Should I or Shouldn't I Take the E-waste Plunge ??

Hello fellow scrapers as many of you know I have been in all fazes of the Scrap metal Recycling business for many years. I have never really got into the e-waste end of the business for a number of reasons but my youngest son has been pushing me to get into it. I can tell you that in South Florida there really is no legit yard or Recycling center that buys e-waste for more than shred price. That's really what has me concerned, we do every thing in a manor that should be done, we cater to our customers and provide the best service possible to them and would do this with the e-waste customers. What I would like to know from you guys doing this already is are you getting your far market share in your area or are most going to the city or county for there e-waste. My idea is to open the side of the warehouse that is on a busy avenue, we do not use that side of the warehouse that goes thru to the next block. I have all the licenses and permits needed in place, I have all intentions of going thru the process of becoming certified electronics recyclers if I take the plunge. Your advise and thoughts are appreciated. 1956

I would recommend trying it out , you have the capital,space and time it's worth a shot . You could always say hey I tried if it's not to your liking . 1/4 of my customers drop off . The rest I have to go to them . It's not a hassle as I try to plan my day around multiple trips to maximize my gas. Me personally I love it and wouldn't rather be doing anything else. But we are all diffrent so take it with a grain of salt.

I also would love to know how many desk tops you could fit on that flatbed so my answer may or may not be biased.

I would say go for it. Just from my experience, everything from cpu's and servers is recyclable. Except the dust from the fans.

56',

As you know I'm on a sandbar an a bit different from everyone else because of my location. Having said that..

1. Do I get my fair share of the market? Yes, i would say so. There are a few who do the ewaste here but not many. An none full time other then myself that I know of. It's a small sandbar an word travels fast in most social circles including businesses like ours. My other competition is the yards. Like yours unless your willing to travel 45 minutes, pay shred price for ewaste. I ain't *****ing tho, it's more for me. As most can't be troubled to drive any further then they need.

2.(or part of 1..either way) Do i have to travel outside my area? Sometimes. My area is only set by my own limitations. I have a route I work an have developed over the time I've been doing this. Now I prefer not to have to travel to the far north(traffic issues an usually not worth the gas)or go so far south as Hatteras. I will go south more often then I will north. Mainly cause I do have some contacts down that way. This is why I say sometimes. I prefer the 20 - 30 mile radius around the house. Keeps me close to all my clients/customers, the house aka office/shop. This lets me hit all the populated spots, an allows me to cross the bridge to the mainland. I only go about 10 miles inland unless it's a good call. Otherwise I stay on my sandbar. My sandbar is only 120 miles or so from north to south where you need to use a ferry.

3. Do I think you should try it? Yes. Being a member here you've absorbed all the knowledge on ewaste, like the rest of us have with other areas of scrapping. Your also honest as hell as far I know from your time here, we can use more such people in the industry. If there is a need for the service an nobody is filling it or doing it well enough when it can be done better...I'd say go for it.

In short..I think you should do it, an may kick yourself if you don't try it. If your not seeing an increase in the bottom line or like dealing with this side, at lest you can say you tried it. Sounds to me like you got a thought out plan, an don't see a reason you shouldn't.

Anyhow, my .02. Use it as you will. Good luck whatever you decide tho.

Sirscrapalot - When you reach for the stars you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either. - Leo Burnett

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

If you generate larger volumes of ewaste then you could always use the shipping (trucking) service to get it to a buyer.

Well Mechanic688 I at least think that the volumes would be that of Gaylord's for the more high volume items, This is a pretty populated area and the more I think about it with a little advertising and word of mouth that I could do some descent volumes, I am up for a challenge, now I just have to find some trustworthy honest buyers that would work along with us.

I've been in it for a year or two. What i've tried to do is network in such a way that all of the higher value e waste items in the area funnel through me as they become available. At this point it doesn't seem as there's enough volume.

Bear in mind ... this is rural. If you were in an urban area and could process 200 - 300 towers a month at 6.00 $ net per unit it might be worthwhile.

I'm still going to stay with it because it's something fun and interesting. There are all kinds of new things to learn and it's a bit of an adventure. My experience has been that if you follow the things that you feel drawn to they will take you to places that you never could have anticipated. In a good way ....

Well the Tri County area, a hour in each direction has six million people, to my knowledge there is no place that purchases e- waste for more than sherd prices. I have in mind to set up a place where any one could bring there e-waste to and get paid a fair market price, our prices would be posted no B S. I am sure there are plenty of IT guys and computer repair places that would bring in there scrap if they were treated fairly, in addition to doing high volume pick ups. Does any of the e-scrapers know of a place like that? In there area.

The nearest buyer in my area is about 45 miles away and is paying .45 USD/lb for " computer green boards". They all get tossed into a gaylord and shipped out in bulk. I asked if it was okay to take a peek inside and there was some nice stuff in there. Some telecom grade boards.

Apparently there's a gent that comes up from Southern Maine that stops by to pick them up every so often. Didn't want to mess up the deal he's got going so was very careful in my speech.

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Time is a big factor. These guys are playing it smart.

It takes about ten minutes to do a basic breakdown of a tower into it's component parts. It takes another 30 - 60 minutes to tear down the components. After expenses you might net six dollars. Do the math and it's less than minimum wage.

Now ... if you just buy and sell boards & components someone else is doing most of the labor.

I think you have the location and client base to do it. If you want you can post a limited time offer type trial period. So post your price and say that you are only buying them for a limited time like a couple of months or weeks, then stop until you finish processing and do the math to determine if it is worth it for you.

