Where does all this scrap go to?

Look at Germany and Japan and how much they pay for labor and tell me how they can have all kinds of manufacturing and we can't. The steel making areas in the US (my city included) used to be poluted as hell, these days Chinese cities are like that and worse. The EPA made it so the air is mostly breathable and local rivers don't catch on fire anymore.

The US steel industry didn't put much money into keeping their plants modern after WW2 and suffered from it causing the great restructuring. These days the plants seem to specialize and make some money but are nowhere near the size they used to be when supplying the whole world with steel.

I also noticed quite a few chemical/steel plants are foreign owned and they do invest money into their facilities. Investers based in the US would rather pump and dump companies instead of the hard job of keeping them profitable long term.

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Originally Posted by olddude

yepers, definitely says something about the state of things in America today.

heres another fact that will make your eyes cross. in $ guess the #1 export was last year,

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I was guessing oil. It's actually machinery. Oil is third.

This won't likely say where it's going, but might speak some about why it isn't staying here. Tonight's PBS Need To Know
Full Episodes | Need to Know | PBS

From my experience the highest quality material stays in the USA, extrusions, clips, alloys, wheels, bare bright, #1 copper, red brass and even some sheet. This is because these are low labor intensive materials and can easily be processed. The standards for US mills are very strict, so the so-so sheet produced and iffy #1 copper will be sent overseas. Electric motors, wire (except premium no attachment #1 wire-which is suprisingly a difficult package to produce when you're talking 40-42k lbs). Yellow brass-mainly because zinc and steel contaminates on 40 percent of brass bought and sold through yards. China is the largest consumer, but India and surprisingly Pakistan have been emerging as larger consumers I've noticed in the past year.

I work for a very small steel fabrication company (less than 20 people total) we get steel from at least 4 different suppliers (about 3 trucks a week) 2 for flat steel one for bar/round/tube material and one for special stuff (perferated, expanded) we make parts for an exhaust company, 2 lawn mower manufacturers, stock car builder (dirt track) and a store fixture builder (and others) and there are a lot of bigger operations within 100 miles.

Plenty of steel gets used in the USA more would get used if people would "look at the tag" and get MADE IN THE USA. Personally, I don't like to buy the same thing 12 times when I can spend an extra couple bucks the first time and buy it once.

Being more of a non-ferrous guy, I can only speak to that. The bulk of aluminum I purchase is processed here in Tn and made into ingots that are sold domestically to numerous die casters. A lot of the low grade items (electric motors, sealed units, starters, alternators,etc) are all sold export.