Tool haul a scrapper finds in a dumpster...

[KnurledNut]

The whole video is worth watching, but the theme starts at 2:55.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know the value of the Starrett surface plate and left it behind. :-(

 

[woody 73]

Unreal what people throw away, just unreal. He had no idea about that surface plate, but I would bet after reading future comments he will learn about his mistakes.
Love the few tools he found.

 

[Bert_]

I need to make friends with more guys that scrap. Offer them more than the yard so I can get some good stuff.

 

[JuncleJohn]

We had to lock our dumpster after hours to keep divers from making a big mess in the parking lot. Metal chips mixed in with floor dry, misc trash etc just thrown all over.

Yes that Starrett surface plate would have been a good score. Obviously the ones that discarded all the goodies had no idea the value of what they were tossing.

John

 

[Dumber than lumber]

The whole video is worth watching, but the theme starts at 2:55.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know the value of the Starrett surface plate and left it behind. :-(

Did you post a “You ****!!” In the comments?

 

[four.cycle]

DAmn! That is crazy! Tossin' out perfectly good tools!

 

[Shiftless]

I’m not scrapper by any means, but I did pull this Reed vise out of a dumpster. My mailman knew I collected bench vises and he was nice enough to alert me to one that was bolted to a rotted old workbench sitting in a dumpster out at the curb a few blocks from my house.

 

[3baygarage]

Goodbye stir it stone

 

[MushCreek]

If only you knew what businesses throw out! I had recently left a job at one place to start my own business. The company told the maintenance man to clean out the store room, and he got pissed and threw out everything. Precision tools, tool steel; all sorts of stuff. The guys knew I was starting a shop and called me up. "Bob's gone crazy and threw everything out!" I filled my old pick-up until the springs bottomed out.

The last place I worked they threw out a welded steel table with a Wilton vise on it because it was 'in the way'. It's in my shop now.

 

[dchawk81]

I’m not scrapper by any means, but I did pull this Reed vise out of a dumpster. My mailman knew I collected bench vises and he was nice enough to alert me to one that was bolted to a rotted old workbench sitting in a dumpster out at the curb a few blocks from my house.

I wish my mailman knew I'm a prolific amazoner and gave me everyone else's packages.

 

[neophyte]

DAmn! That is crazy! Tossin' out perfectly good tools!

Check the “hoarding” threads on GJ.
Companies toss stuff because it costs more to sort or repair stuff than it is worth to pay the people who work there to fix the stuff, or maybe than the storage space is worth.
I would presume either a new granite plate was needed in a larger size, or that one had become out of spec for some reason, do into the dumpster it went.
The same possibly for the depth gages.
Once the items are thrown in the dumpster, they are legally disposed of, and can be written off of taxes as no longer in inventory, and therefore no longer a “stored asset” on the companies books.

 

[JuncleJohn]

Most likely the business or that part of it had closed and those in charge had no idea on how to handle liquidating the assets. They probably thought the micrometers and depth gages had no more value than a stapler or paper punch. The Starrett surface plate? Just a heavy rock to them.

Quite often big businesses are in too big of a hurry to lay off employees than to wind things down in an orderly manner. I blame it on the bean counters.

John

 

[MushCreek]

I had a buddy that worked for a defense contractor in the early 80's. When they closed the plant, they took all of the NEW carbide inserts out of the packaging and dumped them in drums for disposal. We're talking 55 GALLON drums of carbide inserts!

 

[rust in the eye]

Amusing guy and a nice haul. Not sure I'd want to do this for a living.
There is guy who patrols my neighborhood on trash collection day who sometimes has some interesting stuff aboard. I need to look closer into his haul when he stops here for my scrap.

 

[LXCam]

Last week I spent a day trying to make space in the shop. I’ve had these doors in my way for months

Jail doors - free!

Bet this is a first here. Free to a good home or possibly a really bad one. I’ve got 9 - 3/0 x 7/0 x 2” detention grade doors we had to swap out as they failed a ASTM deflection requirement. They’re set up for a vision pane (not provided) and your very own cuff port (hinges not provided)...

www.garagejournal.com

And decided to test out the tweeker scrapper theory and set them out in the alley. I also had a milk carton crate of the vision pain angles that was close to a hundred pounds tossed on top of the doors.

