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Today Ray surprised me with a totally cool video – he took his camera with him on a trip to the scrap yard. We go to a lot of different scrap yards in the area – this one happens to be near our house and they pay pretty well.
One of the things to note about this video is Ray was recycling pretty much what is considered to be “shredder/mixed” scrap metal – this is the type that sticks to a magnet and contains iron.
This type of metal does not pay very well, so you can have a lot of it and not get as much for it as you would for the higher-priced metals. The good news however is this type of metal doesn’t require a lot of time to sell, as you don’t really have to sort it or strip much and you can simply just load it up into your truck and unload it in the pile in the scrap yard.
Payout at the scrap yard is all by weight, so it doesn’t look like all that much, but considering this isn’t even a half-ton, it’s not too bad of a haul.
Here’s the Trip to the Scrap Yard Video:
I think this is one of Ray’s coolest videos – it’s so fun and interesting to watch, especially if you’ve never been to a scrap yard before!
For Ray, this was actually a pretty small load of things. Here’s the size of the load he took to the scrapyard to sell:
It was about a half truckload – a little over 900 lbs of metal there! This actually is a pretty small trip for us, but we wanted to have the truck empty for the weekend.
Here’s some cool shots of the junk at the scrap yard:
And, the best part is we got a couple of really cool photos from the video – I might seriously frame these and put on the wall one of these days!
This one below shows “The Claw” lol…{I think I may have watched too much Toy Story with the kids over the years, lol…}
Here’s all our metal in the pile:
And you know, the best part – making money 🙂
{Yeah, I blurred out the receipt photo – don’t want to be publishing our address & Ray’s license # everywhere all over the internet – INTERNET SAFETY BASICS 101 here kids!}
Since this wasn’t the “good metals” we only made about $57 – but still not too shabby considering it only took him about 30 minutes to get it all loaded up and unloaded at the scrap yard.
What to Expect at the Scrap Yard
So, some takeaways from the video on what you can expect to experience at the Scrap Yard near you:
- It’s a busy and sometimes hectic place. Pay attention!
- Make sure you have your ID if it’s your first visit and they don’t already have you in their customer database- they’ll need this for tax and security purposes.
- Wear protective clothing & safety gear – metal is sharp and heavy – no one wants squashed toes or need a tetanus shot afterwards!
- If you don’t have precious metals that need inspected or verified, you basically drive on up to the scale, make a note of your weight when entering, then unload the metal and get weighed on the way back out.
- It’s a good idea to keep track of what you do in some sort of journal or log, that way you can see your progress plus have it handy as reference.
At any rate, this will give you an idea at least what you might expect if you ever decide to go on a trip to the scrap yard yourself someday – just remember to be aware of your surroundings at all times, courteous to others who are there as it can be a pretty busy place, and use common sense with safety – steel toe boots, gloves, protective clothes, safety goggle glasses, etc.
Want to learn how to recycle scrap metal? Check out our post on How to Make Money Recycling Scrap Metal to get started!