Just Another Thread, Chronicling the Adventures of a Scrapper

Alright guys (and gals), I love talking about all of my ideas, and trust me there's quite a few in my head at any given moment, so I figured I'd make one of the ongoing threads. I really just need to type this stuff out and run it by other people. Oddly my wife doesn't particularly care to hear about my scrapping adventures. Fair enough, I hate talking about make up and decorations.

So the story today is I've started liquidating all of the metal from my previously open to the public scrap yard. The operating margin got low enough that it just wasn't worth it. we got 240 tons of steel sent out today so only about 380 tons left. The rest of the ferrous and non-ferrous will be sent out over the course of next week. After that, I'm going to start buying cars from insurance companies, banks, and locals to start a pull-a-part yard. I ordered signage for the front of the building and mailed a flyer for it to everyone that passed through the pay gate for advertising. Funnily enough, I already have the equipment for it. The wife says I hoard anything with wheels (and things that used to have wheels).

I also finalized a contract to build a nearby town municipal building. They already bought out the land and houses, which are mobile homes. 5 of which are fairly new, being mid-2000's, and 2 of which are old and ratty. So out of the older two, i'm going to build a flatbed goose neck, because how many is really too many? lol I haven't decided if I'm going to sell the 5 or become a landlord. They're in very good condition so, I could rent them out for around 1000 a month or sell them for around 30k. I just don't know about the hassles of being a landlord. I have a few trucks coming next week to remove them and tow them to my warehouse location so making a decision isn't too urgent.

Of course, I'll post pictures of the most interesting parts

Thanks for reading my ramblings guys, Rob

Update: I got the remaining 380 tons of steel shipped out as well as a couple hundred tons of various non-ferrous metals. I went on some auction websites like iaai and copart and I bought a truck..... only problem is it isn't for the yard. It's a 1999 F-550. It's a 7.3 with a flatbed and goose neck hitch with about 120,000 miles on it. I got it for dirt cheap. It really wasn't my fault. Mother nature WANTED it too happen..... I tried to tell that to my wife but she wasn't really buying into it.

And then a rollback showed up in the yard. No idea where that came from.

I'll post pictures tomorrow. -Rob

I'll never be a landlord again, but that said - if I could get $1000 / month on mobile homes, I'd reconsider. Rock on & good luck with all the other things you have going.

So wait a minute you are gonna stop buying scrap and start buying vehicles? Why not do both? Now you gotta jump thru more hoops and laws buying cars.

I've always bought cars so, there's not really anymore hoops to jump through. The more-than-scrap value is definitely there with cars though. The only local pick a part yard charges $250 for an engine and $150 for a transmission and they have quite a bit of business despite very poor customer service and relatively high prices. I can do much better than that.

i know you didnt buy no powerstroke from copart for say cheap lol

No, it was actually govdeals that I got this truck from Focker. The county just decided an f550 wasnt used enough and I was right there to pick it up. Definitely one of those deals that only comes around every now and then.

Focker just cracked me up. 7.3 is an amazing motor and 2 of my little trucks and my wifes excursion have one, but im scared to buy those things used lol. Also, I don't care what your wife says, you can never have too many gooseneck or semi trailers. never. I do parts pulling on the cars I buy and accept metal, and once that car has been there for a certain time and parts and whatnot haven't been pulled I then pull motor tranny etc then smash all depending on a few different things. hopefully there are other people in your area that take metal or you will have a couple sad folks in the area. I don't know anything about "doublewides" except how to move and level them, and Im not a landlord (yet) but I wish you the best in your slight entrepreneurial change.

This is how I look at it: no matter what you're doing, keep your head up. As soon as people see you with your head down, they will walk all over you.

I got pictures, as promised, just a little late. I've been real busy trying to get a few projects done on time. The crew worked a full Friday and a full Saturday. (We usually do half and half.)

F-550:
http://i.imgur.com/zvaivow.jpg?1

Rollback:
http://i.imgur.com/BTRyxrj.jpg?1

Please forgive the size discrepancies. I took one on my phone and one on a camera. I thought I'd be clever and edit the sizes to be the same but apparently that didn't work out.

Edit: Image sizes fixed

Those trucks look good steelmill, I love my 02 dually but its a 4 door with a bed. And I loved my 4300, that looks like a jer dann but I can't zoom in because I'm on my phone. I forget that the name was on the bed I had on my 4300, but that was the best roll back I've ever had. My jer dann on my old body '97 4300 is a decent bed but it won't pick the truck up and do what that other bed did.

