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Total noob, couple questions

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  1. #1
    TheFatMan is offline Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
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    Hope I can help you out here. Welcome to the world of scrapping. It's addicting, complicated, and filled with all castes of people. Nonetheless, I enjoy it.

    First off, when scrapping bicycles drop a magnet on those bad boys. I've found that about every 1 in 5 bicycles will have an Aluminum frame which is always nice. I mean you'll have to strip the bike down to the frame but it'll take less than an hour and it's an easy 30 plus dollars. Also, when you have bicycles to scrap and they are intact, check them out on Ebay or just Google them. I was given a vintage Raleigh Grand Prix last week that sells in it's current state for 150 dollars.

    Second, when cleaning insulated wire, don't forget to use your magnet on that as well. It will help you differentiate between copper, aluminum, and copper coated wires. Those three wires are the ones I stumble upon the most frequently. A good scrapper always removes the connectors and ties on the wire. A lot of yards won't accept it unless it's cleaned and most often if they do, some poor guy who works at the yard for minimum wage is stuck removing the stuff before it ships out to the smelters. As far as power cords as concerned, they're not all the same. You'll come to learn in time what your yard classifies them as. Some take it in a different categories. I always try to sell mine as Insulated copper. You can strip it as well, but the pay out isn't that much of an increase for the time spent breaking your fingers and patience.



    Now as far as yards are concerned... Different yards pay different amounts. Most usually have a specific chart they can give you which shows what they're paying out for the week or for the month. Those that don't have this usually aren't worth messing with because they're shifty and shady. Most large scale yards will usually have a vehicle drive on scale that you'll drive onto and have an initial weigh in when you first arrive and then someone who works for the yard will come out and send you to where you can unload your metals and then you'll weigh in again to find your overall weight. Those yards aren't the greatest either. Usually their scales aren't calibrated to their fullest and are made for weighing by the ton for scrapping automobiles and large industrial equipment. These places annoy me. Here's what you can do for yourself, hit the yellow pages or an online directory or search here and find all the scrap yards you can that are located within a 50 mile radius of you... Now find the yards with price lists, web sites, and public info.
    Pick your best one based on profitability. Make sure to factor in fuel costs. This will help you achieve the best profit from the best yards.

    Now as far as sorting your metals, most yards will attempt to do this when you arrive but they'll most always mess it up, and some will do it out of laziness or just because they want to profit off you as much as possible. Most yards usually have a little off shoot building where you take it and weigh your different metals separately. When it comes to sorting metal, you are your own worst enemy. Buy some bathroom scales. Get some 5 gallon buckets and sort your own metals into the buckets and weigh them out... I.E. one bucket for wire, one bucket for copper, one bucket for brass.... Leave the light iron and short steel and the like in separate piles until you have a truck bed full of each type (these are also crazy hard to weigh, but you learn what it should weigh with experience, I can eyeball a half ton easy).... Do this and each time you hit the yard, it'll be a paycheck.

    As far as household items are concerned, soda cans are awesome. I took in (8) 50 gallon trash bags full the other day from a local college function. I got almost 100 bucks for 4 hours of walking around picking up cans. I made bank. You can save your cans and even your soup and tuna cans and make good money over the course of a month. General rule of thumb I use is 25-30 cans is about a pound depending on the beverage. Energy drink cans and those generic soda cans differ significantly.

    Any other questions feel free to ask. Hope I helped ya some.

  2. #2
    njhardcore1 started this thread.
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    Hi FM Thanks for the reply! Yeah when i scraped the bikes i knew a lot of the frames are aluminum on them unfortunately i was ignorant at the time about sorting them and actually getting paid for it.. When i took them to the yard no one ever said anything or asked someone walked up gave me a ticket with "210" on it (There light iron code, Universal?) and walked off... Ahh well ya live ya learn..

    Yeah the wire so far i have been cutting everything off and getting it as clean as possible definatly not looking to make more work for anyone, just concerned that im shorting myself alot of weight if the yards expect to get it with that stuff on there, i figure those little connectors are as much weight as the wire itself alot of times..

    Thanks for the tip on the magnet i had no idea how i was supposed to sort the diffrent wire types without stripping them until you said that!

    Still not sure with power cords tho, are you cutting the plug off? thanks

    Anyway yeah hoping to make a go of this as i left my job landscaping this year to start my own landscape business but starting out with that has defiantly been slower than i would like so figure this is a good way to pick up some extra cash in my down time since i have the pickup and a trailer all ready. Thanks for taking the time to reply and the support much appreciated!

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