Question for e-waste recyclers

How do you guys do your advertising? Basically how do you acquire large amounts of e-waste. Do you do advertising online, flyer, CL, or what? Me and my partner have always wanted to start a little side business and have some questions about it. Seems easy to do if you can get it in bulk. That and we work directly with the scrap yard all day every day and we always get industrial prices on our material so we figured we have an automatic edge on the smaller guys so why not at least investigate the matter and figure out if its an investment we would like to undertake. Any help would be gladly appreciated. Thanks a bunch.



We basically figure its about six grand a month overhead, labor, rent, and utilities. Thats two laborers. We have money set aside to purchase material in bulk to. We want to only purchase 10,000 lbs or more at a time. Is that stupid should we accept less then 10,000 lbs at a time? Keep in mind we want to turn the e-waste as quick as possible? Whats the cost of it?

I have zero clue about e-waste to. I know the industrial scrap metal side like a seasoned veteran and can process anything so I figured its time for a new challenge. That and we want a new money stream.

I have been in the scrap industry since I was a kid. I am not concerned about losing money some months that's the nature of doing business in the scrap industry. You just need to maximize your profit anyway you can. As long as I am not bleeding less then 10,000 a month I can weather the storm to start out. Me and my cutting crew will still be out in the burning field every day of the scrap yard we would be selling to generating profit no matter if the market is up or down. We have a forever contract with them. Trust me processing scrap with huge torches has got to be way harder then breaking down e-waste thats why I said it can't be that hard. Working directly with the scrap yard owner day in and day out makes me able to have a leg up on others to as far as pricing goes. In order for it to be attractive to me I would want to make at least 20 percent profit on my material excluding my other built costs I mentioned. That's a minimum. I am not trying to sound like d-head either sorry if it sounded like that to. I am just curious about the business. I just want to buy volume and turn it as quick as possible. Thats my thing moving material.

e wast is kind of like the cat converter bis was a couple of years ago. For years they both were kind of an open secret to a relitivly small number of people. the internet allow no secret to be kept for long. can big money still be made from both ? yes. but ou need to work very hard and get extremely lucky in either one. case in point probably 30% think the gold in computers are solid gold, but most of them still throw them on the dump. another 30% are convinced there is no PM in any of them. then there is the middle 40 %.
there are people paying $20 to $40 for scrap comps thinking they are going to get rich otherke I said just throw them in the trash.

some junk auto yards and scrap yards still buy many cats for $10 to $25 all day long, some people pay $75 for an aftermarket because they dont know what they are doing, thinking they are going to get rich.

The best defence against all is to educate your self here and any where else you can. Be light on your feet and ready to jump onthe next secret before it is too late. As for me I have had my glory days and they were great, Ive had one grand ride on this earth, I truely did it my way. as for now Im just looking to get back to the dailey comfort days.

Yeah I was reading a bunch of posts on the goldrefining forum. From what I gathered motherboards alone have about $8 to $10 worth of PM in them. Thats including silver gold and platinum. Not to mention if your refiner pays for the basic metals refined out of them as well like copper and alluminum. I hope to be big enuff one day to send some boards to a refiner and get some assay reports. Thats the only way we will ever know for sure.

Yeah i get the fact that its not an easy thing to do. I wasn't saying it was. I am just saying it doesn't seem hard to break down e-waste fast. WTF do I know though like i said I am completely green and new at it. Just looking for something to make me cash on the side. Its not like this would be my main focus just some extra dough if it could be attained. I am just throwing it around in my head.

From what I guess others are commenting on your profit is only 10 percent. That would mean you would have to do 1.2 million dollars worth of business to make a 120,000 a year. I think I will pass on that. I never really considered china or india to be a threat when it comes to this kinda material like I said though WTF do I know about it. I guess paying someone 12 dollars an hours over 32 cents an hour the cheaper labor always wins out.

I was just wondering how the seasoned vets acquire large lots of material? That was my main question.

They get all of us small timers to sell it to them. I know I cant get enuff to send directly to a refiner. So they buy it from me and 1000 people like me. Then they send it to the refiner. Thats my guess anyway.

buy directly from the scrap yards as well

I am the small timer working out of my garage, so I don't know how useful my input would be, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway.

I tried craigslist, ads kept getting flagged. I mainly use freecycle and word of mouth. Both have yielded me with as little as a tv and VCR to as much as a trailer load. I have one regular supplier who specializes in freon. During summer he was getting me 10-15 tvs/monitors a week, plus smaller items like VCRs,DVD players, radios, etc. If you want to post flyers, I suggest the least thought of places...you may have the community board at the gas stations and super markets, but theres also small work out clubs, and independently owned buissinesses with only one or two employees, but still have enough traffic for people to take notice of signes

Originally Posted by Ewasted

I wasnt saying any of it to be a jerk, just telling you the honest truth. Find me an assay of motherboards in the last 2-3 years running 8 to 10 per lb of precious metals and we will drop out of the business... we've been in this industry for long enough to know what is hearsay.

eWasted,

Any possibility that you (or any of the other E-Scrap buyers) could post of copy of any Assay Reports from a refinery for a load of Motherboards or other eScrap items? I think it would be really interesting to see.