what would this be worth.......

[mx842]

I have connections at a large plant that lets me know when they are about to scrap medal, parts and old equipment. I told him I would take any kind of medal that if I couldn't use it for something I could pile it up and when I got enough I could just scrap it. You wouldn't believe the stuff they throw away. I get all kinds of flat plate, bar stock, alum and SS beams. Most of the beams are shorts up to 10 feet but the other day he calls me to tell me to get down there fast. I didn't ask any questions I just hooked up the trailer and headed down to the plant. It seems someone had ordered a load of SS beams and box tube for a job and it cost more for the few pieces they needed than it was for them to make a minimum order. So they used what they needed for the job and was going to scrap the rest.

My buddy and another guy was going to split what was left, half and half and when I got there I was looking at these two beautiful 20' long 316L SS I beams and a 20' section of 4" X 9" box tube that had 1/2" sidewalls that was also 316L SS. I didn't know what I was going to do with it but I had to have it......... it was just to pretty to let them throw in the scrap bin.

Then the next day he calls to tell me to come back down, that the other guy decided he didn't want to mess with it because it needed to be gone to fast for him to be able to get it out of the yard in time so I got the other three pieces too. I don't really have a need for the beams but I could probably use the box tube someday.

What I would like to do is sell them to someone to help pay for some of the materials needed to finish my shop but I don't know who I might go to, to find out what something like this would be worth. I know the company paid over $14,000.00 for the load and they didn't use half of it for the job. I'm not looking to get full market price out of it but I would like to get enough to make it worth my time and to cover what I had to pay for it....basically scrap price.

Anybody have any ideas what to ask for it and who might I go to to sell it other than a scrap yard?

 

[srmofo]

Cant help you with your question, but how in the hell does someone order $14k worth of material for a job where only half is needed and the rest is going to be scrapped without losing their job?

My guess is going to be that you are going to have a very hard time trying to sell those to anyone except the original customers for anything more than the cost of scrap. Thats a pretty unique piece of metal.

 

[Kevin54]

Cant help you with your question, but how in the hell does someone order $14k worth of material for a job where only half is needed and the rest is going to be scrapped without losing their job?

My guess is going to be that you are going to have a very hard time trying to sell those to anyone except the original customers for anything more than the cost of scrap. Thats a pretty unique piece of metal.

^^^^This right here^^^^

Also, even if you took it to a scrap yard to sell it for scrap, you may get questioned about where you got it and how.

But on the other hand.....YOU ****!!!!

If I were you, look at what pieces like that go for through a place like Speedy Metals and some of the other places that cater to hobbyist. Cut the pieces up into one foot lengths and in six inch lengths and sell it that way. You will make more money selling it to hobbyist than you will trying to sell a complete 20' length or even a 10' length. Not a lot of people out there that want to build something like a rotisserie, gantry crane, engine stand, out of stainless and pay the price. But a hobbyist on the other hand can use small pieces to build anything from small engines, small tools, and so on and would like a good deal on some 316 SS.

Oh yea.....and YOU **** again!!!!!

I must live in the dead zone of Ohio because everyone it seems gets great deals except around here

 

[Strouty]

Last time I scrapped stainless it was 50 cents a pound for prepared (4' lengths or smaller). I am sure it is worth a lot of money to the right person, but you have to find that person. Good luck and as Kevin said….. YOU ****!

 

[justanengineer]

Just my $0.02, but if youre getting hundreds, much less thousands of dollars worth of material with any regularity I would be VERY discreet regardless of how you dispose of it. Odds are plant or higher management is going to get wind of it eventually and somebody very well could wind up in handcuffs for theft. If youre not lucky it could be you, and the excuse "they said it was FREE" doesnt work when common sense says somethings majorly wrong/crooked unless youve got something in writing. The plant I work at doesnt make too much scrap, but we make it regularly so we get a better price for it than Bubba's scrapping and the local yard picks it up free of charge as well.

 

[G_P]

Something seems very fishy. Most plants and factories that make scrap have a dumpster on site that is picked up regularly by a scrapyard. They dont just give it away to random people since they can make good money on it.

