Millions of tons of scrap is sitting unused in garages and basements across the nation, when it could be earning you some extra money. But taking your haul down to the scrapyard to sell it is an intimidating process, especially if you’re not yes exactly how to prepare your scrap, or have actually never ever gone to the scrapyard in the first place.
To show you how to navigate the entire process of turning obsolete metals into cash in your pocket, we’ll walk you through our own trip to a Detroit scrap garden.
More From Popular Mechanics:
- How to Build Your Own Garage Shelves
- Just how to Turn Your Shed Into a Home Office
- Hall Monitor: Exactly How To Make This Entryway Cabinet
Cashing Out
Salvaging metals can be either a lucrative idea or an exercise in futility. Numerous factors play into the profitability, including how difficult it is to dismantle and load the material, and the going rate when you sell it at the yard. In our quick guide to selling scrap, we kept it simple: We chose a tightly packed pallet of obsolete steel shelving that easily loaded onto our vehicle. But these tips apply no matter what you decide to scrap.
Choose Your Vehicle
You can use any type of car to haul scrap to the yard, even a bicycle. Though, for the heavy loads that will make you some more serious cash, we suggest good sturdy pickup like this GMC Sierra Denali 2500HD, because an open pickup bed allows easy unloading by crane. If you simply take your scrap in a closed vehicle, like an SUV or hatchback, unloading is on you.
Choose Your Scrap
Next, identify what you’re gonna send to scrap. On this trip, we’re loading steel shelves that can only be utilized on an obsolete shop display system, making them the perfect candidate for scrapping. Steel is one of the most common but least lucrative metals you can scrap.
Lucrative Alloys
By contrast, alloys like brass can fetch upward of $1 to $2 per pound. Brass is utilized in applications needing low friction—gears, locks, valves, and ammunition. Brass is also used extensively in musical instruments because of its durability and its bright shine when polished.
Coveted Copper
Copper is one of today’s most-wanted metals. Any yard dealing in steel recycling encourage it, and it returns values of $2 to $4 or more per pound, based on condition. Copper has such a high value as scrap because the processing required to convert raw copper ore into usable copper is excessively energy intensive. By contrast, recycling used copper is a lossless process, meaning 100 percent of the material is restored, and the process uses far less power than using raw ore. You can scrap any copper-containing item, including motors, wiring, and bare copper.
Find a Local Scrapyard
Once you’ve got your material, keywords like “scrap yard” or “metals recycler” on the internet to find a buyer. Do your research: Different yards have different specialties and buy various materials. Knowing the composition of the material you’re trying to sell for scrap, you can call around to find the best price—buy rates can vary wildly between yards. Our preferred yard, H&H Metals in Inkster, Michigan, accepts most ferrous (iron, steel) and nonferrous (aluminum, brass, copper) metals.
Weigh Your Vehicle on the Inbound Scale
With your scrap material onboard, pull your vehicle onto the marked inbound scale. When the attendant gives you the thumbs-up, that’s the signal that he/she has recorded your fat. Yards use a large, accurate, pressure-sensitive plate to weigh your vehicle loaded and then unloaded when you’re on your method out. The difference in fat is your scrap total.
Behold the Mag Crane
If you’re selling a ferrous product, such as iron or steel, the yard will unload your vehicle with a mag crane. These incredible machines are large excavators modified to wield a powerful electromagnet. A skilled operator will pluck the material from your vehicle and destination it in their ferrous storage pile for later processing. If you’re selling a nonferrous material, it won’t be affected by the magnet, so the yard will unload your truck with a forklift.
The Workhorse of the Yard
Skid steer loaders are the backbone of any high-traffic scrapyard. Their attachments include the versatile claw bucket seen here, extended forks, high-power steel shears and also an electromagnet. The humble skid steer’s adaptability makes it indispensable to any material-handling procedure.
The Last We’ll See of Our Scrap
As soon as the loaders place our racks in the ferrous storage pile, our scrap will wait to be processed for shipping with other similar material. The yard will either compact the shelves into a standard bale or shred the material into extremely fine pieces. Either way, the metal will be fed to a blast furnace at an off-site smelter. From there, our scrap could be recycled and processed into any steel product imaginable, from cars to household appliances, to another store shelving unit.
Weigh Your Car on the Outbound Scale
Just like with the inbound scale, you pull forward onto the scale, wait until the attendant provides an affirmative signal, then pull forward and park. The attendant inside will give you a fat ticket, showing you your inbound (loaded) fat and your outbound (unloaded) weight, with the difference between the two deciding exactly how much you’ll get paid.
You’re in the System
Some scrap metals, specially copper, have become so valuable that the government is rolling out new protection systems to catch those who try to steal scrap. The federal government has begun requiring all people selling material to register in a database that links a photo and description of the material with the seller’s personal information and thumbprint. If the authorities hear about material theft, they can check the local scrapyards electronically to see if it has been sold as scrap anywhere. Remember: You’re legally responsible for such a thing you offer to the yard.
