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is that why cfs took down their signs. ashamed to let folks know they lowered the price

I was planning on taking a load of oddball stuff.... the interior and exterior of the freezer I took apart last week , sealed units, radiatiors, batteries, wire, al cat cans, copper contents stuff. guess I just have to take what I can, to get it out of the yard, so much for having a 'savings account'' when the price dropped so much

cwgii wrote:is that why cfs took down their signs. ashamed to let folks know they lowered the price

Desert metals down 2 streets from CFS said $40 a ton when I called (after I got the $33) LOL

I just called 3 yards to get new prices
CFS now $30 a ton
The Scrap Yard $30 a ton
Desert Metals $40 a ton

silversaddle1 wrote:Ha ha, kind of tough out there huh boys?!!!

silversaddle1 Why do you think prices are so bad? Is it imported steel, no one buying exported metals, not much production here in the USA?

84 lbs smashed alum cans @ $.85 lb $71.40

340 pounds of old roofing tin. $6.00

I won't be taking anything to the yard until prices increase dramatically. I have the room to stockpile more valuable scrap, and will wait it out.

" I won't be taking anything to the yard until prices increase dramatically. I have the room to stockpile more valuable scrap, and will wait it out."

Agreed. What if the vast majority of scrappers did the same. I imagine we could help the supply side of the equation to our advantage.

160 lbs. clean sheet iron $.029 lb. a whole $4.64 Enough to buy 2 32 oz. Miller Lights with and still $.34 cents change left! Sucks. Did get a 1941 s wheat in the $4.94 payout

3500 lbs of light iron at @ $40/GT for $62.50 total in central CT.

#1 steel is down to $70/GT.

200 lb clean sheet at 58/t

two bins of tin can lids, one of prepeared , a light shelving unit, dryer parts.

280 lbs sheet iron @ $.0165 lb

I'm going on 12 months of not hauling anything in but the scrap steel as I can't have it piled up at my place of employment.
I do have 3500 or so pounds of copper/alum rads
7500 pounds of appliance compressors
1000 pounds of aluminum rads
2000 or so pounds of #1 copper
800 or so pounds #2
250-300 pounds yellow brass
I guess I'm in it for the long haul as I've waited this long

I went on Saturday to sell some scrap. Here are the results followed by some commentary:

Aluminum cans (5.4# @ .40 = $2.16)
Sheet iron (80# @ $50/ton = $2.00)
Old aluminum sheet for shredder (2# @ .37 = .74)
Irony aluminum (3.8# @ .20 = .76)
Aluminum MLC (0.6# @ .36 = .22)
#2 IC Wire (50%) (5.8# @ .62 = 3.60)
Harness Wire (0.04# @ .45 = .02)
#2 IC Wire (30%) (10.2# @ .15 = $1.53)
TOTAL (107.8#) RECEIVED $11.03

Comments: Frankly I was very, very disappointed with the results. I spent at least 6 hours gathering everything, sorting it, driving to and from the scrap yard. Making just over $11 for all this work was NOT worth it. I've never been homeless, thank God. But I think that even if I was I'd have been disappointed with what I received.

A couple things that were very disappointing to me- I knew prices had come down, but the amount, frankly, is ridiculous and makes me think that some scrap yards are going to go out of business soon. For instance, aluminum cans which were 75c/lb. in April are just 40c/lb. now, down 47% in just 6 months. Sheet iron, which was $170/ton in May 2014 was fetching a mere $50/ton now (down 71%). I didn't even turn in motors, because they say you have to throw those in with the steel, which is ridiculous.

To make things even worse coaxial cable was not even accepted- they told me I need to separate the cabling by splitting it in half before they will accept it. For my power cords they told me I had to clip the ends of all the cords before they'd take them. Then they have me a pair of shears that didn't work very well. So it took another half hour or so for me to clip the cords.

I need to seriously reevaluate my strategy here. Thoughts?

Yep sucks when yards change the rules. As for steel its a by product of breaking down things. In order to get the good stuff you are left with some steel. I have not been going after much steel as prices are so bad, items sit much longer at the curb or alley. Not worth it but its a habit and still fun to break down stuff while having a few beers. Only problem as prices are so bad you need to buy cheaper beer

What did you do with your cut off ends from the wire? What did the yard take them as?

Prices could go lower yet. I think we are in this one for the long haul. $40.00 a ton for shread today. Ouch! Oh well, I'm not sitting on shread steel. Copper and such, well yes!

hobo finds wrote: What did you do with your cut off ends from the wire? What did the yard take them as?

I threw them away. They didn't seem interested in the cutoff ends at all.

silversaddle1 wrote:Prices could go lower yet. I think we are in this one for the long haul. $40.00 a ton for shread today. Ouch! Oh well, I'm not sitting on shread steel. Copper and such, well yes!

I agree. This feels like a long haul type deal. In the past steel has been so low that not only were scrap yards not paying for it, they were charging to pick up dumpsters full of it. We could easily be in that situation again in the near future.

Sold another 1,000 lbs of light iron/shred today @ $40/GT.

Recyclersteve wrote:I threw them away. They didn't seem interested in the cutoff ends at all.

Those are worth at least light iron/shred price by me. Some places will buy them as copper-bearing scrap.

This will be a trial by fire for the newer companies who went around taking customers from us in the past. I have already had one account come back to us for their computer recycling. When the money was good they came in with all their offers of big cash for the scrap and how good of job they would do. Well now that the money is gone, they want to start charging to pick the stuff up and then charge by the pound to haul it away. We have never charged a per pound price to haul away and recycle computer equipment. Crt's yes, but only those. I'm guessing now would be a pretty good time to go out and drum up some more business.