Within the hour the milk carton crate was gone and the top door had been shifted.

Within three days the entire stack was gone. Tweeker theory proven

 

[rust in the eye]

Most likely the business or that part of it had closed and those in charge had no idea on how to handle liquidating the assets. They probably thought the micrometers and depth gages had no more value than a stapler or paper punch. The Starrett surface plate? Just a heavy rock to them.

Quite often big businesses are in too big of a hurry to lay off employees than to wind things down in an orderly manner. I blame it on the bean counters.

John

Yep, I was once beneficiary of such a disposal.
Turned down a large genset, easy five figures, perhaps six, in a shipping container because I had no place to store and no way to move. Still kicking myself for not investing the time to figure that one out.

 

[KnurledNut]

A friend of mine sold sheds. Sometimes they would get repo’d with stuff inside. The business secured them and gave the customer the timeframe agreed upon in the contract to collect their items. Everything went to the dump after that. More often than not, they would forfeit their stuff. A lot of garbage, but some gems. I’ve seen some with rolls of brand new Romex where they were wiring it to live in.

 

[welder4956]

I blame it on the bean counters.

Bean counters shouldn't be counting beans if they don't know what the beans look like.

 

[MushCreek]

When my buddy and I had a small shop, we ditched an old fridge that had burnt out (long story). It weighed a metric $hit-ton, and it was all we could do to get it up and into the dumpster. The empty dumpster made a huge BOOM! and we sneaked back into the shop. Literally 3 minutes later, here comes a stumpy little guy with a scrap truck. He got that fridge out of the dumpster by himself! We joked that he could tell the copper content by the sound it made hitting the bottom of the dumpster.

 

[NUTTSGT]

I've watched Mike off and on over the years. I have no doubt, hes a good dude and entertaining. When I first started watching him, he had an older pick up. Last time, he moved up to a newer F150 and one haul had 5400lbs of scrap steel (think heavy equipment parts like track pads).

This video, it appears like he's moved up to a Super Duty, at least on my phone.

He explained one time about the Akro-bins. He finds them all the time and if he took them on every haul, he wouldn't have room for anything else. Now, he leaves them in the dumpsters.

 

[NUTTSGT]

Bean counters shouldn't be counting beans if they don't know what the beans look like.

Or what they are worth....

 

[zendriver]

Had to mute the sound.

I used to find pretty good stuff in CA dumpsters, when I had time to dig through them.

 

[Tynee]

Not sure I'd want to do this for a living.

this is how I feel about it. I suspect he spent the better part of an afternoon in those dumpsters to collect that truck load of scrap, and he's still got time ahead of him to remove the fittings from the hoses and other "clean up." All for what, a couple hundred in scrap? Yeah he did better on this load because of the tools and their value at the pawn shop, but I'd guess most loads are half a day for $100...

 

[NUTTSGT]

this is how I feel about it. I suspect he spent the better part of an afternoon in those dumpsters to collect that truck load of scrap, and he's still got time ahead of him to remove the fittings from the hoses and other "clean up." All for what, a couple hundred in scrap? Yeah he did better on this load because of the tools and their value at the pawn shop, but I'd guess most loads are half a day for $100...

Watch of his videos, hes had some pretty good scores. I think also has a means to flip some of the better stuff.

 

[four.cycle]

^ yeah well... half a day for a C-note is still better than a poke in the eye with a stick. just another young man tryin' to make his way in the world - can't fault him for that. better than the guys standing on street corners with their cardboard signs.
but yeah... lot of effort for not a lot of return.

 

[dchawk81]

^ yeah well... half a day for a C-note is still better than a poke in the eye with a stick. just another young man tryin' to make his way in the world - can't fault him for that. better than the guys standing on street corners with their cardboard signs.
but yeah... lot of effort for not a lot of return.

Right it's not worth it to us but that doesnt mean it's not worth it to him.

I made some of my money when I was younger spending inordinate amounts of time cleaning fixing up and reselling stuff people didnt want.

Would I do it today? No because I make more doing what I do now. But back then I couldn't do what I do now.

 

[gahrajmahal]

We have a nice and clean scrap yard near our house. They routinely run a bobcat broom about the yard so you don’t get flat tires every time you go there. I saw a woman driving an old ambulance one time filled with pop cans, uncrushed in garbage bags so I asked the scrap man if there was money to be made in pop cans. He told me the going rate and I looked up how many cans to make a pound. It was about 30-35 cans. So I made the summer pop can challenge for my grandkids. Two boys -vs-two girls. I told them I’d match the money they made up to $300 to be used for school supplies and clothes.