Originally Posted by miked

Starting realatively slowly would be a good idea in my mind. The local yards are selling to someone now or are themselves processing the materal and shipping. Rather than looking for small amouts this will require "Sales Rep" type to represent your company to businesses(it could be you).

My ewaste profit is largely dependent on myself and my wife working for no wage. I am assuming you are looking for employees to do the work which will require lots of training and supervision to make this work well. Best of luck, Mike

Well Mike the yards that do buy computers around here do not process much e-waste at all, they do not have the time or knowledge and I know this because I am friendly with most of the yard owners and they have offered me there e-waste if I want it, they just take it in to service there customers and not turn them away. To tell you the truth I have seen them in my old yard just put it into there shred, my old partner who has three yards now and sixty five employes is in the mind set that the labor costs involved make it counter productive to separate and brake electronics down, that's one of the reasons I sold out, the expenses in running a yard today are mind blowing. I do have a couple of sales man in the street already so it would be just another service they would sell.

I second what olddude says on the on the Expert, an also some of what Miked says on employees.

I think your better off handling it yourself if you want to, or having someone you trust to raise up to the expert position an let them do the sorting, breaking down etc. Then again if your talking large volume you may have to have two or three "Ewaste Experts" an let them only work on that.

I know as a one man op who focuses on ewaste, I can do a lot of break downs in a day. Mainly cause..I don't deal with ebay an such. I break down, sell to my buyers an move on. I don't deal with the auction sites. I will deal with CL an other local venues like flea markets but..doesn't sound like you want to go that route. The time I save not dealing with eBay an other sites is used to find more product an break it down an get it out. I also work nutty hours due to my odd sleeping schedule.

To the eBayers..I'm glad it works for you. I chose not to go that way an I'm quite happy with how I do. To each their own an all that. eBay is great if you got the time an patience to deal with it. I don't.

Turn an burn baby. Turn an burn.

My other .02.

As always good luck with it, an let us know how it goes!

Sirscrapalot - Well it's true! It's true! You're semi-evil. You're quasi-evil. You're the margarine of evil. You're the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough. - Dr. Evil

Originally Posted by olddude

You are a yard right?
Now that i'm retired
I would definitely add e waste! increase your bottom line on both e waste and metal.
e-waste is now neighborhood noteworthy because of the internet. You will attract scrappers who get both e waste and metal. You will get a larger market share.

2. your second biggest problem is market awareness on the customer side, but once the word gets around if you got the bucks, in your area millionaire status is possible.

Caution: know what your doing or it will be very easy to end up with a semi load of boards worth 20% or less of actual value. Its all in the sorting. Tear down is much easier (in most cases) then prepping a car for the crusher of appliances. I would plan on one specialists for e waste not your non Ferris guy, (a mistake a lot of yards make)

Well Old Dude I am not a yard any more, i sold out a few years ago I have a few large customers that we service that produce a nice amount of material. My building is a nice size that we work out of, although I have all the required permits and licenses in place to buy material I have chose not to buy material off the street as yet. My youngest son wants to go in the e- waste business so that's what this is, I agree that a computer literate person will manage this end of the business because of our lack of expertise in e- waste. The business model I have in mind will be a recycling center that specializes in electronics, we will post our prices up for all to see and hopefully get some good volumes simply because there is no place to sell e-waste around here that pays more than shred, what are your thoughts? I myself are semi retired.

As much as anything experience is the best teacher. Before deciding to get into e-waste why not do some processing and ship out a few boxes to one of the buyers here ?

Most of the local scrappers in my area have their heads wrapped around steel, aluminum, copper & brass because that's what they have always done. You know how it is ..... monkey see / monkey do. Someone comes in and starts scrapping electronics then they take an interest. They want to do it too.

To Them: E-waste is something complicated and really weird. I can tell by looking at their leavings that they're still thinking in terms of aluminum & copper. If they see something familiar like a wire or an aluminum heat sink they grab it and toss the rest. They like hard drives because it's a chunk of higher grade aluminum.

They're completely overlooking the gold bearing items that are right there in plain view.

Towers are about the easiest thing to do. I tore one down in front of a couple of the local guys so that if they did want to get into it they could. Again ... they could care less about the processor & the ram. They seemed more interested in the power supply because that's where the copper transformers & ferrites are.

That's what's gonna help em' most so i explained where to look for the power boards that are found in most electronics/

For whatever it's worth the basic breakdown of a tower isn't that hard to do. You could almost set it up like an assembly line and have separate bins for each of the components. It could go like this:

Bin #1: Plastics
Bin #2: Steel
Bin #3: Power supplies
Bin #4: Floppy disc drives
Bin #5: CD / DVD drives
Bin #6: Finger cards
Bin #7: Hard drives
Bin #8: Computer wire

What's left after that is the motherboard. You have to break that down a little bit but it's not hard.

Bin # 9a: processor cooling fans
Bin #9b: Aluminum heat sinks
Bin #9c: Processors
Bin # 9d: Memory chips
Bin # 9e: The little coin cell batteries like you find in a watch

That's pretty much all there is. It's not hard to do a basic teardown like this in under ten minutes. From there you're pretty much ready to start selling stuff to your buyers.

If you've got guys on the clock and it's a slow day you could have them do this instead of idling. You could train just about anybody to do it.

That would be one way of getting your feet wet without getting a lot invested in it. If it pans out, and you like doing it,you could gradually start branching out into other e-waste items.