StRegis 
I have read some posts about cardboard recycling but nothing posted recently. I wanted to share my recent experience collecting metal and cardboard and hope to learn from others on the forum. I collect full-time in the Philly area and focus mostly on businesses. I have regular customers that I visit weekly and some call me when they have bundles of metal or cardboard available. Mostly retailers, schools, a homebuilder and a hospital. I also cruise some neighborhoods in the evening to collect bulk items and metal. My experience has been mostly positive. For businesses I show up in a clean box van and try to be as helpful and pleasant as possible. My truck can hold about 5 tons per trip and I have a yard closeby that I drop off cargo for further separating. I do my business runs in the early morning or late evening. During the day I work in my yard on baling to avoid traffic. Metal I take to a local scrap yard about once a week. I've been going to them for about a year now so I know they won't rip me off. But make sure you separate the valuable metal from the tin scrap. And the cardboard (OCC) I bale and store until I have a trailer load. About two trailers a week because OCC piles up fast and it's everywhere. I sell the cardboard to a broker that ships to Asia from the port. I get about $70 per ton for the bales which weigh about a half a ton each. I'm a one man operation and may add a helper this year to work on baling OCC. Here's the part you've been waiting for: I made $100k last year and cleared about $50k after expenses. I'm expecting even more this year if prices improve. The trick is to just keep pushing volume and sell. Don't hoard and wait for prices to rise.
I'm sharing this because I want others to know that there is money in scrapping even at today's prices. I'm not worried about competition because I only operate in one market and I already compete with larger recyclers here. The key is to be friendly with your customers. I get all my material for free. My competitors may pay a few bucks per ton but most people don't want to deal with them. I hope this encourages others to start in other parts of the country and this helps them earn a little extra cash. I will try to post with updates if enough people find this useful and want to hear more. Thanks and good luck everyone.
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