What does it take to "make it" Scrapping

Talk to neighbors, friends and family, ask them to put anything metal or electronic that they are going to throw out in a pile or to call you when they have some. Then when they are talking to someone moving or cleaning out, they might pass on the word that you will take the stuff they don't want for them

My movement has only been from beginner to novice. Many times a person is so caught up on the destination, they forget to enjoy the journey. When you stop to smell the roses, you might just find that pot of gold under the rainbow.

It depends on how hard you want to work. you have a great opp right now to be the kingpin of your city or as i call myself the trash king or tin man as the scrap yard calls me lol. Your city is small enough that a 1man operation can be done full time for work. Now I am not talking about crap loads of cash but good money to be made. All you have to do is advertise as cheap as possible, print out flyers, sent letters to businesses and so forth. You could also spend about $400 to do a full postal mailing to everyone in your town. This will help push out comp and establish your dominance in town as more of a household name. You get the idea and good luck

Do you have any other towns, or communities near you? My sandbar has a year round population of 20k. So, twice as much as yours. What I like to do, is branch out a little. Do the networking, ads, etc the others suggested in your area, an if you do have other towns near by..Say an hour or so, drive over an do the same thing there. I have my sandbar folks, then I have clients/customers across the bridge on the mainland. Hell I even have 3 clients up in Chesapeake,Va that I go get stuff when they call.( Sorry my Va Beach, Hampton,norfolk etc members! I get around!)

Don't be in a huge rush to move up to the next level. Enjoy the ride, eventually you'll get to your destination.

Sirscrapalot - We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. - Marcel Proust

Originally Posted by Patriot76

My movement has only been from beginner to novice. Many times a person is so caught up on the destination, they forget to enjoy the journey. When you stop to smell the roses, you might just find that pot of gold under the rainbow.

While I agree with what you are saying, I am not caught up in the destination. I am merely wanting to get moving on the path to the destination.

I am trying to take the first step of a 1000 mile journey.

Originally Posted by jw7783

Talk to neighbors, friends and family, ask them to put anything metal or electronic that they are going to throw out in a pile or to call you when they have some. Then when they are talking to someone moving or cleaning out, they might pass on the word that you will take the stuff they don't want for them

Thanks for the idea I will do this next.

Peace is a journey of a thousand miles and it must be taken one step at a time. - Lyndon B. Johnson

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. - Lao Tzu

Your last post Ryan came as I was looking at quotes! So you get extra quotes to your thread!

Take your time, an it'll come. It did for the rest of us who started this as a hobby, or part time.

Sirscrapalot - Quotes are above!

Originally Posted by travistemple202020

it depends on how hard you want to work. you have a great opp right now to be the kingpin of your city or as i call myself the trash king or tin man as the scrap yard calls me lol. your city is small enough that a 1man operation can be done full time for work. now I am not talking about crap loads of cash but good money to be made. all you have to do is advertise as cheap as possible, print out flyers, sent letters to businesses and so forth. you could also spend about $400 to do a full postal mailing to everyone in your town. this will help push out comp and establish you dominance in town as more of a household name. you get the idea and good luck

Haha I like the way you think. When you are known as the "Tin Man" it really shows how much you bring in

I am not looking to replace my 8-5 job. All of this extra is going directly into Physical PM

As I like to say... dig your well before you are thirsty.

Thanks for all the great ideas.

"I feel as though I am not making enough progress at the speed at I would like."
I think it's a rare thing when we do progress at the speed that we'd like, in any endeavor. However, as I've gotten older/more experienced, I feel that it's only in retrospect that we can truly appreciate our progress or setbacks and how they play into the timeframe of our lives. Please keep in mind Ryan that true progress is slow, while setbacks seem fast and catastrophic (although they rarely really are). Keep at it. Expand your horizons. Don't concern yourself with any lack of "big" scores. If you are dedicated to whatever it is you're doing, you will progress no matter how slow it might feel at the time. Keep working hard and best of luck to you!

When I started out the economy was good, everybody was working. People were buying houses and moving evry month. People were throwing stoff out just because they wanted new(things were still in working order). I had more scrap than I could handle. Then 3 things happened (1) the economy took a dive (2) people stopped throwing things away (3) everybody and thiere brother started scrappin. Even businesses that was saving stuff for me began hauling thiere scrap to the yard themselves or giving it to thiere employe's. I'm still trying to recover.

Persistence perseverance for starters imho without those a person will always be in the beginner stages

When i started 6 years ago now i cleaned out my parents shed of dead appliances then got into computer and when i started those all i did was gut and seperate bare minimums (hdd cd roms wires and all the boards went into the same pile) Now i strip down the hdds test the mobos save dvd rw's strip down and i have a slew of boxes that are sitting around collecting various pieces of computers and electronics.

Best advice i can give is if you live in a town with a pop of 10k there has to be at least one computer repair place. Go talk to them and see what they do with their broken parts and see if you can make a deal with them. when i started with comptuers the first place i set up with was charging $5 per piece (monitor tower) then they were paying that out to dispose of them so i set a deal with them where i would take most of it free of charge and they would be able to keep the money they were charging to dispose thus increasing their bottom line. Now they have decided to do free disposal for people to make them more friendly to the college kids and i still get all the goodies including several laptops a month to part out.

so keep working at it and you will get there (6 years into it and i may know more then some of the places i sell to but they had the money to take the bigger step and i would rather earn it step by step

and here is a quote for you

"it is better to pay for each step as you make it rather then to overpay for a big leap and land flat on your face"

What is your rural area like? Farms? Ranches? Go down every dirt driveway in the county and ask the property owner if you can haul away that pile of metal that is sitting behind the barn. How far to the nearest scrapyard? With only 10K people in your area, you will have to hustle. Good luck.

Thanks for all of the responses, advice and encouragement. I am definitely not giving up! You can take that to the bank!

When I got started scrapping I used to take a 1/4 of my paycheck and use it for buying scrap. When I got time outside of work I would prep the stuff. Let the money come back and always used some more off the paycheck from work, took all the profit from the scrap and leave it solely for scrap. Everyone has a little bit of slow times, and faster times. If you don't have cash on hand, your not ready. The easiest way to try to get the work out for example is: live radio shows (Local radio for buying and selling), craigslist, facebook, word of mouth, fliers, cards, town clean-ups, ect.. If you want to be dominant offer $ that you know will kill out your competitors, even if you hardly make money on that particular piece or person you are buying from. It's like the stock market. Buy as low as you possibly can and sell as high as you can. I had always tried to find the biggest buys I could afford. (example: if I had $100 in hand I would look for something as close to $100 as I could and leave myself a little wiggle room for fuel). Invest the most you can and the return is always higher, making you more money in the end. After you get the ball bouncing you can relax a little bit but keep on top of everything so nobody is knocking on your back door. There is nothing wrong with being a little slow starting to a rock solid foundation, with a well built base you can build anything.