Well, the wife got mad with the "junk" (treasures) in the yard and said they had to go across the road to the shop. So, Friday and Saturday afternoons were spent using the rollback to haul projects across the road from the garage to the shop. I think I'm going to have to cut some trees to clear up some parking and maybe pour a larger parking pad. But only my current project cars are left in the garage. I reckon I should probably free that up so the wife can park her cars, but, that's a project for another weekend. Maybe after I get done with the cars ;)

I'm taking Friday and Saturday off and we're going to the Blue Ridge mountains to cruise the Parkway next weekend. Really looking forward to that. The mountains are truly beautiful this time of year.

I was thinking that was your roll back, but either way, that's a good riding truck. Mine was spring ride rear and still a great 85 mph truck lol. And you can never! I mean never! Have a big enough garage. And about the blue ridge, are you planning to ride the whole stretch? And car or motorcycle? I've always wanted to do that have never been able to just because I claim I'm busy and just don't make time. I pass by the fancy gap in Virginia about 6 or 7 times a year in my semi and that's just not the right time. But my moms family has a huge cattle ranch (the bedsaul ranch) in Galax Virginia and I could stay there any time, but I make every excuse in the book to stay in town and work and since I had my first born (2 years ago) the excuses have gotten worse. Haha

Question for ya man, and congrats btw! anywho - how much they hit you for insurance on the flatbed, etc? I know up here in PA it drives my buddy nuts!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thecamokid

I was thinking that was your roll back, but either way, that's a good riding truck. Mine was spring ride rear and still a great 85 mph truck lol. And you can never! I mean never! Have a big enough garage. And about the blue ridge, are you planning to ride the whole stretch? And car or motorcycle? I've always wanted to do that have never been able to just because I claim I'm busy and just don't make time. I pass by the fancy gap in Virginia about 6 or 7 times a year in my semi and that's just not the right time. But my moms family has a huge cattle ranch (the bedsaul ranch) in Galax Virginia and I could stay there any time, but I make every excuse in the book to stay in town and work and since I had my first born (2 years ago) the excuses have gotten worse. Haha

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Yall need to look me up. I live in Sparta, and have what I think is the prettiest stretch of parkway there is, from Cumberland Knob to Laurel Springs (Freebornes and Stations Inn).

Dsroten, I've been to Sparta many times. My step daughter has family there. Also I bought Christmas trees for resale from Sides nursery 3 times. Beautiful country.

No mountains and not many trees here but some people think its scenic at the right time, especially when its -20 F with ice crystals dancing in the sun (that's for SirScrapLots and t002.....too hard of a handle to remember for sure) down in Sarasota. Its really only -20F a couple times a year ;)

Raedwyn, insurance will be a little less than $400 a month but it's worth it. I have equipment that costs a lot more than that.

So far as the parkway, I believe we're going up to Boone and driving to Asheville. Spending two nights there while touring the nearby areas.

Raedwyn, I'm down in Florida and my insurance was around 250 per truck and at the time I had 3 roll backs and one 30 ton wrecker. But I got rid of most of the tow trucks and got semis and my rates went up because "people in my area are having wrecks".... Ummm I hate how that effects me, but you can't argue with them.

Dsroten - that is a great stretch of road. I have friends from down here that live up in that area. And carolinajunkman, I hauled Christmas trees out of combers rock in VA which was really weird/hard/cool, because my grandpa was burried in eye sight distance from where I was trucking.

This really is a small world..

there should be at least 2 kinds of insurance available.

-you haul other people's stuff

-you only haul your stuff

can anyone guess which one is cheaper?

So, I had some guys pick up a ton of CRTs from a local school system that I have a contract with today. There were about 350 of them to be picked up and fortunately I get paid to take CRT monitors per unit.

Unfortunately, the truck is going somewhere tomorrow, so I had to off-load all of them, but I'm told you guys love pictures.....

http://i.imgur.com/VUr8Fhk.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/10apljb.jpg

Looks just like our (partner- I) first big load of dealing with tv's but we forgot to charge back then.
Ours was a fully loaded 26' (might have been a 24') box truck. I'll never do that again.

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/.../101_05572.jpg

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/...1/101_0572.jpg

Yup, this one is a good old 23*7*7.5 International 4700. It's an absolute beast. I went through the whole forgetting to charge process...... Never again.

