how old were you when you found your first item and what was the nastiest one yet or the beste
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how old were you when you found your first item and what was the nastiest one yet or the beste
I think i was 27 when i became a "scrapper". first items were air ducts and a fuse box.
Nastyest item was a 5ft cast iron lamp. Got to the gas station and saw what I thought was dogdoo all over the base like its been going there for years. Luckly it was frozen so i picked it up from the post and unscrewed the base using the cord to turn it, threw it in the garbage can there.
Best find at curb co. was a copy,fax,scanner machine. probobly 350 to 400 lbs.
First thing, cant remember, used to pick up cans with my grandfather when I was a little kid.
Nastiest, had to be a microwave/range hood combo, those things can get disgusting.
Best thing, to many to list, but this time I will go with 7 rolls of silver dimes and 2 $50 bills in old suitcases.
I was 7-8 years old picking up cans on my road, setting right in the middle of the road was a folding Allen Pak. I had no idea what it was but when I gave it to my dad it sure made him happy :)
The best thing for me was a compound bow. Cant wait to take it to the range this spring and take lessons
Lol I was told to scrap but knew nothing. I said I charge for that! They said I would get paid to toss it (a fridge or other from a business) I was a parts driver or medical driver or other driver jobs using a pick up truck . I was like no $ no haul . Even stuff I disassemble today lol. I always think ......i used to pass this up. No more . Gimme more. I'm down now.
Worst .....a fridge or freezer with dead ducks or geese and deer.
Off the top of my head. I'm sure there's worse.
At the dump with my grandfather, climbing over stuff and I was standing on a dead cow!
Tip : Beware of taped up appliances. They are taped for a funky reason. Investigate at your own risk.Quote:
Originally Posted by blacksteel
Well, I just found what's probably the coolest thing I ever found scrappin':
A cell phone in the street.
Big deal? Well, there's more. I was loading my truck with a couple prom dresses my wife wanted me to take to the thrift store I get scrap from every day. So I set my phone down on the truck's bedrail ""for just a sec"" while I opened the door with one hand, holding the box with the other hand. So I set the box in the truck and rearranged a couple things and the box fell and I had to pick it up and yaddayaddayadda... so I got in the truck & took off.
Now, like yall, I always keep my eyes peeled when driving, so I'm almost back home, and right by the turn-in for my alley, I spotted something in the road. ....Hmmmmmm.... looks like a cellphone..... Hmmmmmmm..... looks like..... HOLY $#!+ it IS my cellphone!!!!
8-l 8-l 8-l 8-l
Whew!
It's fine. Couple scratches on the tuff-cover thingy, but all-in-all good shape.
worst thing i found was a like lamp post with coon crap and stuff on it and a dead rotting rat
First thing - pop bottles in LA. I use to walk the road sides collecting them for Icees. Don't know if this was scrapping, but it helped me keep my eyes open. Best - First farm scrap job. Still working on it today and my son will have to finish it. Worst - grain bin full of rotten grain. Full of explosive gas from the grain. I will post the solution to this challenge someday.
The first thing that I officially scrapped was my old BBQ pit, the one with the brass burners. (I have a thread about that. ;) ) Hmmmmm the nastiest thing I've ever found was probably that BBQ full of rats from a few weeks back or the computers I get from one of my contacts. Every single one of them is full of this dirt that sticks to EVERYTHING and is impossible to clean up all the way. I've been lucky so far, I haven't had to deal with a stinky fridge full of food yet. Dealing with nasty stuff is just another day on the job, I'm not too scared about that stuff.
First haul: Old radiator and some copper pipes, when I was 16.
Nastiest haul: I've hauled lots of nasty stuff; fridges can get pretty putrid/covered in mold and rotten food particles.