Scrapping those brand new SS beams is going to throw up red flags at any honest scrapyard as nobody would scrap out thousands of dollars of unused metal for pennies on the dollar.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

A buddy of mine, was given an ice cream packing line, that was just replaced for a new kind of ice cream container. He had to load it all from their parking lot, put it on his trailer, drove it to the local recycler, left with a check for just under $4500. Id call that a good days work. Hes not a scrapper, but knew someone in the maintenance department, who said to him "hey do you know what to do with our used equipment, come take it if you want..."

 

[sethmo]

Sounds awful fishy to me too. I work for a steel foundry, so any scrap metal gets remelted or reused somehow, but they control everything else that goes out of the plant very tightly.

I do get access to used pallets and wooden boxes we get from raw material shipments though.

 

[Busted_Knuckles]

If a plant is not producing constant scrap (as in taking bids for a roll off), I see it being given away to get it out of the way. I know a guy locally, that buys machines, he gets paid to haul off scrap material too, as well as scrap machines. Sweet heart deal for him, no doubt, but hes prompt and gets it gone fast.

I used to run a place that filled 2 roll offs a day of scrap, I had recyclers fighting over it. But for those places that dont produces scrap daily, I can see where scrap of value can get "tossed". While it may seem like big $ to some of us, its in the way for them, they just want it gone.

 

[mx842]

Big companies don't look at things the same as real people do. This company orders parts for each job they do and the customer pays for it. When they order product especially if it is something they don't use a lot of it is cheaper to order 8 pc than it is to order just one or two so they buy it how ever they can get it the cheapest. In this case the beams and tube they specified (probably and odd ball size) needed to be special ordered or was a special run and needed to be made to order. To do a run it cost X number of dollars weather it is one piece or ten so they just made the minimum order.

They don't care about the waste they are just building a product that some engineer drew up plans for. The customer don't care because they are getting something they wanted built that came in under the projected price they figured it to be. The medal is junk to them and would cost them too much money to try to go out and sell it. They are in the manufacturing business not the steel business. They have a contract salvage contractor that picks up the containers once or twice a week and they don't care either because all they do is pick it up and sort it out and send it to who ever is paying the highest price.

Talking about sucking, you ought to see the stuff that gets tossed into those containers like the 100' long 75' wide travel crane they tossed out because one of the big wiggs didn't like the safety yellow it was painted. He liked blue, and he kept picking at it until one day in an OSHA inspection they noted a frayed power cord going to one of the winches and that was good enough of a reason for him to junk it. One of the winches that was on the thing had just been replaced to the tune of over $20,000. One day while I was there one of the 20' containers was brimming full of stainless steel, nuts, bolts, washers in ever size known to man. A lot of them were still wrapped in the bulk wrapping they came in the plant with. It's nothing to see these beautiful lift tables that will lift 10,000 lbs. Most are 12 to 15' long and 5' to 10' wide with solid SS or Aluminum plate 2 or 3" thick for the table top. I've gotten several of them but what the heck can you do with 5 or 6 welding tables? I got most of them just for the hydraulic systems and scrapped the rest.

 

[leadfootloon]

He paid scrape price on the SS. Holly cow guys read the hole story.

 

[Kevin54]

Big companies don't look at things the same as real people do. This company orders parts for each job they do and the customer pays for it. When they order product especially if it is something they don't use a lot of it is cheaper to order 8 pc than it is to order just one or two so they buy it how ever they can get it the cheapest.

This is true. The only difference between MX and the company i worked for was that our company was kind of prickish about things. They were afraid that if they sold something and someone got hurt, that would open the doors for a potential lawsuit.