Well, it was mostly the dads who pushed the kids to sort and crush the cans by stomping on them. Each pair went to the scrap yard with me and a regular load of scrap I end up having. The extra scrap was a bonus. We drove the truck onto the scale and remembered the total weight. Offloaded the regular scrap with the giant cranes grabbing and shifting the giant piles of scrap. Then we drove back to the special metals shack where they weighed the garbage cans full of crushed cans and received the weight ticket.

Then we drove back to the scales to re-weigh the truck. The tension was palpable! Some group mathematics was done. The truck had lost about 220#. Into the payment trailer which is dirty but looks like a bank vault due to the bullet proof glass and slipping my drivers license and weight slips under the glass.

How much will it be???

Around $7.50 for each team! Plus around $15 from the mixed scrap.

So we all had a good laugh and stopped for ice cream on the way back. I gave each kid $50 to get the school year started and thanked them for this little experiment. We have gone back several times just because we love recycling and tossing the stuff onto the giant pile.

 

[Roert42]

Is did math on cans once.

I figured out that if I drank a 30pk of beer a week for a whole year, I’d have enough to buy a $20 case of beer.

Totally worth having trash bags of old beer cans piles up next to the house.


I’ve met guys who drop a couple pieces of gravel in each can before crushing them.

 

[LXCam]

We have a nice and clean scrap yard near our house. They routinely run a bobcat broom about the yard so you don’t get flat tires every time you go there. I saw a woman driving an old ambulance one time filled with pop cans, uncrushed in garbage bags so I asked the scrap man if there was money to be made in pop cans. He told me the going rate and I looked up how many cans to make a pound. It was about 30-35 cans. So I made the summer pop can challenge for my grandkids. Two boys -vs-two girls. I told them I’d match the money they made up to $300 to be used for school supplies and clothes.

Well, it was mostly the dads who pushed the kids to sort and crush the cans by stomping on them. Each pair went to the scrap yard with me and a regular load of scrap I end up having. The extra scrap was a bonus. We drove the truck onto the scale and remembered the total weight. Offloaded the regular scrap with the giant cranes grabbing and shifting the giant piles of scrap. Then we drove back to the special metals shack where they weighed the garbage cans full of crushed cans and received the weight ticket.

Then we drove back to the scales to re-weigh the truck. The tension was palpable! Some group mathematics was done. The truck had lost about 220#. Into the payment trailer which is dirty but looks like a bank vault due to the bullet proof glass and slipping my drivers license and weight slips under the glass.

How much will it be???

Around $7.50 for each team! Plus around $15 from the mixed scrap.

So we all had a good laugh and stopped for ice cream on the way back. I gave each kid $50 to get the school year started and thanked them for this little experiment. We have gone back several times just because we love recycling and tossing the stuff onto the giant pile.

Been there done that far too many times. Copper is one thing, everything else gets left in the alley.

 

[The Cobbler]

Too bad there's not a more effective way of recycling or repurposing

 

[JuncleJohn]

Every so often I will make a pile of misc steel and other metals in front of my house and text someone on CL to come and get it. I used to sell scrap when I was a kid. That was over 50 years ago.

If I needed something to do, I’d sell it myself. At this point in my life, I feel that it’s nice that others have the ambition to come and take it away.

John

 

[Murby]

My wife and I used to go dumpster diving.. We came back with a lot of stuff that I still use around the farm today. I was never interested in scrapping, I was after things I could use. Lots of pipe and electrical supplies, broken laptops I could salvage the 18650 batteries from, angle iron, fasteners, etc.
Found almost 400 canning jars in a dumpster once.. They still had food in them that appeared to have mold and all the tops were rusted. We brought those home, buried the food next to our fruit trees for fertilizer, then gave the canning jars a bath in muriatic acid after several trips through the dishwasher. By the time we were done, they looked brand new again. We still use them today.

Found a torpedo heater that wouldn't run.. Looked almost brand new but for a couple of scratches from being thrown into the dumpster.. A bug had made a nest in the nozzle.. Cleaned it out and it still works perfectly today.

