Scrap motorcycle disposal

I have known a few "scrappers" that did OK... it's a CASH business, so there are a few tricks to the trade... and one of those "tricks" is you're not making any real money cruising the curbs on garbage night.
To make money you need regular sources of scrap.
Metal shops are GREAT for scrap. They have "cuttings" that are clean, the "cuttings" are already written off the books, so you drop a case of beer on the foreman and load up your truck.
Back in the good ol' days of better tax write offs on vehicles, a buddy had a fleet of nice new Kenworths (with BIG motors, road ranger transmissions, 72" sleeper, cool paint job... REALLY nice trucks.... pulling scrap) that pulled the worst looking, rattiest disposable side trailers you've ever seen. He'd drive them for 3 years, writing off the truck price 100% off the scrap sold... then sell the really low mileage trucks for cash... and put the cash in his pocket. He sold 3-4 trucks a year, I doubt he made a dime in metal recycling. All the trucks he sold went logging. Ya can't do that anymore. Damn the CRA.
another guy i know had a lot off Wolfedale where he could park 100 cars. The price of scrap fluctuates wildly... so he'd work his nuts off when the price was low, and no on else was working (there's WAY TOO MANY scrappers) and when no one else is working, there's no competition, so you pay nothing for the scrap cars and he'd fill his lot. When the price went back up, he emptied the lot. He's younger than me, and retired before I did.
 
I drop them off at Standard Auto parts, Sewells Rd, and Steeles.
 
I have done quite a bit of scrapping over the years, as far as I'm aware, have never come across any "preferred" rate for anyone, even businesses get the same amount if you bring it in your pickup truck as when they have the dumpster out back and the scrap company comes and changes out the dumpster for you. (of course their pickup/drop off charges come off the top) My old machine shop saved all our shavings and we would take them in ourselves and get cash and use for once a week breakfast sandwich's. That stopped when the boss switched to the dumpster style where he was given a cheque and of course taxed on that as income. I was doing a delivery at another machine shop one time and guy told me they just had a bucket of carbide inserts they were saving up get stolen a few days before (if you know anything about machining you know how small and heavy they are) Was probably a couple grand worth.

I picked up a high end aluminum gazebo last summer, had to take every speck of steel or plastic out of the extruded portions and ended up with $75 I believe. Was happily surprised. CLEAN extruded aluminum is very good money. A contractor contacted me once when they were re-flashing a Walmart all along the perimeter of the entire roof. Had it all nice and stacked, craned onto my trailer ($500 worth) given to me for free. I could go on and on with similar examples. Old style black cast aluminum bbq lids good as well if you save up a few of them.

Every hot tub I take to the dump I pull the motors out, save them up for a few months and take in 20 or so at a time (usually about $8 each)

Talking to many tow truck drivers who used to pick up many scrap cars have told me it's almost impossible to find them anymore with all the facebook ads every tom dick and harry got into it, and bramptonians driving anywhere and everywhere to pick them up they don't care if they make $10 on it when all said and done. Offering people $750 for $800 in scrap value. Race to the bottom.
 
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Scrapping discussions always reminds me of the Trailer Park Boys scam where Trevor moves people's lawn furniture to the curb, he didn't steal it, he moved it. Once at the curb Ricky takes it as it is now garbage at the curb... Their logic, no one was stealing.

Then in real life a friend was doing gardening in the front yard. He went in the house to get something and when he comes out all his tools are gone, from mid yard. They look at the security camera footage and it was one of the scrapper guys that work the area. They confront him a few days later when he is making his rounds, shrugs his shoulders, the tools are not on his trailer so he hands them a bunch of garden tools that were not my friends.

