Dirty Tricks of the trade. - Page 2

i hate it when folks tell me that kinda stuff,,,,,my favorite is when they insist you should water down the seats in a car....it seems like 50 different people have told me how there uncle used to do it that way and really put it to those yards.....

i like my way better,,,i hauled in a load today...it was 5500 pounds.......i walked in to get paid, and dan says what did you have today wade....i said well dan it was about half shred and half short iron....he said ok half and half it is then.....



when i got to my truck i noticed i was paid for short iron across the board,,,,i have earned a great deal of trust over the years...and i can tell any new commers that you will prosper more in the long run by being honest than you will by trying to cheat them for every little bit you can

oh i will admit to pissing behind my truck door at the yard,but thats out of general laziness and not wanting to leave my tools un atended while walking 1.5 miles to the out house

I am sure that most of the fluff get processed and may even make the yard some money. Foam from car seats, plastic and such. But almost certain rocks, dirt, water and bricks do not!

Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

Most truck scales use 20 lb increments, a little yellow water should not tip the scales one way or the other.

yes
the scale at my yard has 20kg increments- which is approx 45lbs
so, if i bring in 259kgs, they will record it as 240kgs

thats how my yard works

they have another 2 smaller scales which have 1kg increments
- i would like to use those but when i have a big load, its too much work for both them & me.
i asked- they said i HAVE TO use the other scale.

my point is-im getting cheated for at least 10 kgs on every visit that i use the weighbridge scale

i dont like cheating at all
and i dont like it that im getting cheated regularly either.
i try to bring in clean stuff but the yard does not play fair.


the past few months, i sweep my yard, collect all the dust n dirt & add it to my my steel or shred/sub grade loads.
its just a few kgs but it should make some difference.

Oh well. People are people. I have come to expect the worse in people, that way I am happily surprised when I meet people who do not disappoint me. Those are the people I try to keep and deal with as friends. I like relationships where some nites I buy the beer, and sometimes they buy the beer, and over time we know we will come out even. Hell, most of my friends I would buy the beer just to sit with them and be friends. I have paid good money to spend time with complete a$$holes (think DMV).

Everything I bring to the yard is sitting right out in the open for all to see. If they tear it apart, they will be happily surprised to find that there are no gallon jugs of water or fridges full of frozen road kill.

It is like guys that cheat on their wives, if they will FK the person they swore to hold most dearly to God and their friends, they will think nothing of FKing me over.

MSM,

How do you know if you bring in 259 kg your yard will treat it as 240kg?

If the scales only read to 20 kg, AND they are gov't certified, the readout should be switching between 240 and 260 kg when you get to 250kg on the scale. In other words, the yard gets screwed on some loads and the customer gets screwed on some. At least in theory.

Jon.

Originally Posted by sawmilleng

MSM,

How do you know if you bring in 259 kg your yard will treat it as 240kg?

If the scales only read to 20 kg, AND they are gov't certified, the readout should be switching between 240 and 260 kg when you get to 250kg on the scale. In other words, the yard gets screwed on some loads and the customer gets screwed on some. At least in theory.

Jon.

Fair enough. But, keep in mind, the most you will be "screwed" is $2. I look at it this way; I could drive across town to save 15 cents on a gallon of gas, or I can pump right now and pay an extra $2 to be done with it now at my convenience. Sometimes $2 is not worth sweating, or even wasting twenty heart beats of extra stress. I pour more than that down the drain in backwash every week.

Originally Posted by t00nces2

It is like guys that cheat on their wives, if they will FK the person they swore to hold most dearly to God and their friends, they will think nothing of FKing me over.

I had never clicked to that. I'd say its 100% true though, in hindsight.
Definatly something to keep in mind.

Our NZ yards measure in Kgs, with each sale I guess I loose a Lb, just a bit under the halfway mark.
I know this and try to get my guesstamit at about 200 gms over.
Thats something for the imperialists to take into account if they think they got ripped off, or lost a Lb or two.
It happens with every sale here....
The only way to beat it is to save up, get a price quote before going to the scrapper and sell as much as possible with every sale.
Even if you are only selling one metal of your metal stock at a time, good reason to get the best price too.