Dr. Cadmium asked me why I thought prices were so low. I missed that question. The answer is simple. China's economy is in the crapper as well as ours. No one is buying durable goods, no new major building projects going on, no government contracts. While imported steel had hurt us big time in the past, it really is not a big factor right now. No one is buying, so there is a huge surplus.

The cut ends go as Copper Content by me $.05 - $.15 a pound here

silversaddle1 wrote:We have never charged a per pound price to haul away and recycle computer equipment. Crt's yes, but only those.

Dr. Cadmium asked me why I thought prices were so low. I missed that question. The answer is simple. China's economy is in the crapper as well as ours. No one is buying durable goods, no new major building projects going on, no government contracts. While imported steel had hurt us big time in the past, it really is not a big factor right now. No one is buying, so there is a huge surplus.

Best thing to happen in computer recycling in the past few years, actually one of the only good things: the volume of CRTs has greatly reduced.

And I wasn't the one who asked about steel prices, that was hobo finds. I agree that it's increased supply and reduced demand. Also, the strength of the dollar is a factor (deflation).

Well, I was going to get out of dumpster diving thing but since metal isn't worth much, quite a bit is going to the landfills again. First score was walking out of the dentists office and a dentist office was being scrapped, much of that was wiring that was sheathed inside aluminum flexible conduit, took all of that. Some dentist machinery with relays and brass fittings came along, a sink, with copper/brass/stainless, etc. They had some nice aluminum picture frames, left em.

Then, I went back and got more later on in the week. Didn't feel like hitting it again, to far away. Tonight I went to the dumpster in my condo, three microwaves, an amp, tuner, and vcr, I'll tear those apart later, one microwave I was the one that fits into the wall, that was already opened up, took most of the wiring from that and a motor. Also, some shelving that had lighting in it, took that too.

Oh, and found a dumpster that is only a mile away that I can hit regularly and might start hitting after work later at night, on my way home, it's a cable TV company. They throw a ton of the coax away, not taking any of that, don't know if I can recycle it or not but if I could their is allot. But they throw away allot of thick copper ground wire, Cat5 stuff, and electric cords.

Nothing spectacular, the total spoils is probably up to around $25-30 It's just a hobby for me that I get a kick out of, if you go out to co2list.org you can see the carbon load of all this stuff they throw away, it's pretty sad. I didn't realize the carbon load of aluminum, it's substantial, to bad the recyclers won't give me hardly anything for it or else I'd take more of it.

Sadly, I have not been out here much lately to post. In my quest for health, or in an attempt to figure out what the hell is wrong with my health I scrapped all the mercury fillings and put new crowns in my mouth this year, so the dentists took the equivalent of about 8 ozs of gold in $ from me this year, big dent in my Au/Ag purchases for the year. One of the crowns just busted apart and now I'm getting a zirconium crown put in next week, another $1150 out the door, damn dentists.

I wish we had decent recycling laws/motivation. I know the city here .. one of their big money makers is cardboard. Well, I was cleaning out my grandpas house this year and we had a huge dumpster, I called the city and said I got enough cardboard here for you guys to make some money, they say you have to cut it down into yadah, yadah, I say sorry I'm a grandson I have to go to work so I can make the payments on my condo and send you property taxes for this stupid little box that I live in, it all went to the landfill, along with a ton of iron, well actually allot of the iron went into my truck and I scrapped it, first and last time for that, I toss lots of iron, I have nowhere to put it, store it, until I have enough to bring in and they don't take it at the curb, or the recycling bins, again to the landfill.

Oh, and at work tonight I found 35 cents under the soda machine and a penny in the parking lot as I was leaving work.

MetalMan wrote:" I won't be taking anything to the yard until prices increase dramatically. I have the room to stockpile more valuable scrap, and will wait it out."

Agreed. What if the vast majority of scrappers did the same. I imagine we could help the supply side of the equation to our advantage.

This might be tougher to predict than we think. If many people stop recycling, then lots of scrap yards would most likely go out of business. Only the strong scrap yards with deep pockets would survive. I don't know how many major companies with deep pockets there are in this business. Many of the companies I've visited seem like pretty small companies.

Then, if a bunch go out of business, fewer recycling businesses would mean they would know they'd have less competition from other buyers of scrap so they wouldn't have to pay even what they're paying now for new material to recycle. On the other hand a good business person should know if their clients feel like they are being mistreated, they will go elsewhere.

I'm curious what a large recycling business with thousands of employees thinks about this. They say that in really tough times is when the strong survive. But perhaps even some of the strong companies could be dealt serious, if not fatal blows in this type of market.

The tug of war continues- It will be interesting to see what happens. I'm not making any predictions whatsoever on this one.

everything wrote: Oh, and found a dumpster that is only a mile away that I can hit regularly and might start hitting after work later at night, on my way home, it's a cable TV company. They throw a ton of the coax away, not taking any of that, don't know if I can recycle it or not but if I could their is allot.

I had a bad experience with coax just recently. The scrap yard told me I'd have to split the coax into two and then they'd accept the copper side. Haven't tried it yet, but I figure that if it was easy to do or profitable, they'd do it. So I'm not too excited about this one. If I had to do it over, I'd avoid the coax. Too much space taken. Not too hard to actually split the cable, but not enough (not nearly enough) money in return. The idea of working for perhaps $1 an hour (maybe $2 if you hit the motherload) doesn't appeal to me.

Too bad there isn't a simpler way- I hate seeing some of this stuff that could definitely be processed go into the city dump.

Price increase for light iron. 800 lbs today at $55/GT for $19.65 total (this yard rounds up to the nearest $0.05).

I can sell intact low grade coaxial cable as light iron/shred.

coax= copper content ==.03 lb