A good reason to deal with multi yards

This seams to be a topic that many Scrappers are in agreement with and I wanted to share this with you. Let me qualify my self that I am a former yard owner. So there are a few different types of yards that you can deal with its up to you to find the ones that work best for your business. The first ones I want to talk about are the large multi location yards, Some of you might think that because they are the largest they are the best to deal with well I do not. The second type of yard I would like to talk about are the small what are known as feeder yards, they basically sell every thing to a larger yard in a larger city and pay a lot less across the board for all materials but they are closer to you and easier to deal with. The third are yards that are medium to large in size are mostly owner operated, and are more aggressive to building a business and getting material. So to go back the multi large locations are corporate owned and the people that work there are basically following instructions and are told what to pay and really do not care if you sell them your goods or not. They have a place in the market share I might sell them my tin or shred, not much else. The smaller feeder type yards are the ones that you want to avoid if at all possible. The third and best type of yard in my opinion to deal with are the yards that like my old yard, are owner operated the owner is on site all the time. We always ( pre booked orders ) for materials. This's means that we would be committed to supplying a large amount of say electric motors, We would supply say three loads 120,000 lbs of motors for a set price regardless of the market changes. It was good for us knowing what we would be payed for that amount of weight and good for the end user knowing what he could count on for the amount of weight. Why I am mention that is that we were always trying to full those orders and say we needed 5,000 lbs of motors to fill a load or complete the order we could pay much much more than the current market prices and were aggressive in filling those orders, so using that as a example that's were you would like to sell your merchandise, we always pre booked aluminum rims, electric motors, UBC's,(used beverage cans) sealed units, and copper if we could, so my advise to you is to find that type of yard that has a person of authority who you can talk to directly, are aggressive and do appreciate your business, and use common sense in there business practice's. Happy Scraping 1956

Well said 56. My main yard would fall into the owner op yard. An I love going to them. They get everything of mine that is not ewaste. Now an then I will use the somewhat crappy but improving yard near me, but usually only for shred or small loads its not worth driving to my main one for. The second yard is also owner op. A third yard near me, I think falls in the feeder yard category, an I never use them. They talk out their butts a lot an aren't very trust worthy far as a business goes.

Excellent post.

Sirscrapalot - Won't you be my...Neighbor. - Mr. Rodgers.

Lot's of words of wisdom here and greatly appreciated. As a farm scrapper my choices were limited to a feeder yard or a corporate yard. Each had a quota they were trying to meet and deals were only available at the end of the month when they were short on tonnage. The present challenge introduced a wide variety of scrap yards and various pricing systems. I was able to bring in international companies from both coasts, the Gulf and the Great Lakes. They could not compete with a local yard with the owner on site. He did not have quota's to meet and could stock pile the material until contacted by a major buyer, refinery, or mill that had to have the material yesterday to meet the quota. This meant they were willing to set a price based on the Iron Age Index for everything we had. They provided the transportation, loading, and did not care how it was prepared. They knew we would sell the nonferrous to another company, but were able to make a profit in this situation. We are getting well above prepared price for anything they loaded.

Recommendation for those that can: inform your yard you have x number of lbs. of what ever and tell them to call you when they need it. Keep updating the amount as you increase your stock pile and you might be surprised by the results.

Thank you, very informative. Are feeder yards also owner operated? If so, are there good rules of thumb to tell if a yard is a feeder or the "good kind"?

I am sure some are owner operated but remember this if you are the only scraper you see there there is good reason.

Originally Posted by Patriot76

Lot's of words of wisdom here and greatly appreciated. As a farm scrapper my choices were limited to a feeder yard or a corporate yard. Each had a quota they were trying to meet and deals were only available at the end of the month when they were short on tonnage. The present challenge introduced a wide variety of scrap yards and various pricing systems. I was able to bring in international companies from both coasts, the Gulf and the Great Lakes. They could not compete with a local yard with the owner on site. He did not have quota's to meet and could stock pile the material until contacted by a major buyer, refinery, or mill that had to have the material yesterday to meet the quota. This meant they were willing to set a price based on the Iron Age Index for everything we had. They provided the transportation, loading, and did not care how it was prepared. They knew we would sell the nonferrous to another company, but were able to make a profit in this situation. We are getting well above prepared price for anything they loaded.

