Do scrapyards still take scrap ?

[bontai_Joe]

Last July I was quoted $7.50 per 100 pounds on junk cars, I had my old truck (Dodge Dakota) towed in with the bed full of misc. scrap metal in late Oct. and got $4 per hundred. After paying the tow truck, I cleared $60, not what I had planned. I still have an old car in my yard, and it's a lot lighter than the truck, so with today's prices, I'd loose money after paying for the tow, unless I find a bargain tow truck service. I've got around 500 pound of aluminum, and maybe 100 pounds of copper and brass, and I'm gonna sit on it for a while. My local yard is still taking metal, but I don't know for how long as his piles are getting pretty big.

 

[varmint]

Just visited a recycling yard over on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, found the 4 6' long pieces of heavywall alum. sq. tube I needed, for $1 a pound. I was happy to dig thru the mass of scrap aluminum to find just what I needed at a cheap price. They buy metal scrap, but I don't know what they pay. I do know that clean scrap brass (from manufacturing) is worth $4 pound, in quantity.

 

[pickstock]

well in australia its the same prices were high and now there nothng abnd they don't even tak old cars like what weve got =(

mums not getting a christmas girft this year
spke

 

[Scooby074]

I had a small car picked up today all i got was $25 down from around $70.

 

[California]

... financial planner/ investment guru ... claimed that he has always watched the scrap metals markets very closely and used it as one of the best indicators for not only certain sectors but for the general economy. ... His theory is that material needs are a direct indication of how much business certain sectors will be doing and an excellent forecaster of the near future economic trends.

Ok, a data point from Northern California. This was in the paper a week ago.

A scrap paper/cardboard exporter said the price he was getting from China, for material that would be turned into cardboard boxes, dropped suddenly. Then the China importer said don't ship any more.

This guy has no market and his stockpile of huge bales is growing like crazy. (I think his source is landfill-diversion recycling from the county, all free to him, and they deliver bales to him whether he wants it or not.)

He said this is the first time in 23 years that there is no market for waste paper at all. His theory is that imports from China have nearly halted, so they don't need any packing material to send stuff over.

I don't think we are anywhere near the bottom of this market.

 

[JSharp]

Ok, a data point from Northern California. This was in the paper a week ago.

A scrap paper/cardboard exporter said the price he was getting from China, for material that would be turned into cardboard boxes, dropped suddenly. Then the China importer said don't ship any more.

This guy has no market and his stockpile of huge bales is growing like crazy. (I think his source is landfill-diversion recycling from the county, all free to him, and they deliver bales to him whether he wants it or not.)

He said this is the first time in 23 years that there is no market for waste paper at all. His theory is that imports from China have nearly halted, so they don't need any packing material to send stuff over.

I don't think we are anywhere near the bottom of this market.

From 3 weeks ago. An article about the port at Long Beach being flooded with cars and cardboard -

There has also been a sharp drop in demand for the ports' single largest export: recycled cardboard and paper products.

This material typically goes to China, where it is used to make boxes for new electronics and other products that are sent back to the United States. But Chinese factories reacting to sharply falling demand are slowing production, so they need less cardboard. Tons of paper are piling up recycling businesses around the port, the detritus of economies on hold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/b...op/News/World/Countries and Territories/China

I don't think we're near the bottom either. After the crash of '29 it was about 3 years until the market bottomed. Anyone ready to see the Dow at 6500?

 

[Knotbored]

Alternative energy?
How about burning that cardboard in coal-fured boiler plants to produce cheap energy and melt down the cars into ingots to sell to tractor manufacturers.

 

[Renze]

How about burning that cardboard in coal-fured boiler plants to produce cheap energy and melt down the cars into ingots to sell to tractor manufacturers.

Problem is that cardboard combustion temperatures arent high enough to melt steel- and the tractor manufacturers can get ingots cheap too because the demand for them is inherent to the low scrap demand...

 

[charlz]

Some years back I worked for a company that made onboard systems for trucks. Trash companies were a market segment. I was onsite at a trash company where they were the service company for a county trash contract. The county was mandated to collect cardboard in separate bins as part of the recycling program. They were bringing it in, baling it and hauling it to the landfill. I was like they said there was no market at the moment and the fire laws (or maybe insurance) wouldn't let them stockpile very much so they just went through the motions. They got paid to pick it up via the contract with the county whether there was a market for it or not. Probably some of that going on right now.

 

[tractorman99]

Metal prices


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