So long 2013 (How did you do scrapping>)

In Sept. of 2013, I bought a very used 1995 Dodge Dakota for $1500 and began my part-time scrapping adventure. After four months, I've managed to replace a third of my investment in the Dakota while paying for the insurance, fuel, snacks, and a scrapping toolbox full of the necessities. I'll cautiously call my venture a success.

My question is simply, how did you fare in the scrapping world this year, and what further plans to you have for 2014?

One final note -- Thanks so much to all you loyal SMF members. Your experiences have helped me to vicariously live the scrapping life, your stories have made me double over in laughter, and your successes have inspired me to make next year a far more prosperous one for both me, my family, and my students.

All my best to you and yours, STEVE

I set a goal of at least 10,000 LBS of scrap to be hauled to the yard. I calculated just shred a couple months back, and was around 600-500 LBS away. With ewaste, and nonferrous added, I am well over my goal.

Next year, I will hopefully buy a truck and I will be able to haul a lot more in and make more money.

I filled and emptied the cooler a lot. I helped save a lot of trash from ending up in our ocean, sounds, rivers, etc. Oh..an the bills are paid, dogs are fat an happy, an we're talking about a trip in the early part of the year for a vacation. An on top of all that work..I provided more then I care to count quotes, smart one liners, quirky taglines. An just guessing here on numbers but I caused over 2000 smiles, several thousands of curse words to be uttered..ah, why get into details! Lets just call it a successful year. ;)

2014 - Expand. I need more space. Warehouse is in the future, just not sure when. I'm on premium real estate people! So I'm looking over on the mainland. Within 20 miles or so of my sandbar is bout as far as I'm looking tho. If that fails, I'll just wait on a some space here on the sandbar that is opening up closer to spring/summer.

Good luck to all in the coming year, and hopefully you met/exceeded your goals for 2013!

Big thanks as always to my fellow forum members. Without you, I'd still be doing something I hated an uneducated in the world of scrapping.

SCRAP METAL UNIVERSITY WORKED FOR ME!

Sirscrapalot - Nothing beats the common cold, but whiskey sure does put a whooping on it!

1. Rearrange my work and storage spaces
2. Pay for some part-time help (sigh)
3. Learn how to identify a dad-gum tantalum capacitor

Great year for me. I met some fantastic people on the this forum and my knowledge base tripled. I doubled my goal of aluminum cans - not a good thing, and more than doubled my goal of tonnage hauled. No trips to the emergency room, no accident reports filed, and no traffic tickets. Kids are on their own and successful, plenty of free time, and still with my wife of 29 years. Life is good.

Good and bad. I added cars to what I deal in and reaffirmed why I advise against partnerships by going into one. Lasted almost two months. Had a student make a documentary about me and my business. Said he'd send me a copy but never heard from him again. Got a couple of big "whales".

Im new to the board. Added escrap to the business. Really enjoy the education.
Learned about it from a design point. I really think if you know how and why and master a item you will be able to much easier grade it.
Maybe bought a few million pounds of batteries. Half the normal amount. Capital issues.

That's my goal for 2014. Line up enough buying $$ to never send an account away.
Stillwater.

I will have to say not bad, I've made about $500 at the yards, and have a large load of boards, plastic, Mylar, cpus, ram, etc, to finish processing and haul, I also have made about $1500-2000 on things I've saved from the scrap heap or the dump.

not to mention I have a utility trailer I made from the truck I parted out.

I want to have better tracking next year for my cash input and time spent vs reward. I don't care about time spent as much since I'm doing it when I have nothing better to do.

hope everyone had an enjoyable year, and good luck next year!

alot happened for me this year as well had a house fire lost everything and no insurance to cover it had a car accident and lost my only vehicle back in may but the last half of the year has been good. moved back to the area i grew up in and am now back up to 3 vehicles 1 really nice boat 1 nice boat 2 trailers a couple of constant scrap contracts a good word of mouth reputation and have hauled in about 5k worth of scrap and have 2 farm cleanups waiting for me in the spring.

For 2014 i'm hoping to find a different house (600 a month to heat the first flor alone on the one im in now!) close to where i have most of my contracts get back into a pickup instead of suvs get a car trailer and or a tow dolly for cars and also get a 2 ton truck for the bigger farm clean outs along with a bobcat. so i got high expectations of myself in 2014 hopefully i will get there but if not atleaswt i will be trying and shooting for 75 tons of scrap metal for the year (hauled 30 from june to november before snow hit

Year started badly with ending a partnership with my brother. I think it was best that we parted ways and now are on speaking terms again. Then in Jan/Feb my youngest daughter had a bad bout with her epilepsy and had a 33 day stay in the hospital. Doing much better now but still have to monitor her closely.
Scrapping obviously took a back seat for a while but when I had a free moment I educated myself by studying the refinement of precious metals. Was fortunate to have met Scott here who has been a sort of mentor for me, thanks again Scott!
Built a solid relationship with a computer repair shop near me as well as an electrical supply house which has kept me in ewaste and circuit breakers since June.
Partnered up again with a local scrapper who I was buying ewaste from and has been a good move to date. We both got our garages cleaned out and moved most of it to a storage locker where we can breakdown materials. He is very good with tools and has a backround in the refining business so its been a good fit.

