Is collecting metals (iron/aluminum/copper/etc) and selling them by the tons as scrap a good business?

Is collecting metals (iron/aluminum/copper/etc) and selling them by the tons as scrap a good business?

holy shit an actual thread?

This thread makes me nostalgic for the old Veeky Forums.

idk if you come up with a cheap purification method after smelting then propably yeah. if not you don't get much €/kg because the metal isn't very pure and as such can't be easily re-used

Low barrier of entry, saturated market, heavy competition.

If you have a pickup, put out some scrap removal ads/flyers (they seem to be popular in grocery and convenience stores around here).

oh and you absolutely have to scrape/burn the metal clean from any plastics/etc and sell just the metal and nothing else, otherwise you just listen to complaints forever

It's terrible. I did it for a while. It's decent if you can scrap a ton of shit/rob old sites, but the shit is so so heavy compared to it's value.

You can fill up a whole cab of a truck, waste gas picking up random scrap of craigslist and walk away with like 50 bucks.

ive never seen a wealthy scrap collector.
they are all dirty hobos with rusty trucks.

the one making real money is the guy who buys the scrap and melts/recycels it.
the scrapyard owner here has scrap worth millions at his companys yard

The thing is, i've got three dudes with experience in the subject telling me about how they can make a ton of mad cash with that business, but they can't due to them being foreigners and since i'm a local i could start my own company with them as employees, so i'm asking just to be sure if i should really go ahead and do it.

>three dudes
dont get scammed user

metal trader here. the best pay for pound is copper but everyone is in it. aluminum cans are surprisingly valuable with 20 tons (a container full) being about $25000. also consider high grade plastics which go for about $15000 per container and has few people gathering

also ignore ferrous there is no money there outside of massive economies of scale

How should i go if i want to start from scratch?

Got some capital, but not a big one.

HOW DO I BECOME A SCRAPYARD OWNER

I process a lot of aluminum, and sell about 10k lbs of scrap a year. Anyone who generates a decent amount gets free pick up from the local scrap yard anyway, so there is no real reason to have a middle man.

buy a piece of land, a crane, an oven, truck scale and just wait for hobos to supply you with cheap raw metals

So here's the best way to do this ..

Sources:
craigslist ads
flyers
contact foreclosure cleanout companies
appliance/home improvement stores
commercial contractors


Collect:
all metals
appliances
computers and electronics

You'll have to break everything down. If you want the real money, you'll need to salvage what you can and sell on ebay or amazon. You can literally part out an entire appliance and sell the parts on amazon. Or just resell the appliances to landlords on the cheap if they work.

Computers and electronics can be disassembled and sold to scrap yards. If you take the ram out of a shit ton of computers, you can sell that ram on ebay if you get about 5 pounds of them.

You also need to separate out the non-iron metals like copper, brass, and aluminum. But I'm sure you already knew that.

This. The only way to make money is through copper (good luck finding that in large enough quantities) and truckloads of steel.
I used to work for an old guy that made a business out of it. Basically, he would find old houses and industrial properties then buy them, then demolish everything and take the scrap metals to his yard, then sell the property. Then he'd go through the scrap. I used to load a bunch of old engines and other metalic shit into containers, after separating the different metals of course. I remember cutting and burning those 5 inch thick copper wires which I have no idea where he got, but I staffed 2 barrels full of copper in one day. I think he sold each barrel for 2k.

>has scrap worth millions at his companys yard
But it just sits there

>Computers and electronics can be disassembled and sold to scrap yards

But you can make more money selling to collectors and hipsters. I seen people scrap old Unix systems (SGI and Sun Microsystems) and people still buy this stuff.

Plus dont forget the Winfags that are into retro gaming. They will eat up and thing from a 286 to P4 systems.

Some factories will buy old 486 systems to replace computers for their older macchines because paying $100-$300 for an old 486 is cheaper then replacing a $50000 to $500000 machine.

This is were scrapers fail because most of them are dumb rednecks that go around busting old crt tvs open for dem coppers.

cant process all at once. and hes probably waiting for higher prices and just sells as little as he has to

vintage electronics are hella expensive.
onld sony walkman? 300$ easy
Magnetic tape recording machine? better save up 1000 bucks

if you're anything like Are Nige, it'll propel you into a lucurative career in politics

So, you have 3 mexicans trying to get you to pay them to gather scrap metal. Tell them they will only get paid when you get paid for a shipment of metal and see how eager they are.

>vintage electronics are hella expensive.
onld sony walkman? 300$ easy
Magnetic tape recording machine? better save up 1000 bucks

Damn, I have a fortune sitting in my garage.

Absolutely. Ignore anything ferrous. It's market value is dirt cheap, and it's (relatively) expensive in time and resources to refine it back to usable steel / iron.

Not worth the effort for anything below industrial scale recycling.

Copper and lead are ok, but once again, anything at a large enough scale to make worthwhile 'profit' is being done by the contractors using the materials initially to recoup some cost.

If you had land you could use as a "dump" for other people to deposit unwanted metal, you might get some cash from it. Other than that, don't bother. Time / yield doesn't make sense compared to other quick schemes.

better sell those quick and invest in RDD