So, I forgot to update you guys but, the trip to the mountains didn't happen. 20 odd inches of rain decided to get in our way. So i worked and then we went to a fancy restaurant so that I could pay 4 times what I ought to for food and wear nicer clothes than usual. Whatever, it made the wife happy and the seemingly endless rain has been getting her down, so it was easily worth it. We'll probably head up the weekend after this one. More of the leaves will be changing colors and I've been informed by the woman of the house that the trip will happen rain or shine.

I'm working on fixing up the old garage next to the house. We demoed the house that was here before because we wanted something more modern and that one needed a lot of foundation work that would've cost half the value of the house and kept the old garage. It just need rafters, tin, and floor joists for the upstairs. It needs a lot of cleaning too. It's right next to the house so the wife wants to put her cars in it. Says are yard looks like the circus is in the back with all of the cars in it...... I'll post pics as that goes along.....

My Garage plans got canceled for the most part. We went to the mountains and rode the Blue Ridge Parkway though, which is very beautiful this time of year. If you're within driving distance, I would definitely recommend it. My wife has a Mini Cooper that I had admittedly only ever ridden in once. I'm one of those guys that sticks to what they're comfortable with and that's my 2500 and my Mustang. I was really worried about space constraints because I'm a tall dude but those new Mini's are nice, the seat lowers and everything. It also had a surprising amount of kick to it considering it's a 3 cylinder,but, then again, it weighs nothing. The only thing I'm still unsure about is the quality of the parts. I've read that they don't last long, but, she's only got 1500 miles on it, so that's pretty far out.

I did patch the roof on the garage. I went everywhere looking for the aluminum roofing only to find out it hasn't been sold since the mid-80's. I was pretty down about having to roof the whole building, but, when I was at the farm, I noticed one of the old chicken houses has aluminum roofing on it of the same pattern, so you bet, i took a sheet off and used it to patch the garage.

I need to tear down the chicken houses. One collapsed last winter under all of the snow we got and the other one isn't much sturdier.

The farm is a whole 'nother subject. There haven't been cows there since 2009 and they were taken out because the fences were in poor condition and my Grandfather knew he would never see the money back from the fences. I got sick of seeing all of the property go to waste because not only are the pastures empty,a few hundred acres of hay fields have gone more or less unused, So for the past week, my friends and I have been ripping out fence and putting in new posts on one of the pastures. This pasture has about three miles of fence and all we have left to do is stretch fence and maybe install and electric wire. After we have this one down there's only 5 more pastures and 20 more miles of fence...... woo.

We've salvaged 4 tons of wire from old fences in this pasture. As is the case with so many pastures, it just kept getting fences laid out in it so at one point it was much smaller and then it was expanded, and again, and again. That means out in the middle of the pasture you can run across a line of 80 year old posts and get some wire wrapped around your four wheeler axle. It's happened to me twice already. so we had to pick up that wire, dig out, those posts, and fill the holes on those too. It's been quite a bit of work.

I'm going to have to drain, clean, and refill the ponds as well. I'm lucky we have a river that runs on the back edge of the property that I can pump from.

Once I've been using three or four of the pastures for a few years, I'll have to build a pole barn to store hay and equipment.

There's a set of 10 townhouses consisting of 20 units for sale in town that I'm going to buy, I just have to figure out how to tell my wife. I also saw some property for sale that is on a main road that looks ideal for the trailers that I removed from a job site a while back. I'd really like to expand on this part of my income because generating passive income is something my Grandfather always preached to me. I've read a lot of positives about having a property management service that handles, every aspect of renting except yaknow costs. I've read that they generally charge 15% of the rental price and with the limited amount of time that I have, I believe it's the safest bet. They even offer some kind of insurance to me in case their selected renter tears the place up.

There's a set of 4 66' by 600' chicken houses for sale down the road because the man running them passed and his son wants nothing to do with chickens but before I even consider that I need to get some of my projects done.

My Wife's PhD is on track to be completed in four years instead of the typical five and so long as her dissertation is accepted. NCSU has also offered her a job as a professor for the 2016-2017 school year and the school is only a 45-50 minute commute from the house

Sorry for the novel, this is what happens when I allow myself to think about things for a couple of weeks without writing anything down.

So, I talked to the wife about rental properties and she thought it was a great idea (to my absolute shock) and she went and talked to the real estate agent while I was working. That girl brought the real estate agent WAY down on the price, I need her to negotiate ALL of my deals.

So far as the property I saw that I would like to put mobile homes on, it's for sale under the same agent handling the town homes, so I'm hoping my wife will wear down the poor woman on that property too.

