Scrap metal and theft

[Silver_civic]

Hello all and went to the scrap yard other day; actually both Wednesday and Thursday(work was kinda slow). Company made bout $1000 dollars in all so not too bad. Is it just me or is scrap metal, aluminum, stainless, copper, brass and so on higher than it was when I was a kid helping my grandpa junk stuff from the farm? Batteries in my area; they give you $8.00 car/truck. Heavy duty batteries they give you $13 for. When I was at the scrap yard Wednesday, a black kid in a red BMW was ahead of me and had 3 heavy bags of aluminum cans. He was off to get his weigh slip and Ohio State cop and Ohio Sheriff car caught him coming back to get his money. Cops gave me all his aluminum money too! Guess the man had 2 arrest warrants, and I didnt even ask what for.


How high is scrap value in your area?

 

[JustinH]

We have tons of junker pickup trucks that drive around every day looking for anything metal thrown away in the trash.

I set a rusted out gas grill out in front of my house for pickup, and the junkers had got it in 30 minutes.

A friend of mine does a lot of side jobs working on cars, and he saves the scrap brake rotors, etc. He had a whole truckload of metal and it only paid a little over $100.

 

[greenaccord02]

I can't say what the price is on everything, but I brought in 100lb of aluminum the other day and got $80. It was from work, and they were fixing to throw it all in the trash so I asked if I could take it. Really gives credence to the saying, one man's trash...

 

[Silver_civic]

Yeah around here, rotors and drums and undercarriage/cradles that are steel are heavy melt. Takes lot of that to make any money. We took our whole old car wash down after we cut it into pieces that would fit into a pickup, had 2 truckloads total of that aluminum beams, that paid more than the heavy melt. I myself got $175 for both converters off of a mazda suv of a friends that he paid me to do for him. Converters are way up at the moment. Around here, everyday I read the paper, someone is stealing stuff metal wise, even aluminum siding and everything. My boss new house, while he was on vacation someone smashed out his windows and stole his kitchen sink, hot water heater and all the copper piping. Thats sad

 

[Stelth]

Scrap metals are very high right now. I can get well over $3 a pound for dirty copper, and $250/ton for iron. I'm in the plumbing business, and I used to throw away the zinc parts (also known as die-cast or pot metal) when I was turning in brass. Now I don't because I can get $.55/lb for them.

I've had scrap metal stolen out of the back of my truck as well.

Every once in a while, someone tries to steal some live high voltage copper, and when the cops arrive, they find a smoking corpse. Natural selection in action.

 

[Silver_civic]

Hello Stelth, and that happened, or a woman and man, both in their 50's stole some grounding cables from a substation, then stole a car. Found them in Ohio and just the other day extradited them here to PA for prosecution. Somehow both only had minor injuries paper said. Yeah my dads friend gets a lot of converters and copper and he said even the more rare red brass is high.

 

[Pablo]

http://www.alanwire.com/cop1.html

http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/aluminum.html

 

[bdcardinal]

We get the scrap guys coming by the dealer all the time. It is fun when more than one show up at the same time and we get them to complete with eachother for the old radiators and condensors.

They always want our batteries, but balk when we tell them Ford gets $16 a core now.

 

[exranger06]

Copper is over $4 per lb. I work for the electric company and I'm currently working on a way to prevent people from stealing the copper wires on poles. Just about every pole has a ground wire running down the length of it. It's a AWG 4 solid copper wire. Thieves come along in the middle of the night, reach as high as they can and cut the wire. They hit every pole on the street. And as soon as we fix it, they come and cut it again. Potential solutions I'm considering are using copper clad steel, which is basically a steel wire with a thin copper coating and has almost no scrap value. Another one is proof-positive copper, which actually has a serial number laser etched into the wire. A scrap dealer can look up the number and see who it belongs to and prove it's stolen.

 

[Chris142]

Ya we have atleast 1 scrapper a day pull up asking us to give scrap away. Since we have many scrap Copper Radiator cores they are hoping that we are too lazy to scrap them.

Not a chance! They are part of my X-Mas bonus. A truckload of them will fetch around $3000.

 

[MonumentOiler]

Originally Posted By: JustinH
We have tons of junker pickup trucks that drive around every day looking for anything metal thrown away in the trash. not tied down or guarded.


Corrected.

 

[MonumentOiler]

Originally Posted By: exranger06
Potential solutions I'm considering are using copper clad steel, which is basically a steel wire with a thin copper coating and has almost no scrap value. Another one is proof-positive copper, which actually has a serial number laser etched into the wire. A scrap dealer can look up the number and see who it belongs to and prove it's stolen.


Go with the steel wire. It's the only thing that worked for my local railroad. They were replacing miles of control wires a month until they went with a steel wire with very low value.

Serial numbers depend on honest scrap buyers. Haven't met one yet. They'll cooperate when the cops demand it but they know that much of what they buy isn't come by in a legitimate manner.

When the methheads will do $10,000 damage to get $100 in scrap metal it makes you wonder if the recycling industry is a net positive.

Here they are hitting electric substations, sewer grates, irrigation controls, plumbing, wiring and anything else not tied down.

 

[PF52]

Empty, foreclosed houses are also a common target for thieves. They strip the drywall and siding looking for wiring. Same with abandoned buildings of all kinds. In Gary, Indiana, for example are a number of large school buildings which have closed due to falling population. Scrappers break in on a regular basis and gut the place. I've seen the aftermath and its not pretty.

 

[volvos_rock]

About twice a year Ill take a truckload of stuff from around my property, usually 1200lbs (light iron)or so and it usually pays $100-150. My daughter (8) collects our cans and crushes them and once a year usually scores $70, or so. If I'm out with my truck and see something out at the curb Ill throw it on. My wifes father is a scrapper (the legal kind) and while he was sick with cancer some dirtbag stole a whole load of car radiators from his back yard.

 

[hattaresguy]

I hate scrappers they are like cock roaches, I have seen them go into a new house and strip out all the wire and plumbing.


I see them driving around in their beat trucks all the time, just as long as they stay away from my job sites I don't mind, but I won't let them on my property and have told a few they were trespassing.

 

[Dave Hess]

I saw on TV that a church was hit 3 times and their A/C units ruined due to copper thieves.

 

[Spazdog]

Scrappers stole all the manhole and water meter covers from the street my Ft Worth shop is on.

I can only hope that they spent more on gas hauling around that much cast iron to the scrap yard than they made.

Or that the scrap yard got caught with a whole truckload of CITY OF FORT WORTH manhole covers for taking them.

 

[Dave Hess]

Things are gonna get bad with the drug addicts and people out of work looking for some quick cash.

I also saw on TV that people are stealing brass vases form cemeteries.

 

[mailman74]

Originally Posted By: LT4 Vette
Things are gonna get bad with the drug addicts and people out of work looking for some quick cash.

I also saw on TV that people are stealing brass vases form cemeteries.




Yes they stole my dads and grandfathers 4 months ago.

 

[Shannow]

On a $6M refurb project, there's often 0.5-1M in scrap revenue.

Our children get to trade in a year's worth of Al cans at Christmas time for $1/kilo at "Cookies".

Sort of off topic, but a lot of failures in power stations built in the 70s through 90s have been attributed to the demise of chrome bumpers. It only takes a trace amount of chrome to prevent Flow Accelerated Corrosion in high pressure feed mains....but they didn't know about it until the traces of chrome from bumpers ceased to be part of the mix.