Recommendation for those that can: inform your yard you have x number of lbs. of what ever and tell them to call you when they need it. Keep updating the amount as you increase your stock pile and you might be surprised by the results.

Patriot,

Excellent advice! Now if I only had enough storage area!

I have to agree with you about owner operated yards. Here in Southern Cal. I have more than ten yards within a twenty mile radius of my operations. I use one large corporate yard for my steel, I know nobody there by name and they know me by (NEXT). The other two yards I work with are owner operated. A night and day difference from the large corporate yard, here I met the owners in my first couple of visits. Customer service has a priority at the owner operated yards!

Does anyone know a good owner op yard in the DC area?

Let me add one other type of yard: one owned and operated by a city.

I go to GreenGuys Recycling in San Marcos, Texas that is operated by the city. They do have a great system where everything brought in is set upon by workers who break down and collect all that is not shred, so that may be where they make more money. Also there is a charge on resident's garbage bill that helps support the system.

I don't know if that is what makes the difference, but this week they were paying $7.50/hundred while my local owner operator was paying $5.00/hundred.

Owner operated yards are generally feeder yards, but not always. In essence, every scrap yard is a feeder yard to the mills, refineries, and foundries. The end yards have the highest quotas, prices, and resources. The resources include networks they have created over the years. Each has their own niche and specialty area of steel they are looking for. Some of the end yards redirect certain products to smaller yards because of their transportation system, networks, or specialty. Certain scrap yards will sit on specific items waiting for the market to turn. Thus it creates a futures market in the recycling industry. Thus sitting on your stockpile is essentially betting on the futures market.

To identify the end yards you need to figure out their logistics. Are they dependent on trucking, gondola cars, barges, or hauling directly to the coast for a ship to refine out in international waters. If their logistic patterns look like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, they are an end yard, sending specific metal to certain buyers thus maximizing profit. If you see gondola cars being unloaded into a scrap yard, you can bet they are in the international market or control the national market.

Most members on this forum are dealing with feeder yards and dependent on the circumstances. Owner operated have a ventured interest in the day to day dealings with their customers, making it a more business friendly environment. At the same time when we watch the price fluctuations in the metals markets, we can benefit.

Information is being sought on the virgin steel market. Evidently certain manufacturers are looking for metal that has not been recycled yet because of it's purity. This seems to be an underground market without public pricing, yet is based on current steel production and the cost ratio of new verses first time recycled. Based on research, old farm equipment, manufacturing equipment, power plants, etc. have a higher value than most scrap values.

1956's insight on this post would be greatly appreciated.

Originally Posted by sledge

1956: One Question. How about larger yards that have Feeder yards? As an example one of my favorite yards is one that is one of the big boys.. but the yard itself feeds the main yard- any price differences there? Between if I were to take it to the MAIN yard (with the shredder vs the feeder yard)

So XYZ company is the main yard it is in Northern Indiana. They have an XYZ named "feeder yard" that buys material and it ships to the XYZ main yard shredder up north.

I also have another yard- lets call it "ABC" that is not an XYZ yard but upsells all its material to XYZ- they usually pay about $10 to $20 less per ton than the XYZ feeder yard would.



So technically both are "feeder yards" one is a company named feeder yard and the second is more like a customer of XYZ.

Just wondering if it were logical to take your material to the yard with the actual shredder- if you would get paid better as it is "further up the supply chain" to the mill?

Well sledge, i would have to say that the feeder yard has a added expanse in the material they are handling twice,
so i would think that the main yard where the shredder is would be able to pay you more like $10.00 a ton more most steel after being processed
travels by rail to the mill.

We used to have two yards. One focused on resale of stuff, and is closing next month.

The other sends everything to a yard in another state, about 2 hours away.

You get more if you drive the 2 hours. The first yard in this case basically acts as a trucking company. Now, for 1000 pounds of steel, it's not worth it to drive. They use Kenworths, not Chevrolet 1500s.