Hello everyone. I just stumbled upon this site when doing a google search on scraping AC compressors. Very interesting to say the least.
I got started when my pet store business was slow and my landlord gave me a bunch of computers to scrap. Another tenant in the complex had a computer repair business and he gave all this old machines to the landlord rather than scrap them himself. The whole time vs profit thing and all.
The landlord was retired and he sat around all day breaking things down and he got me started.
So far I've done about 3 loads to the scraper and made about 275.00. Not a lot but when you consider it almost free money it does come in handy.
The most interesting story I have though is about my 10 year old nephew. His dad has an old restaurant foundation on his property and he uses it as a containment pit for burning his construction scrap. There bits and pieces of old broken down equipment scattered about and one day while burning my nephew found a 2 foot piece of copper off of some type of machine. I mentioned to him that he could get rich from scraping ( I know but you have to entice kids with big promises these days) so he started collecting anything and everything he could find. His dad humored him and even got into the act. When he had to replace some aluminum windows on a jobsite he told his kid he could have it. After about 4 or 5 months of just nickle and dime stuff I decided it was time to take him to cash in. I didn't want to get his hopes up too much so I said "you'll probably get 30 or 40 bucks" That sounded good to him and we set off to the recyclers.
On the way there he said "I hope I get at least 20 bucks"
We unloaded and the guy handed me the slip and my jaw dropped.
My nephew looked at me and said "not too much huh?"
I said "I think you are going to be pretty happy with this"
How much?" he asked.
" $110.00 bucks" I said.
Now it was time for his jaw to drop and his eyes got to be the size of saucers "How much really? he said
"$110.00" I said.
Needless to say I have created a monster. Everything he sees now is "is that scrap?" or we drive by a junky house with old machines in the yard and he will say "I wish I could scrap there" Best of all (for him) his dad is taking the whole thing a bit more seriously now. Stuff that used to get tossed now gets saved.
Anyway, that's my best scraping story and if I don't make another dime doing it seeing the look on his face when that $100.00 bill popped out of the machine was worth every minute I spent helping him haul it.
Well, I'm off to break down a few electric motors now.
Steve
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