Best non ferrous haul: Copper buss bars- that got me into scrapping seriously about 10 years ago. Netted 300 lbs of copper and 100 lbs of aluminum. Only needed about 5 buckets (wish I took picts)
Bulkiest haul: almost 30 large appliances at once
Heaviest ferrous haul: 7860 pound of steel shelving and rotating libraries over 8 ft tall (showed in my pict)
first thing was a water cooler, was getting laid off for2 weeks last Christmas, and that's how I actually found this site and got into e waste. nastiest thing was a black box beside a dumpster, thought it was a cable or tool box or something, until I googled the name and found out it was a rodent trap haha
Not the first but in the beginning of posting adds on Craigslist I got a call for a dishwasher and almost passed but figured it was better then waiting for the next call. Before I got there they called back to see what else I could take...anything metal, anything that plugs in.
When I got there they had a pile with car batteries, wire, dishwasher(stainless tub!) and small kitchen appliances including this. (Set the hook in the wife's mouth for good)
http://i1269.photobucket.com/albums/...psdd9fb4ad.jpg
An that's how you get the wife on your side when it comes to what we do...nifty things they'd never buy, or buying them said nifty things, or dinner. Ha ha!
Mine went with me to the yard when I first started, I won't take her back, she keeps trying to claim ALL the profit!
Sirscrapalot - All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else. - Mae West
young, 7 or 8 my sister and I used to find old dump sites in the woods and bring dad home oilcans, butter churns, electric knobs and other metal doodads, mom got the glass jars, some are worth money now:).
The nastiest had to be the fryer oil furnace, every inch coated in grease, all the copper lines were full of old grease and the catch pan had a sorta biology experiment look too it.
I threw the copper line into the sun to get the old grease out.. When i went to pick them up later the smell from 15 ft away was making me gag something fierce.
My stomach is turning just typing about it.
I wasn't actually scrapping, but I remember breaking a line to an old refrig unit that used amonia in those days. Didn't take me long to vacate the premises. My dad had alot of that old meat processing/storing equip in a building. Wish I had it today..
You got lucky there...ammonia in old refrigeration equipment can do serious harm to your lungs and/or kill you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yunkman
kz whats the worst?Quote:
Originally Posted by KzScrapper
I did the same thing last month. Found my cell phone where I had stopped to peak in a dumpster 3 hrs before. It was a total fluke too.Quote:
Originally Posted by auminer
Best thing I ever found was a cash register, one of my first finds too, that when I took apart in my garage...:D...had $95 stuffed in the back of it!
Like others on here, a freezer with bad food. I always check before loading but the one time I didn't I got burned. Waited till trash day then with a mask, jug of bleach and short shifts I was able to get the stuff double bagged and out to the curb.Quote:
Originally Posted by hunterandscrapper
A fridge with live roaches all over it and then one time I sold a used fridge to a government subsidy apt building owner and after I refused to knock money off the fridge for him giving me the old one I told him I'm not in the business of scrap metal I'm in the business of used fridges so he begged me to take it so I loaded it up and the compressor was so full on and around with roach eggs I knew exactly why the fridge quit working ... Nasty stuff I've run across plenty of needles blood vomit hi it excrement. Exercise caution when scrapping wear gloves and use tools for everything you can because you never know what you are going to find in whatever it is that you are opening
First item scrapping: Found a drum set on the curb, 5 peice coda set. No holes in the drums, so i sold the set for $250
Nastiest thing: nothing yet, thankfully!!
Greatest item ever found: JFK President Pin, found it in a dresser i got off the curb
A 40" tube Sanyo that I had no clue that you had to worry about a charge from the transformer. ZAP!!! Nastiest was between picking at a retail store dumpster and being pooped on by 30 - 50 birds. Or the other was last week at night I thought I had a dumpster score with a stainless, copper coated, brass handle mug sitting on a commerical sized microwave. Jumped in dumpster set mug to the side and pushed microwave out. I grabbed the mug and as I started climbing out I could feel warm sliminess running down my arm and up my shirt. KNew it was bad. Trying to find flashlight and all I could do was smell wintergreen. Talk about an expensive spit cup.
