Focker 
At our yard we use and excavator mounted shear to remove engines and trans. Engines with aluminum are piled and sold to the chinese/indians who I assume break them down further.Older cast engines are munched up with the shear and sold as heavy melt. There must be more money to be made if we do it that way.
Which reminds me of a true story: Back when I first got married in 1977,my now ex wife and I had no job and no way to pay the rent,but she had a 1967 chevy van. We soon found out that scrapping paid the rent and bought beer. We progressed to working for a salvage yard with me driving lugger truck and her working in the warehouse stripping metals by day and working part time in a movie theater at night. One of us had the bright idea of stripping engines in the warehouse on weekends since we had a ready supply of engines that had been already pulled. Since Sherry had a 250 chevy six in her truck,we must of stripped hundreds of 250s first. Yard paid us 7 dollars per crankshaft.This is how they kept count and paid us. I used to remove pan,head covers and whatever else i could break with a fire axe and she would rattle with the impact removing heads and crank. I then drove out pistons with a hunk of firewood. We stacked heads and cranks like firewood and loaded the rest into a lugger. When she and I had enough beer,we could strip and engine in 9 minutes. After about three months of this,we both moved on to better jobs in the steel/scrap industry. I used to say that you never want to get into a bar fight with the wife(she had abs and muscles from manhandling trannies and engines) and she would say that every day is and adventure with Bill (me).
I was reading this thread and that came to mind out of my pre AA days
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