Found an entire crate of keyboards too.. 32 of them in a big box packed in foam.. all brand new. When my keyboard gets dirty these days, I just throw it out and grab another one.

Also found an entire box of Cat5E cable.. Some of that stuff runs through my home to wire up the security cameras.

Probably one of the best finds was from a retail store going out of business.. We found an entire 40 yard dumpster full of gondola shelving.. Good ones.. 4 feet wide, 30 inches deep. Those things are like $60 for each shelf.. We scored so many of those, it took three trips in my truck to bring them back. We chop off the back hooks and just screw them to 2x4's. My entire basement is filled with those things along the walls. You could put an engine block on those shelves and they wouldn't even flex.

Those were good days.. Dumpster diving is a lot of fun and can be quite rewarding. Unfortunately, it has also become quite popular and some people would leave a mess behind them as they emptied out the dumpsters to get what they want and didn't bother picking up after themselves. Businesses complain, then the cops start doing routine checks. It's always the a-holes that ruin it for everyone.

Looking back.. of all the supplies I scored, I probably saved myself somewhere around $10,000.

 

[dchawk81]

Every so often I will make a pile of misc steel and other metals in front of my house and text someone on CL to come and get it. I used to sell scrap when I was a kid. That was over 50 years ago.

If I needed something to do, I’d sell it myself. At this point in my life, I feel that it’s nice that others have the ambition to come and take it away.

John

I'm about ready to do that with an old car. Free for the hauling. It's not worth selling and I don't have my trailer or dolly anymore.

 

[NUTTSGT]

My wife and I used to go dumpster diving..

Also found an entire box of Cat5E cable.. Some of that stuff runs through my home to wire up the security cameras.



Looking back.. of all the supplies I scored, I probably saved myself somewhere around $10,000.

Mike The Scavenger found a dumpster full of Cat5E a while back. He got two pick up loads out of that along with some other equipment. I think his haul for all the wire was like $1800.

If a video ever comes up on my feed, I usually watch him, just for the sake of thinking how much is tossed and what side cash you could make. I think he has a good route he follows in a major city. I don't think it's just random dumpster diving.

 

[Beerhippie]

Oregon was the first--or one of the first--states to institute a Bottle Bill (1971)--mandatory returns on beverage bottles and cans. It started at $0.05/container. Since the surrounding states did not have mandatory return laws, we'd finance our road trips when near the borders by dumpster diving at the rest areas along the highways. We'd usually pay for gas AND have enough left over for pie and ice cream.

The refund on beverage containers is now up to $0.10/per. Does this law work? Drive across the Oregon/Idaho or Oregon/Washington border and you can tell me. It's rare to see a can or bottle along the roads in Oregon, but common in those two states, despite Washington having charming signs informing you that "LITTER AND IT WILL HURT". Whenever I see one of those signs, I envision a couple of gigantic cops hauling a guy out of his rig and beating the **** out of him beside the road. "Gotta set an example, buddy".

As a very young man, I spend a season at Grand Canyon NP, working whatever jobs I could find and as a volunteer for the NPS (that got me housing). For spending money, I'd dumpster dive for cans (bottle were not sold in the park). Once again, the park had a return on all cans sold within the park and the surrounding communities didn't. I'd usually haul in $20-50 in a morning's work--that was real money in '78!

In my freshman high school year, I got a gig recovering silver from medical X-rays. Back then, the X-rays were taken on large--20X30" (?) negatives. I could process a hundred or so pounds of those in a day and harvest an ounce or so of silver--at $8/oz. Probably cost more to dispose of all the acetate sheets, but it beat pickin' berries and beans. No, I don't recall the process, but it was pretty simple with household chemicals. Probably a YouTube vid on it these days.

We do things sometimes out of necessity that don't seem to pencil out--if you have a real job.

 

[Murby]

Mike The Scavenger found a dumpster full of Cat5E a while back. He got two pick up loads out of that along with some other equipment. I think his haul for all the wire was like $1800.

If a video ever comes up on my feed, I usually watch him, just for the sake of thinking how much is tossed and what side cash you could make. I think he has a good route he follows in a major city. I don't think it's just random dumpster diving.

