Which is exactly what we did.
28 Tonnes of mixed farm scrap that paid us 210/tonne.....On top of about 100 lbs of #1 copper 300+ lbs of # 2 copper.....About a lb of pure silver(old electrical boxes)....Not too mention all the goodies we kept because it was too good to scrap......Pretty sure we did alright on this one.

You.Are.A.Lucky.Bastard.

Holy scrap! I'd say you did "alright" on that one too. Good job!