I'm amazed at the amount of heavy equipment I see headed for scrap - road graders, tractors and accessories, bulldozers, fork lifts, heavy trucks - you name it. Even with these relatively high scrap iron prices, I'm betting lots of this could be going for much more as reusable parts.
Allow an old-timer to regress a bit. Back when Iron was around $30 a ton I got a call about a road grader. Said I could have it. When I got to the place, the old guy had forgotten he had told his neighbor about it. Neighbor was all set to cut if up for scrap. I asked him how much he thought he'd get for it and I asked him if $100 would do the trick and save hiim some trouble. I paid the hundred not knowing for sure that I could do better but my gut feeling told me there was some valuable stuff there.
Turns out I was right. Drive train - basically the whole back half of the grader went to a dealer in Yuba City, CA for around $1500 as I recall. Blade fetched another $800. Some hydraulics brought another couple of hundred and the rest was scrapped.
I handled this with my 1947 GMC 2 ton truck and a cutting torch. I found a local guy who hauled roof trusses and paid him to lift parts on my truck. It was a slow go with that little 6 cylinder, but turned out to be a really good paying couple of days.
I'm sure prices for used heavy equipment parts has gone way up since then as have scrap iron. So give it some thought. You may be able to make much more than scrap.
I'm looking at a big dual engined generator tomorrow. Guy says it weighs 4 tons. If he'll take $6-700 for it, I might go for it or, who knows, maybe it's free. We didn't get that far yet
Good Luck
Bookmarks