I talked to my wife about the chicken houses, but, I don't think I've got enough free time to look after chickens and it wouldn't be worth it to pay someone to do it.

We got the fence stretched over the last two evenings and the pasture will be ready to go as soon as I drain, clean, and maybe excavate the pond a little bit more.

This weekend, I'm having some guys who want to work Saturday help tear apart chicken houses and start tearing out old fence on another pasture since the subdivision they're building in doesn't allow construction on Saturdays (I HATE that.) I'm looking forward to a productive Saturday.

We have a few of the grain bins that sit beside chicken houses that are in decent shape and I was wondering if anyone knew anything about safely moving/selling them.

Thanks for reading guys! -Rob

grain bins? you meen silos?

not sure if you know about them, i didn't until my neighbor rented one, they make tow-behind man lifts.

it is like a bucket truck bed on a trailer, super nice for doing stuff like that.

they have outriggers that auto level the trailer, and if you are not on too much of a hill, you don't even have to un-hitch it.

If you get into real estate something to think about for better $ and less turn around could be lease to own .
same thing as renting ,but you make a sale for hundred plus thousand depending on area and the renters might not trash there/your house.
If you do rentals get a Real estate lawyer to help you do a renters agreement contract and brief you on your legal rights it will pay in the end .

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SteelMill

So, I talked to the wife about rental properties and she thought it was a great idea (to my absolute shock) and she went and talked to the real estate agent while I was working. That girl brought the real estate agent WAY down on the price, I need her to negotiate ALL of my deals.

So far as the property I saw that I would like to put mobile homes on, it's for sale under the same agent handling the town homes, so I'm hoping my wife will wear down the poor woman on that property too.

I talked to my wife about the chicken houses, but, I don't think I've got enough free time to look after chickens and it wouldn't be worth it to pay someone to do it.

We got the fence stretched over the last two evenings and the pasture will be ready to go as soon as I drain, clean, and maybe excavate the pond a little bit more.

This weekend, I'm having some guys who want to work Saturday help tear apart chicken houses and start tearing out old fence on another pasture since the subdivision they're building in doesn't allow construction on Saturdays (I HATE that.) I'm looking forward to a productive Saturday.

We have a few of the grain bins that sit beside chicken houses that are in decent shape and I was wondering if anyone knew anything about safely moving/selling them.

Thanks for reading guys! -Rob

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Those bins (assuming its a bin and not a silo) are worth money if the bottom isnt rusted out. Theres a lot of different styles of these things to. I've never messed with the huge ones that have augers and stuff. Poke around in that area with a screwdriver or something to make sure. People were bad to leave feed in them for years and years and it just eats them up. I've sold a couple of the things but if the bottom is rusted out I just mash em flat and to scrap they go. The best thing I found to take them down was a "Lull" as the locals call it, actually I believe the correct term is telehandler, though an excavator would work well also. I just tie a strap around the top, unbolt the bottom, and lower them down onto the trailer with the strap.

pictures of the bins would be helpful, there are many types.

also consider selling as is where is.

Kbl, Yeah, I was talking about silos, I was just drawing a blank. They're good silos, there small but, they are in very good condition.

NatureRecycle, My lawyer that is handling the acquisition of the property is also handling my renter's agreement and we have a meeting on the 3rd to discuss my rights as the property owner as well as their rights as a tenant. Lease to own isn't something I'm really considering, because, if I have children (if), I'd like to set him/her/them up with a source of passive income after I pass, so that I'd at least know that they would always have a little bit of money.

dsroten, I hadn't even considered a telehandler, I'll definitely borrow one from another contractor in the area. A crane would be a tad excessive not to mention that it's very expensive to move one. An excavator, I have onsite, but, I'm not exactly a pro when it comes to using one. I guess I could have one of my operators come out and do it and probably end up better than if I moved a telehandler around.

I'll definitely post pictures of them soon.

One thing I was told by a relative, was always keep your rent modestly high, and you'll weed out a lot of the "trash" from renting from you

must be a market for those silos within the better homes & garden/martha stewart types, here is a link for a craigslist wanted ad from my neck of the woods.

https://morgantown.craigslist.org/wan/5255327326.html

and as far as the real estate goes, selling as a land contract deed of trust is the way my father in law does it.

its like the buy here-pay here car lots, they want you to default so they can sell the car over and over.

deed of trust puts the responsibility of property taxes, etc on them.