The other thing was that a lot of our machines ran chuckers. The minimum scrap length of the chuckers was three feet. Any shorter than that and they couldn't run it in a chucker. Also when a job is bid on, and a lot of jobs were government jobs, and the majority of our jobs were Boeing, but when bid, the scrap 3' was also included. So in a nutshell, Boeing owned that 3' of material. Boeing did not want it because they don't run material, but we also couldn't use it to make a part for, let's say Embraer. So what happens then, it gets scrapped. We could use the material to make tooling out of the scrap barrel, but we couldn't use it to make a customer part. It would bring tears to your eyes to see the tonnage of material at inventory time. And then you add in 5S, and the fact that the company would not let anyone buy or have anything, and it would REALLY make you cry. When the company started 5S'ing, just for instance....Fire Cabinets.....No one was allowed to have one, but there were maybe three or four roll-offs of Fire Cabinets. Machines were sold for pennies on the dollar. It was not uncommon to see one or two of the deep long roll-offs removed and two empties brought in, only to have the same thing happen the next day. The chrome wire racks that you can buy that are on wheels....dumpsters full of brand new ones thrown away, and yet we weren't allowed to buy them.

We definitely are a wasteful country when it comes to certain things. I know that the scrap dealers that picked the items up made a shitload of money. One reason too is that our scrap had to be identified. So we had 55 gallon drums setting everywhere and at almost every machine. Barrels of aluminum, cold rolled, brass, copper, titanium....it was all very neatly separated into separate drums and picked up.

 

[gorilla]

Not knowing what size the I beam is it's possible that you have the makings of a really nice dock.

 

[Perrorojo]

Saying Big Companies don't look at things the same way isn't entirely correct. Speaking as a person who runs a purchasing department for a large company, I will tell you that someone there is paid to keep waste to a minimum. Every single piece of material has value to that company. If they don't see that then they won't be around long or they survive on gov't contracts. I have hoppers for steel, contaminated steel, alluminum, plastic, bare wire, insulated wire, cardboard, lumber and trash. Our trash generates 30k a month. You might want to verify it's ok to be taking the stuff because it sounds to me like someone is having you take it to cover their mistakes.

Quite a few companies have proffesional "Dumpster Divers" that get a percentage of what they save.

 

[CARS]

At work I can buy the scrap steel, stainless, and other odds and ends (alternators, transmissions, etc) for .12 a lb.

I love it and have been accumulating one hell of a collection for future projects.

If I was closer I would buy that 4"x9" SS tube from you. Upgrade my English Wheel frame to a Polished SS frame!!!

Oh ya. YOU DO ****! Some people have all the luck

 

[Stooge]

We have one guy at my work im friends with, whos been there a good 25+ yrs, who is basically the go to for whatever scrap we happen to be junking. a whole lot of machined aluminum, decent amount of stainless, etc. and i know he's told me when he goes to scrap maybe once a month or so, he usually takes home $1500 or so. where most of this is machined stuff, the cost can range from $50 a piece to several hundered dollars depending on the size, but its more important to the company to not have junk lying around or wasting time to get it remachined than what the initial cost of the part was. i wouldnt be worrying about picking up scrap.
my previous role in the company was heading a electromechanical and biomedical test fixtures dept, and with no more than 6 people in the department, we had a $500,000a year write off/ scrap account that we could dump stuff into and i never once heard anyone ever ask about anything that was in there. on the flip side, we have buyers who desperately try and squeeze a vendor out of an extra $6 out of a several hundred dollar part.

 

[CodyY]

I work for a small(ish) fab shop. 8 guys.

**** doesnt hit the bin till its under 2 foot long.

What the hell does Joe Blow do with that SS tube?

 

[Kracin]

Saying Big Companies don't look at things the same way isn't entirely correct. Speaking as a person who runs a purchasing department for a large company, I will tell you that someone there is paid to keep waste to a minimum. Every single piece of material has value to that company. If they don't see that then they won't be around long or they survive on gov't contracts. I have hoppers for steel, contaminated steel, alluminum, plastic, bare wire, insulated wire, cardboard, lumber and trash. Our trash generates 30k a month. You might want to verify it's ok to be taking the stuff because it sounds to me like someone is having you take it to cover their mistakes.

