First Load of Scrap

My first motorized vehicle at age 8 a Villiers motor cycle my dad brought home for me, then a 47 Hudson before I turned 12. I remember measuring the length of that car, 22 1/2 ft bumper to bumper.

The Hudson had a flathead 6 with a cork clutch run in oil, I could get that old beast to do 45 mph in first gear. I soon found out though that you could only do this so many times before blowing a head gasket.

That car took a beating for tow years before getting parked, or rather replaced by a 51 Chevy which was the first car I ever rolled. Of the two buddies that were with me at the time one turned out to be a true friend he stayed while the other went home. Neil and I went back to my place to grab the tractor and some chain to pull the car back onto its wheels.

After we got her back upright, Neil pushed started me to get the old Chevy going, wow you should have seen the smoke form all the oil that had passed into the upper cylinders while laying upside down.

I managed to make it home but not without ruining the engine by over heating, when the car went over the engine had ripped from its mounts tearing the radiator hoses free from th rad.

From here I go through a succession of small English cars, Austins, Zephers, Vauxalls, Morris Minors and Oxfords, with a few Anglias thrown in. I hated these English cars.

Also have a strong dislike for the Dodge and Plymouth flathead 6's with their paper crankshafts any cop could follow my trail after throwing a rod through the pan, just follow the oil trail.

Now I get into the Fords, my first flathead a 36 ford truck, then a 54 Meteor, then I get into the Y blocks with the over head valves. the 55's 56 and 57's

By the time I'm 14 years old half our acreage was filled up with my cars in various states of disrepair. One day a friend of my dads happened by and offered to take a load of junk into the scrap yard for me.

Wow the kid makes a new discovery they pay you for this junk, a whole $20.00 a ton back in 1962. But that money back then would buy you a whole lot of goods, way more than I get from a $100.00 bill in todays economy.

If you think about it, scrap prices have not come up all that much.

My fathers friend had a farm full of old cars, one in particular I wanted was a 36 Hudson Terraplane, The Hudson did not look pretty but they had a strong engine that went onto win races.

A buddy had a 56 Hudson Hornet that could beat any Chrysler 392 Hemi or Red Ram.



I apologize for the long winded story, but it was relevant to how I had acquired so much junk at an early age. I have my dads friend to thank for teaching me that my junk was worth money.

All I really wanted to ask is how old were you when you took in your first load of scrap and what was the price per ton.

Cool story of your scrapping history and your rides.

I don't honestly remember what the first load of scrap I took in paid. I wish I did. I do remember that I was 19, and it was actually my friend's car we were taking in. He had been doing this for years with his dad. He asked me to help him haul in this old car. I drove his little Mazda pickup with him in the car. Something went wrong. Coming to stop sign, I looked in the rear view and noticed he was not stopping. He was headed off to my right, like he was passing me. But we were still connected. Next thing I know, I am being pulled by the runaway car. We ended up in a field. I remember the back end of the truck getting whipped around and thinking it was going to flip over. We didn't give up. We got the car in and got enough money to eat specials at Dairy Queen for a few days and beer money for the weekend.

My first load was about three years ago. I was doing some remodeling at a small private school and needed to remove a large awning that had a lot of extruded aluminum. My 15 year old at the time was rebuilding and customizing Gopeds and had recently taken in a bucket of aluminum motor parts to this place not far from home so he is the one that got the ball rolling around here. I always new there was $$ in metal but never took the time to find out how much. Got about $45 when I brought the extruded in but still had much to learn, I had seperated the steel but come to find out, this small yard only took non-ferrous, they were generous enough to let me dump it there though. Wasn't that nice of them?

Pushin 50 now, better late then never.

Originally Posted by ComputerScrapper

Wow, talk about walking down memory lane....My first load of scrap was over 20 years ago....At that time I knew nothing of scrap metal but my best friend's Dad was heavy into it. He dealt only with copper and aluminum items and he made big money even in those days. So my friend and I started messing with it. We started by getting a truck and we thought we would be smart and pick up all the steel that people left out for trash. We loaded that truck until the rear bumper was almost dragging the ground. We hit the scrap yard and unloaded and we got our check...A whooping $35....Little did we know that steel and tin was at 1/2 cent a pound back in those days....So we started messing with non-ferrous only ourselves...We would get all excited when we would get a load that brought us $100...Of course we would celebrate with beer and lots of it in those days (20 years ago $100 bought LOTS of beer lol) while his Dad was turning in loads of $10,000 or more. But we learned nonetheless that there was money to be made.

If I made $10,000 off of one load, I would die happy.

My first load was miscellaneous scrap metal, tin, aluminum, wire, copper, brass, all the usual stuff. Brought me and my ex partner in $120 a piece. The next day, our last stop was a freaking gold mine. A dumpster that was filled partially with copper and brass. After all was said in done we made close to $400 a piece that day. Been hooked ever since.

However, anymore for more, it is not all about the money. I remove things whether it is scrap metal or junk for people and businesses all the time. I enjoy it, because I make money off of it, and unlike the bigger companies out there, I can charge much less then them, and know the client isnt being ripped off.

My biggest payday for a junk removal job was tearing down an BIG sheet metal shed. This thing was as big as a 2 story, 2 bedroom home. Took us 3 1/2 days to tear it all down!

Originally Posted by ComputerScrapper

Back in those days $10,000 was a lot of aluminum and copper to say the least...I think we were getting .75 for clean #2 back then if I remember correctly.

Heck even now $10,000 would have to be mostly copper, brass, and aluminum, unless you had a huge 18 wheeler filled to the bring of scrap metal.

I think a gaylord full of nothing but ram chips would bring more then 10 G's would take me 10 years to get that many but hey.

Everybody's got to have a dream,,

Originally Posted by PartTimeScrapper

I think a gaylord full of nothing but ram chips would bring more then 10 G's would take me 10 years to get that many but hey.

Well, considering the cost per lb, then yeah, I am sure it would! Hurry up and we can test the theory! lol