the first thing i ever scrapped was copper pipes & brass taps
im a plumber by trade & i did a whole residential complex
i installed new lines for all 61 homes & had to remove the old copper pipes where i connected to the water meter outside every home
since the old pipes were all underground except for a small part where it came out of the ground and connected to the meters i mentioned, i did not get as much copper & brass as i hoped to get
but all said & done, i made about$55 on whatever i managed to salvage.
its a shame, cos what i got is just a small part of whats still there underground.
http://s15.postimg.org/4hi0aux13/puke.gifhttp://s15.postimg.org/4hi0aux13/puke.gifhttp://s15.postimg.org/4hi0aux13/puke.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by Rollyrogers33
OK... I literally just had to force down my gorge just reading about that. NASSSSTAAAAY!!!
My first scraping was some old metal at a farmers place that he needed removed. This is roughly 1987 or so. I carried a trailer load in and had no idea how things even worked. I made like $25 and thought it was awesome. After that, there was an old house on my friends land that they used to store hay in. Imagine an old clapboard farm house that had been abandoned for 50 years. We stripped the wire out of it along with some other old houses that had already fallen down. We made like $50 each and that was when copper only paid like $0.85 a pound.
The worst scrap job was for another guy who had the old family farm. All the barns and house were swallowed by by underbrush and were falling down. He was paying us to tear down some of the old structures and haul off the junk. Well all the junk was metal except the wood that we burned on the spot. There was an old butane tank that already had holes in it. Honey bees had made a huge hive in there. We just burned the wood around it and they moved. We cut it and there was lots of honey inside. Then the same site, there was an old washer and dryer in the woods that had been previously pulled out of the old house. The brush had grown up all around it. I pulled them out with my truck and black snakes (non poisonous ones) came jumping out. I thought I had them all out but as I hauled that load down the road, people would drive up next to me and honk and tell me snakes were popping off my trailer. Kind so funny after it was all over.
Best find was during a foreclosure clean out. I had a guy that would contract directly with a bank for foreclosure clean outs. If there was much metal, he would call me up and I would clean all the metal out and he would count that volume of material in his clean out cost. Anyway, I went to this 2 story house that had been used as a drug house. It smelled so bad that it might have been a meth house. Lots and lots of trash and anything of value was removed. As I looks through piles of trash in the living room, I see 2 silver colored canister things. They were smashed like someone stomped on their side. I picked them up and looked at the bottom and it was stamped with silver hallmarks. They were only scrap but they paid out $300 for the 2 pieces.
Our business was called out to help clean out an estate...first day was just the garage. Paid $30/hr left with the bed stacked. Tools...a lot of brass. Day 2, cleared out the house, another full load, plus 4 more of trash and donatables. That was 7 more hours paid. Been scrapping since.
Nice guy. Had someone drop a nasty fridge full next to me on the shred pile last week. Reeked.Quote:
Originally Posted by KzScrapper
A cast iron sink. Figured ‘what the hell’ and brought it to the new yard I had heard about on the radio. $22 later and I knew I had found my second job
As for the nastiest thing…it’s pretty tough to gross me out since I did ten years as an EMT and paramedic student. I’ve been in close contact with every bodily fluid you can think of (and I mean EVERY kind). But a few weeks ago, I found an old busted vending machine in the dumpster of a local firehouse. I had to climb in to get it which I have no problem with. I could smell some food garbage that was starting to go but really not too much of an assault on my sinuses. When we got the machine out and into the back of the truck, a bunch of flies flew out, no big deal, right? And then I saw the MAGGOTS. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Nasty little bastards. Dumped the machine back on the ground, turned my head, closed my eyes, gave it a little shake and then hosed it out when I got home. Gross. Good pay day, though.
My attraction was not from picking something up but from a memory I had of my mother throwing in the trash a complete sterling tea and coffee set complete with coffee urn and tea urn and tray. My guess 10 to 15 lbs when I was about 10 or 11.
I guess mentaly I have been looking for it ever seance.