Well you guys on this forum are the exception and not the rule, we on this SMF by majority are honest hard working people that just want to treated with respect and professionalism, and you will be after you basically earn it. You have to understand that most will try to do take advantage of a yard every chance they get, I can tell you that after nine years of owing my yard I have seen many things that just make you shake your head and change the way you look at people, that's one of the reasons I had enough and sold out, It got to be like a battle us against them, the most common was three guys come in on a truck, they dump and on the way out to the scale the two helpers had to relive themselves, or on the way out keeping the back wheel off the scale because you were not on the scale straight, those are common and occur many times through out the day, I am not going into what the spotter watching the people unloading see's, many tricks that a few have mentioned in there posts before me, and some that I won't mention because of the open forum we are on. It's common for the spotter to call the scale house and say the u-haul truck deduct 400 lbs for glass, or the best was that red Chevy impala being junked has four fifty gallon garbage bags in the trunk loaded with water, that guy would try to get paid and let's just say he didn't and was banned, these things go on every day, it's very common for a yard to send a load of baled tin and the shredder or mill that was buying the load puts in a dedication of 10% for concrete or wood garbage, so that's why the yard cannot pay you the highest price! to finish my rant I will just say that the guy screwing the yard is also screwing you. That's just the plain truth.

It's a similar thing here 1956. I've been buying e-waste in this area to try and help get it up and running.Maybe make a little bit for myself in the process.

Otherwise ... the nearest yard that buys is a fifty mile drive and they're only paying .45 / lb for mainboards.

Some of the people you deal with are honest. Some are into dirty tricks so you end up playing the catch me if you can game where they're always pushing the limits to see what they can get away with.

It's a close community and you know everybody. When you drive by peoples homes the honest folks seem to be getting by. The other ones are living squalor and theirs is a slipping down life. They have little or nothing and what they do have is falling apart.

I wouldn't really call it Karma cause that's some kind of cosmic retribution that might happen in the afterlife.

It's more like you pay for it in this lifetime. Make good choices and you might come ahead. Make bad choices and what goes around comes around. You end up screwing yourself.

I could fill a whole thread with these kinds of stories, usually these people end up getting banned from the yard. IMO there's nothing wrong with letting the yard know about these people and who they are, they give all us honest scrappers a bad name and as others have noted they're stealing from the yard AND us. Whenever I see someone dumping garbage or stealing from the yard(One guy was even dumb enough to brag about it to me and show me the copper he stole from a barrel in the yard before heading off to the non-ferrous scale) I either discreetly let an employee know or I tell them in the office. The guys in charge know this and they thank me often and give me good prices. It pays more in the long run to be honest.

I've never screwed over a buyer by adding into a item - and never tell anyone where u get it from some scrapers are dirty and anyone will undercut you to make a $

At our yard, people who try to pull these tricks rarely get banned. We just silently deduct weight from their loads and with a smile and wave they are off with a ticket deducted for garbage and another percentage for wasting our time. We end up with their metal, they think they are pulling one over on us but we still still profit on top. To the guys who come in regularly with clean loads, they are paid accordingly and a premium if the material is right. It doesn't pay to screw over the main yard and its part of the reason ferrous prices are dropping. Being honest, professional and personal will go a long way during your trips to your yard of choice.

I have "ratted". Mainly cause I hate a thief. Secondly I use to work at the yard, the owner is a stand up guy. But even if it was a different yard I would have done the same. And I did at the window while he was on the scale. Lol what a day of drama that was. Situations like that I ask myself what would John Wayne.: do mad:

I know this is a slightly older thread, but .... reminded me of when I was a teenager (and for reference, I'm older than 40, younger than 50 .... but pushing the 50 side more than 40) and a classmate and I were talking about aluminum cans. I made a buck or two even back then by recycling cans. This guy was talking about him and his dad putting some dirt "in every 5th can".... That has stuck with me for 30+ years now. I do bad things from time to time. Not preaching to anyone or anybody. I'm just saying I'll never pack dirt into aluminum cans to pick up a few extra cents. I struggle with getting comfortable I've broken enough plastic off of stuff before I take it in.

I worked at a scrap yard in Raleigh NC. We would see all kinds of crap like this come through. Water heaters slam full of water, TV's in refrigerators, concrete in engines, aluminum cans filled with sand and then crushed. Most of the time if you were caught it was a immediate ban, if they play dumb then we'd deduct weight and put a big red flag by their name. It hurts the yard and in the long run, not only hurts you, but everyone else.
Too much dirt in a load of shred, especially if your yard sends off to somewhere else, causes big problems, weight deductions, fees/fines, load rejections or even termination.
We had a load (Truck load 40,000 pounds) of baled cans rejected due to moisture/contaminants because some jerk decided to put rocks and sand in his cans. We had to spend several hours unloading the truck, torching bad spots on bales and picking out those cans. Turned out to be roughly 90 pounds of crap cans. Bummer was that the guy that ran the cans was in on it with the guy who brought them in. So not only did we lose money by having to clean up someone else's mess, a scrapper got fined and banned until he paid up plus the can machine operator lost his job.