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The last trip I made to the yard, the guy at the small scale told me that there was now a minimum weight for turning in materials. Copper, brass, aluminum and other non-ferrous materials are a minimum of 10 lbs. Brake rotors, e-waste and other "better than shred" materials are a 100 lbs minimum. Guess I need to organize an area for bins...
WOW.. Customers aren't worth their time unless they bring in "X" amount of lbs huh? Geez!
wow thats unheard of.
sure I get a little upset with that guy who parks his car in the middle of the way. carries his one or two buckets of all mixed commodities to the scale. then argues with the scale master over what he has. while I have a full truck close to a ton all separated ready to go.
or the little old guy who came in last week while I was dropping and put his plastic bottles on the scale and only spoke italian. he was at the wrong yard… the yard he wanted is about a mile up the road. so he just left the two bags of plastics and told them to throw them away. as he walked out mad and with no money….
now most of the scales in florida they stopped the homeless from walking in and doing little transactions. you have to be registered and have a car or truck no riding up on a bike any more.
I understand it. I was surprised they didnt do it earlier. This is a very large, family run yard. They are trying to train relatives in the key positions and the guy currently learning the scale doesnt like it and isnt good at it. I dont like the minimums but if it stops them from pissing away money and lowering prices more...well...it is what it is
Our yard considers any load less than $10 to be a "donation". I've never understood that- I've always thought that small payouts should be the same as large ones- just smaller....
Double "birdie" to that, Matador!!! Just for that, I wouldn't give those guys any non-ferrous if I could help it. Save it up, stuff my trunk with buckets/boxes and take it on the next larger place road trip I was going on. If you're in an isolated area, a business may think they got everybody by the nads but if you piss off enough locals to make them change their ways (like saving up nf metals and taking them further away), you'll be left holding an empty bag. Seen it more than once around here...
Agreed. Local shops really get that attitude out here. They fail to remember that people go to Billings every weekend!
Oh well, live and learn....
I can kinda understand their thinking on this. The scales are not very precise. They round to the nearest pound where sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. It is better for the yard to lose a half pound off a 50# load then losing a half pound on a 3# pile.
It's nuts what a yard requires of it's patrons. Some situations I can understand but must feel out the window. I hear FL doesn't have proper healthcare either.
I look at it in terms of weather I'd be willing to pay for 1 ac or 5 ac's. Volume gets the money. Simple. When you look at the cost of attracting customers it's easy to understand their reasoning. They're not just running ads on craigslist. For every scrapper walking in the door it cost them x amount of money to get them there. There's the lease or Morgan or whatever to have the yard, the cost of maintaining the scale, and all the other overhead involved in being able to hand over a pile of cash, so they have the upper hand.
The yard I go to here in STL doesn't have a minimum on non-ferrous, but does on ferrous. They require at least 300# if you want paid on that. Last time I went shred was $20 per ton so that would put a whopping $3 in my pocket at the minimum.
we have one yard here that actually told me the following:
Scenario: TMR closed there yard only mile from this small yard.
I was told that due to the TMR yard going out of business that they were taking advantage of the competitors loss and dropping prices across the board. that taking in steel is just a waste of there time and might even stop taking it. they paid out $0.01 and shorted me on the payout one dollar.
I will never go back to that small shop again. sure they are only four miles from the shop. but will go 17 miles to go to someone who wants my business.
There is a small yard in town that buys metal, I used to sell him my tin until he quit taking it period. Huge mistake on his part, but several of us warned him it would be a bad thing. Towards the end he was taking tin from everyone for free but only paying me for it(not sure I was the only one or not). But id bring him 4k a week MINIMUM. with all my non ferrous going to Reno, 30miles away. I would buy stuff from him all the time. Bought 80 microwaves from him. Paid $68 bucks. Most of them were identical so I fixed about 10 of them so far. Sold them immediately for $20 bucks each.
Point is, even if we had minimums here, I don't have to worry about it because I only make the 60 mile round trip only when I have to and when I do I roll in heavy :)
I still wonder why Scrapyard's buy in Lbs, or different versions of 'Tons'.... Even American scrapyards.
We deal in Kgs, a Ton is 1000Kgs. Simple.
1 litre water =1Kg. 1000 litres = 1 Ton. Simple.
Water freezes at 0degC and boils at 100degC. Simple.
You bring in 10Kgs of Copper, they make a average extra of 500gms..... Simple..... "Arrrrrhh, I just lost a Lb of Copper!!!!".
I can understand why they are imposing minimum weights, times are hard. 'Shrugs'.
I think it boils down to labour cost more than anything. The guys at the small scale run balers and do other duties when no one is turning something in, so to stop what they're doing to buy $3 of copper, $4 of aluminum and $6 of ewaste is counterproductive when it takes 2 min more to buy $100 or more of the same. Then there's the girls at the payout counter who give you a look if your total is under $20.
I honestly don't see them turning people away anyway, they'll probably just give a "warning" unless someone is showing up frequently with small amounts.
I love this example, why because it shows both capitalism and free market actions. The yard choose to lower prices because of the local market and then shoot themselves in the foot by letting everyone know why they lowered their prices.Quote:
Originally Posted by gabrielservices
The big news is you were free to vote with your feet and you took your material down the road to a place that values your business.