I pulled out one big box with a 1000 feet of the stuff.. It was partly used (I think).. maybe 950 feet left or something like that. Still a lifetime supply for me. I've run that stuff through my entire house to every room from the main 24 port POE switch in the basement. Cameras, printers, desktops, barn, solar inverters, etc.

The box is still 1/2 full or more.

Jeez.. I can't even remember all the stuff we scored dumpster diving.. so much of it, I can only remember things that stick out in my memory.
Also, not all of it was from dumpsters. Sometimes we'd pick good stuff out of the pile of garbage in front of people's homes on garbage day. We wouldn't intentionally stop to rummage through residential garbage, I didn't want to creep anyone out.. but if I saw something I wanted sitting in view as I drove by, we'd stop and grab it.
Lots of garden hoses.. apparently, people don't know that the end of the hose has a replaceable rubber washer.. so when they start leaking, they just throw them out. Nearly brand new hoses in perfect condition sitting in a pile of garbage because the homeowner is an idiot.

It is disturbing how much stuff ends up in the garbage.

 

[four.cycle]

Washington having charming signs informing you that "LITTER AND IT WILL HURT".

Virtually zero enforcement.
Our freeway corridors look like garbage dumps.
Even in the National Park - cans and bottles and junk all up and down the roadsides.

Worst I ever saw, though, was on Oa'hu when I walked up and around the Tantalus loop just above Honolulu. There's a huge pull-out area at the top, where an 18-inch-high stone wall runs along the outer perimeter or the pull-out.
I jumped up onto it for a great view of the valley spread out below. Directly beneath me, on the outboard side of the stone wall, the plastic bottles and the aluminum cans were piled up over two feet deep - the entire length of that wall (maybe 300 feet.)
No recyling program in Hawai'i.
And "bottle bills" here are regularly defeated by drink manufacturers.

 

[milkovich]

I'm guessing that beyond the pain in the **** (labor) of selling a bunch of $100 tools, they have to pay taxes on the depreciation recapture or whatever so it's easier to throw them in the bin or give them to the employees rather than having a garage sale. If it was a 100,000 machine worth 20k, then it might be worth finding a used equipment dealer to take it off your hands but not for a surface plate and some depth gauges.

 

[American Locomotive]

The whole video is worth watching, but the theme starts at 2:55.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know the value of the Starrett surface plate and left it behind. :-(

I don't think that plate really has that much value, unfortunately. Used surface plates don't go for very much, especially if they haven't been calibrated recently. I don't think "dumpster grade surface plate" is going to attract many buyers outside a hobbyist machinist who wants something sorta-kinda-flat.

We have a nice and clean scrap yard near our house. They routinely run a bobcat broom about the yard so you don’t get flat tires every time you go there. I saw a woman driving an old ambulance one time filled with pop cans, uncrushed in garbage bags so I asked the scrap man if there was money to be made in pop cans. He told me the going rate and I looked up how many cans to make a pound. It was about 30-35 cans. So I made the summer pop can challenge for my grandkids. Two boys -vs-two girls. I told them I’d match the money they made up to $300 to be used for school supplies and clothes.

Well, it was mostly the dads who pushed the kids to sort and crush the cans by stomping on them. Each pair went to the scrap yard with me and a regular load of scrap I end up having. The extra scrap was a bonus. We drove the truck onto the scale and remembered the total weight. Offloaded the regular scrap with the giant cranes grabbing and shifting the giant piles of scrap. Then we drove back to the special metals shack where they weighed the garbage cans full of crushed cans and received the weight ticket.

Then we drove back to the scales to re-weigh the truck. The tension was palpable! Some group mathematics was done. The truck had lost about 220#. Into the payment trailer which is dirty but looks like a bank vault due to the bullet proof glass and slipping my drivers license and weight slips under the glass.

How much will it be???

Around $7.50 for each team! Plus around $15 from the mixed scrap.

So we all had a good laugh and stopped for ice cream on the way back. I gave each kid $50 to get the school year started and thanked them for this little experiment. We have gone back several times just because we love recycling and tossing the stuff onto the giant pile.

Shoulda' fenced them over the border in Michigan - would have been worth about $770!

 

[lotus_esprit]

Local business near me scrapped a two year old Yamaha F115 outboard in its shipping crate which was stored in one of their units which they had arranged to rent out at short notice. Too much hassle to sell it so got dumped. I bought it off one of their employees for a nominal mount.