My goals for 2014 is to have a better year than 2013 and keep a positive attitude no matter what life throws at me. Happy New Year everyone!

Well, I scrapped my first car this year, finally got a trailer, found a buyer for e-waste, gained more knowledge, and my total lbs. for the year with nonferrous and ferrous was 26,012 lbs. In 2014, I hope to get a connection to a computer shop and a school.

Wow, some great stories here, thanks for all the good ones, and my sympathy for the others. Especially yours Brass, I had no clue, best wishes for your girl.

Far as scrapping goes, I'm not able to do it big time, so I concentrate mostly on recycling and re-purposing, re-introducing it to the market when/if possible. It's sort of slow that way, but ohwell, no complaints, life's been good

Best wishes to you all and a Happy New Year

2013 was good to us. I got married Nov 1st. My now new 11yo stepson won his 3 year battle with leukemia in June.
As for my scrap totals: ferrous 20,267 lbs. and nonferrous 2,402lbs.

Things I want to do in 2014: I'm going to overhaul my 5x8 trailer by putting a wood floor in, maybe get an old truck and score more metal!

Happy New Years fellow scrappers.

My wife says shes been at a certain job for 5 years now - so I do remember starting around same time as her . I find it , I sell it consistently .
I have not hit the high notes I have wished for in my years of scrapping but maybe this year . The purchasing of cars is still my goal .
Other then that I had a fine year doing as usual and working with plumbers .
I had theft so thats about what it takes to kill my expert ability of what I do .

I wish a great year to the members and family

Made $2,000 more than last year. Ran in almost 28,000 lbs (27,786) of material this year. Made a great contact this spring just by grabbing 2 bikes from the curb. Guy asked if I would want a 6x8 steel fence gate. OK cool. This is only 2 blocks from home, so i tell him who i am and where i live and he knows what house. Tells me to come by next week at the same time for his furnace, water heater, and a/c. Turns out he owns a fence company. Asked if it would be ok to bring any steel fence scraps to my house, OK, no problem. Got a few business cards from him. My sister had him put up a fence for her and a lady at work needed a new gate also, so i got him some business sence he helped me out, i helped him out.

Had a repeate caller for pick ups 4 times from my sisters friend, who's grandma passed away. Went there to grab some furniture with my sister and told them i do scrap. Turns out the grand father was a "junk man" and they needed to clean up the garage. They wanted to go threw it and let me know later what they wanted gone. So they called 4 times and every time was a full truck load. one trip had 20+ electric motors. Had my sister with on one pick up and goin home with a full load, Washing machine down the street, lucky i had help to throw it in the truck bed cause there was no way I could open the tailgate without everything falling out. Just a few storys...

I just started scrapping in May. I'm one of the strange ones that found this forum and then started scrapping. I've learned a lot and I'm very thankful for all of the wonderful information on this forum. I learn something new every day. While this started as a part time hobby, it has turned into a lucrative part time job. There have been a couple of months where I've made more scrapping that I did that week at my full time job. My best month so far I made over $4,000. I do almost exclusive e-waste. I'm not quite ready to give up on 2013 yet, however. Between yesterday and today I have picked up at 3 new spots and have agreements with all three of them to pick up every other week. In January 2014 alone, I already have 4 appointments to pick up lot of ewaste (I mean take my trailer with me to carry it all.) On two of them, they are completely free. I'm really looking forward to 2014!

Well from my thread you can tell I hit a home run sky high with everything I got and the computers I'm refurbishing. I did very good this year I sold probably half of the computers I had already and made a killing. Pretty darn good for an 18 year old, ain't it?

Not bad for an 18 yr. old, us old guys and everyone in between. Gals included. Congrats Kochy

2013 was our first full year in business.
I just added our numbers up for the year-
Just over 700,000lbs of plastics
Just under 500,000lbs of Ferrous/ Non ferrous
Just over 50,000lbs of EWaste
Then we have smaller amounts of cardboard, paper etc.
I am very happy with these numbers. Hoping to double them for next year!

a couple weeks ago i had looked over my receipts from the yard, added them up and it was $1000 and a couple cents.
I havent even been looking for metal the past year, just swooping it up anytime it comes my way... well it was pretty much that which got me back into it and ive already racked up a couple more hundred since then, ha!

ive also been filling up me and my neighbors new homes with furniture, cookware, appliances and art
speaking of which that $1000 doesnt count the countless stuff ive been reselling on craigslist wooooo