Huge score(Scrapping a bank)

A bank closed down a few months ago around here, the space has been rented and the construction crew started gutting the building yesterday. I passed by in the middle of them throwing metal in a dumpster, asked them about it an ended up being able to get everything! I hauled all the metal from the dumpster last night(mostly ceiling studs), am today picked up 2 box truck loads of more metal(one load was 1,650 lbs of drywall studs alone! Plus a $20 alumium door, $10 piece of brass, tons of BX, 50% wire, some stainless and little bit of sheet aluminum), for a combined total of 5,930 of light iron not counting the non ferrous! I still have more non ferrous to cash in tomorrow and more metal to pick up on Monday. 2nd load was 4 steel doors, every light fixture from the ceiling, drywall studs, air ducts and vent covers, electrical conduit pipe, deposit boxes, a small water heater, and some other random junk plus 2 safes that took the whole construction crew to remove(with great difficulty) and load into the truck, and had to be unloaded at the yard with a forklift. They went as light iron cause the yard manager said they had some concrete in the walls but the top and bottom were solid iron. Couldn't have done the drywall studs from yesterday without my cousins help and I'll be giving him a cut when I see him next week.

Glad to see stopping by paid off.

Its amazing to me that contractors don't take the time to make a phone call to the local yards to get a rolloff for scrap metal during demos. All the better for people like us though!

Nice score - I hope there's more come Monday!

Everything was gonna go in the dumpster if I hadn't taken it. They actually had almost 1000 lbs of drywall studs in the dumpster already plus a metal door and I took all that too. Gonna pick up more tomorrow and there's gonna be a lot of BX cable and wiring coming out, plus 6 more safes. I'm not sure if there's more light fixtures I got like 30 of them last time.

Be sure to check to see if there is a lighted marquee sign. The two I've done were dirty aluminum after I screwed out a couple hundred light bulbs. (Still don't have to buy light bulbs) Plus the heavy gauge copper wire that ran underground to them weighed 1200 lbs. It was a job pulling it from the conduit but well worth it.

Good score. Nice to get to scrap a bank and have a lot of the work done for you. I'd also check the phone lines. They have everything connected with multi line cable. I got a pick up truck load of just phone wire from one bank. If you break out the jacks, you can usually just snip the ends and pull the wire out of conduit.

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Originally Posted by Pnutfarmer

Be sure to check to see if there is a lighted marquee sign. The two I've done were dirty aluminum after I screwed out a couple hundred light bulbs. (Still don't have to buy light bulbs) Plus the heavy gauge copper wire that ran underground to them weighed 1200 lbs. It was a job pulling it from the conduit but well worth it.

Good score. Nice to get to scrap a bank and have a lot of the work done for you. I'd also check the phone lines. They have everything connected with multi line cable. I got a pick up truck load of just phone wire from one bank. If you break out the jacks, you can usually just snip the ends and pull the wire out of conduit.

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The sign was wood. I picked up more stuff today, 3380 lbs of light iron, 291 lbs of 50% insulated wire, a lot of the weight was the phone wire, 372 lbs of BX cable. Wish I had stripped all the BX but I didnt have the time or energy, the Contracter showed me an easy way to strip it but having a cold and trying to get all the metal loaded in a certain amount of time didn't allow me to strip it all, I stripped a few of them and got a lot more for the #1 insulated. Also got some copper and $10 worth of yellow brass, little bits of random stuff and today I made the most I've ever made scrapping before. I'm gonna pick up some ductile iron pipe and the air duct system tomorrow plus whatever else they have.