I actually almost bought a 12' X 25' culvert earlier this year. The problem was that, the day before I was going to buy it, I called and found that the clearance for most bridges and utility lines is 13'6. The deck of my trailer is 30" tall. Add that to the 12' tall culvert and I figure I wouldn't have made it home!
Unless you have a use for them, the culverts are pretty well worthless. The metal is heavily coated and most scrap companies won't even take them; let alone pay you for them. Most I've seen lately have been coated not only with a rust preventative, but also coated with a thick black, tar like, coating. The one I was going to buy had an "anti-fungal" and "anti-bacterial" agent in that black coating. It was supposed to prevent algae and stuff from growing to it. I have no clue if it works or not.
I have the unpleasant task of replacing a 10' culvert under my driveway sometime in the next ten years or so. It was not coated in any way, but is 3/8" thick steel. My guess is that it's 40 to 50 years old now. I doubt it's still 3/8 thick everywhere now. I can't decide whether to spend the big bucks and build a bridge, put in concrete box culverts, or put in a new coated (and permanent - for my life) culvert. I need to span about 20 feet wide and 10 feet in depth. Right now my 10' culvert is a sort of bottle neck in the creek. However, only twice in 20 years has the creek gone over the culvert. And then it went through the two 'emergency' overflow side culverts I put in to relieve pressure if the creek ever was to get that high. Now, what to do...?
The longer I wait, the higher steel prices get.