Quite a few companies have proffesional "Dumpster Divers" that get a percentage of what they save.

not every place pays to keep waste to a minimum if the cost of employing that persons hours to do that job cost more than the amount they get out of the scrapped material, etc.

where i worked before, a ductile iron pipe plant, they used 0 non-ferrous metal in their pipe, too much would cause lots of problems in the makeup of the metal so they had to have it sorted before the scrap came in, but it was never to a minimum. they also re-used their old iron overflow (pig iron), and didn't want any extra non ferrous metal in it as well.

so any time people had spare time, they would go out to the scrap pile and sift through huge piles of metal scrap looking for copper tube, wire, armatures, etc. anything at all nonferrous that was some value to be scrapped. and they got to take it for free, the company got to remove metal they didn't want at the charge of just the scrap price, and people did it on their lunch and break time essentially free of charge to the company.

but on the maintenance team we had it even b etter, because the same rules applied to us, but we got to take home loads and loads of copper because they didn't want the stuff ending up in the scrap pile at the end of the day, if just 3-4 gaskets ended up in the scrap pile it would cost them a ridiculous amount of lost time in dumping out that entire cupola of iron and reloading, pouring, testing, getting the batch consistency right, downtime with machines, lost labor. etc. so they allowed us to take everything as long as it didn't end up in the wrong place.

mechanics were able to take home 4-500 every 3 months or so in scrap copper, brass ball valves, etc. and in return the company had much cleaner pipe makeup, and didn't have to employ 3 different people full time just to sift through scrap piles by hand, and walk around the plant 8 hours a day checking every single scrap hopper nonstop making sure nothing was in there that shouldn't be. over the long run they saved money and labor, and the employees that wanted to make a little extra, could.

 

[Perrorojo]

. and in return the company had much cleaner pipe makeup, and didn't have to employ 3 different people full time just to sift through scrap piles by hand, and walk around the plant 8 hours a day checking every single scrap hopper nonstop making sure nothing was in there that shouldn't be. over the long run they saved money and labor, and the employees that wanted to make a little extra, could.

Keeping hoppers clean and seperating material is the responsibility of the production staff and receiving group. We don't pay a person or persons to babysit the line. But you can bet if I, or any of the Purchasing group find material in the wrong hopper, it's getting dumped and sorted.

 

[mx842]

Saying Big Companies don't look at things the same way isn't entirely correct. Speaking as a person who runs a purchasing department for a large company, I will tell you that someone there is paid to keep waste to a minimum. Every single piece of material has value to that company. If they don't see that then they won't be around long or they survive on gov't contracts. I have hoppers for steel, contaminated steel, alluminum, plastic, bare wire, insulated wire, cardboard, lumber and trash. Our trash generates 30k a month. You might want to verify it's ok to be taking the stuff because it sounds to me like someone is having you take it to cover their mistakes.

Quite a few companies have proffesional "Dumpster Divers" that get a percentage of what they save.

Nawh... As I said they got paid for the material and basically what it boils down to is this material for this job cost the same thing for one piece as it did for 10. Can you understand min. order?

And you are right they don't want people diving in the scrap containers because of safety issues and insurance claims. They don't mind if some employees sits something off on the side for their own use as long as the floor manager knows about it.......but you have to ask the right manager because some of those guys are real dicks and they act like it's their money. They don't want the stuff they just don't want anyone else to have it either. All I know is that I would kill to get the salvage contract for that place....I could retire in fine shape in just a couple years.

 

[ScurvyPete]

Cant help you with your question, but how in the hell does someone order $14k worth of material for a job where only half is needed and the rest is going to be scrapped without losing their job?

You have obviously never spent any time around a coal mine.
"Lean manufacturing" is not a term in their vocabulary.

 

[bwane]

honest scrapyard

hahaha you said 'honest scrapyard' hahaha
are you gonna be here all week? should we try the veal?

 

[ChevyEFI]

I know someone who:
Worked for a shop

Said shop:
used a lot of aluminum
used all new material on a job, even if a perfectly good and 100% new piece was going to scrap; scrapping all leftovers.

It took him a few years, but he finally got his foot in the door as the aluminum scrap guy too. He's moving at least a 5'x10' trailer out weekly.

Good for him.