New guy here

Hello everyone,

My neighbor scrapped in his free time for about 7 years and recently retired from the military and moved back to his home state. I'd occasionally go with him picking and to the scrap yard. Back about May of this year I started going a lot more with him. He moved in June and I have kept up scraping. I'm located in south east Virginia.

I mainly just drive around the neighborhoods close to me the day before trash pickup in my truck with a 4x6' trailer (waiting on a 5x10 trailer to come in paid for by scrapping money). I'll occasionally browse OfferUp or FB for free scrap and have picked up a few things that way too. I'll clean what I can and let the nonferrous accumulate and take the light iron/shred to the yard the same or next day. So far my best day was just over 500 in a few trips to the yard and my worst was 30 in 1 trip just trying to clean up some things.

The yard I go to is less than 10 miles away which makes getting rid of what I pick up quickly easy as I live in a neighborhood on 1/4 acre lots. The nonferrous accumulates for about two or three weeks before I take that in but mostly stays out of sight behind my fence.

Welcome to the forum from Las Vegas! In these threads going back a decade you'll find a wealth of knowledge that will help sharpen your skills, improve your returns and increase your fun. See you around the boards!

Welcome from Montreal. A nearby yard is always useful for selling shred/light iron, but if you accumulate your non-ferrous stuff, place a few calls to other yards before selling. Driving a bit further may get you better prices sometimes and the larger quantity (weight) you have the more chances you can negociate a better price too.

Thanks for the suggestion CM'r. I've called another local yard about the same distance to my go to and their prices for light iron were about a penny less. I just assumed that the prices for nonferrous were lower too so. I also have an account at my main yard (Sims) that gets me a little better price too.

Before I take my next load of nf in, I will call the other yard and see what the prices are.

I’m assuming you mean sims metal management and not sims bro’s based on your terminalagy. Sims metal management has a huge operation so they may be better in pricing generally than smaller guys for shred/ light ironBut then again some bigger places like that occasionally drop prices for retail just to try and keep people out and get stuff cleaned up. Usually sims seems to be pretty good though. I didn’t catch if you were in the military or not but I used to scrap when I was living in the barracks of ft. Hood. It was something fun to do that made me money while others were out getting plastered every night. Like yourself I too started out with a truck and small trailer. I would have to walk a mile into the woods and dig cars out of the ground by hand throw it on a wheel barrow and carry it out to the truck that way. Now I got a ram 2500 that doubles as a weld rig and a 20 foot trailer I just put 4’ sides on. You can definitely make something of yourself in the scrap biz if you work for it. Gain as much knowledge as you can and have fun. From what I’ve seen when they sent me to Pickett is there’s a lot to be scrapped in that region.

Welcome!

Welcome to the forum!