In our business like all others we all provide a service and we need to remember the lesson in this post: Bad Service Will Be Remembered For A Long Time.
Mike
If you are a scrap yard you need metal... with these low prices, I would not turn away any customer. The guy with the less than $10 load may have a lot more stuff to turn in. They could be just checking out a new yard you never know!
I just looked thru some receipts for this year...
Avg. trip to the yard made me $25.00 a trip down from $50 last year!
Low trip was $2.31 I needed an empty truck...
High trip was $344.46!
Cashier looked at me the same weather its $2 or $344 it keeps her employed!
I can think of many reasons this is a very good idea:
1. in a place requiring a hold period, tracking tiny amounts is harder then bulk
2. if you are required to pay in checks, well high end business checks cost $4.00 each or more
3. Wholesale business model ???
4. better customer service (lines move faster)
Do you think at places that pay by check, or by mail (postage) would already incorporate these factors in with there pricing? I would think all costs, labor, fuel, power and even office supplies would be factored in... I do agree that it would make no sense in writing a check that costs you $4 for $4 or less of stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by HT1
even if the factors are already "incorporated in" it is really hard to simply "give money away"Quote:
Originally Posted by hobo finds
right now yards are loosing money!!! no way around it, and they are looking for anyway to tread water til the prices climb back up.
on a related note the truck scale minimum is often a Department of Agriculture (DOA) issue with the certification of the scale. meaning the certification for commerce can only go down to say .1% of the scales maximum, on truck scales that is often 200-300 Lbs
V/r HT1
never heard of scrapyards doing it this way. what mine does if it is under $10 they either give you cash or write you down in the system until you get over $10 or they have more cash. this is only because the check costs them I believe it was .55 to print. and btw this is a new thing idk if they are actually going with the second option
Well, my 2 cents. Today, I'm the only worker in the whole place. I'm cutting extrusion hour after hour. someone walks in with 1 lb of AL cans for which they get paid .35 cents. it cost more than .35 cents for me to shut the shear down, walk to the scale and write them up for 1 lb of cans, walk back to the shear and start it back up again. I understand they want to recycle them but sometimes it does get irritating.
I was happy when you got the job, I was happy when you got promoted, and I am very happy you are still employed. Merry Christmas, MikeQuote:
Originally Posted by newattitude
If you look at 10 lb. Minimum that may still not be enough to justify a situation like Newattitude posted about...
Avg prices by me for this year for 10 pounds of stuff.
Alum Cans 10 lbs. $8.50
Extruded Alum 10 lbs. $6.20
Cast Alum 10 lbs. $5.00
Painted Alum 10 lbs. $4.40
MLC Alum 10 lbs. $4.40
Alum Transmissions $2.70
Dirty Alum 10 lbs. $2.60
Yellow Brass 10 lbs. $15.70
Dirty Brass 10 lbs. $7.10
Lead 10 lbs. $5.50
Stainless Steel 10 lbs. $4.70
Die Cast Zinc 10 lbs. $3.00
Auto Batts 10 lbs. $3.00
Dirty Stainless 10 lbs. $1.70
#2 Copper 10 lbs. $22.10
#1 ins wire 10 lbs. $15.30
Cu/Alum Raid 10 lbs. $11.60
#2 ins wire 10 lbs. $7.40
Compressor 10 lbs. $1.80
Copper Content 10 lbs. $1.50
Electric Motors 10 lbs. $1.40
Brown Circuit Bds 10 lbs. $2.20
Green Circuit Bds 10 lbs. $2.40
100 lbs Sheet iron $2.76
100 lbs Clean Sheet iron $3.44
100 lbs torch p&s $3.50
100 lbs prepared $4.59
I've also heard from customers that some of the yards are not even buying scrap from the public any more. I knew of one before we closed the other yard down but now this is the second I've heard of. They deal strictly with businesses only now.
I was thinking of this just before and wondered when In could add it to a post.Quote:
Originally Posted by newattitude
A few years ago one of the guys at the scrapyard hinted to me that I "should get ascrapmetal dealers license, or even a 'secondhand dealers license".
He said that I "would get a better price for my metal".
I checked the cost of doing this and decided it was not worth the hassle. The better prices would cover the license and that's about it.
In hindsight I find out that as I would be licensed, its not a typical 'over the counter (scale) deal'. They are buying from a licensed and vetted customer.
The law says that the buyer has to hold onto the metal (nonferrous) for a whole month before selling it on so that the Police can check the metal if they want, for stolen metal. Evidence.
I now relise that if I'm licensed, they can sell it straight on to their buyer, that means that they don't have that money sitting there as a solid metal, doing nothing, and co$ting them interest, for a whole month.
If they want they can hold onto it for better prices, or they can sell it within seconds for a immediate profit, plus their ca$h back.
It would also mean that I can buy metal off others in smaller amounts at my set prices and sell it on to the scrapyard, in bulk, for a profit.
Depending, it could be worth doing. If you make sales of over a thousand dollars, then it probably would be worth it.