We put out one of those old school chest freezers. One guy come by and is trying to load it (they are heavy). About 20 minutes later two guys come by and they want it, I thought a full on fight was going to happen...
 
bitzz said:
I have known a few "scrappers" that did OK... it's a CASH business, so there are a few tricks to the trade... and one of those "tricks" is you're not making any real money cruising the curbs on garbage night.
To make money you need regular sources of scrap.
Metal shops are GREAT for scrap. They have "cuttings" that are clean, the "cuttings" are already written off the books, so you drop a case of beer on the foreman and load up your truck.
Back in the good ol' days of better tax write offs on vehicles, a buddy had a fleet of nice new Kenworths (with BIG motors, road ranger transmissions, 72" sleeper, cool paint job... REALLY nice trucks.... pulling scrap) that pulled the worst looking, rattiest disposable side trailers you've ever seen. He'd drive them for 3 years, writing off the truck price 100% off the scrap sold... then sell the really low mileage trucks for cash... and put the cash in his pocket. He sold 3-4 trucks a year, I doubt he made a dime in metal recycling. All the trucks he sold went logging. Ya can't do that anymore. Damn the CRA.
another guy i know had a lot off Wolfedale where he could park 100 cars. The price of scrap fluctuates wildly... so he'd work his nuts off when the price was low, and no on else was working (there's WAY TOO MANY scrappers) and when no one else is working, there's no competition, so you pay nothing for the scrap cars and he'd fill his lot. When the price went back up, he emptied the lot. He's younger than me, and retired before I did.
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Inland Iron and Metals?

They always had some nice new trucks when I worked at Peterbilt.

Most of the career scrap guys I've known all have a property that they sort and hold scrap in. They will collect stuff for weeks and or months and wait for the price to go up. Once the price hits a point they unload it all.
 
One shop many years ago the scrap bin was out behind bay #3. Unfortunately at the back of bay #3 is where the brake lathe resided.

I was turning a set of rotors off of a truck with the old spoke style hubs. With truck rotors, you put them on the lathe and machine them still attached to the hubs. These rotors/hubs are a good 100lbs each.

I finished the first one, took it off the lathe and used a handcart to wheel it back to the other side of the truck. Dropped it off, cleaned it up, installed outer bearing and pounded in a new seal. Headed back to the lathe to get the next one cutting the first pass as I reassembled the other side. Got to the lathe and the hub and rotor was missing. I noticed one of the scrap guys truck leaving the lot and the scrap bin was empty.

Caught up with him down the road and low and behold there was the hub and rotor in the back. "I thought it was scrap, it was by the bin" yeah sure, only it was inside 20' away.

That was the last time he was welcomed at that shop, or any shop in the area.
 
Torren said:
One shop many years ago the scrap bin was out behind bay #3. Unfortunately at the back of bay #3 is where the brake lathe resided.

I was turning a set of rotors off of a truck with the old spoke style hubs. With truck rotors, you put them on the lathe and machine them still attached to the hubs. These rotors/hubs are a good 100lbs each.

I finished the first one, took it off the lathe and used a handcart to wheel it back to the other side of the truck. Dropped it off, cleaned it up, installed outer bearing and pounded in a new seal. Headed back to the lathe to get the next one cutting the first pass as I reassembled the other side. Got to the lathe and the hub and rotor was missing. I noticed one of the scrap guys truck leaving the lot and the scrap bin was empty.

Caught up with him down the road and low and behold there was the hub and rotor in the back. "I thought it was scrap, it was by the bin" yeah sure, only it was inside 20' away.

That was the last time he was welcomed at that shop, or any shop in the area.
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We get scrap stolen from time to time. In Jan a thief emptied our stainless bin, got away with 1500lbs of clean 304 chips.

We put a 1000lb weight on the bin lids these days.
 
When I worked in the autobody shop we would save radiators ( brass then , and aluminum in high end) alternators and starters and bent steel car rims , alloy wheels were not common. About every 6 months we would fire up a Celtrac 12ton dozer we had outback and make scrap cars about 2ft high , we could put 10-12 on a flatbed , rads and rims went into a 3 ton stake truck we had and that bought the next 3-4 months of beer.


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