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At my local scrap yard yesterday selling off some things as I do normally, when I saw a small stack of school laptops sitting on a table next to the scrap scales. I ended up in the office talking to the lady at the desk asking what they did with their computers, printers, tablets, phones, etc. She said they purchase as shred steel...
I asked her if they ever sell any materials to individuals verses other scrap yards or wherever they sell to and she said she wasn't really sure and would have to ask about it. I told her I would want to buy possibly anything related to computers including monitors, laptops, desktops, projectors, servers, etc.

She said that if I were able to, it'd probably cost me $500/ton ($0.25/lb) to buy from them...

Do you guys think that $500/ton is a good deal for e-waste or should I try to negotiate the price down & if so, to what amount? Right now, I know they are buying shred steel from customers for $150/ton ($0.075/lb) so @ $500/ton ($0.25/lb) that is obviously more than triple what they give for it...

Let me know what you think, this is the first time I've ever offered to be interested in buying scrap from anyone and I feel like I should try getting the buy price down maybe around $360/ton ($0.18/lb) but I have no facts to base that off of or anything... Not sure what I should do in this situation.

Thanks

It'll depend on the mix of stuff they get, take a look at the whole system and teardown sections of the price list here for a general idea of how much stuff is worth in scrap before taking them apart. If they're okay at 25¢/lb you'll probably be just fine. And if you bring the metals back to them then you're getting some of that back (minus gas/time) from them.

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Here to learn more so I can recycle more
My grades are my own opinion and not an official grade from Boardsort

Take into account your distance from boardsort and shipping price too. I have to send ltl freight to make decent money from here. Also how much plastic, low/mid grade boards are going to be in the material and what your yard pays for the other metals that are in it.

Ill add in the new bump to 60 cents a pound on low and midgrade helps out alot. I pack my pallet with apple boxes sorted by grade. The bottom 2 or 3 layers are all 50 to 65 pound boxes of low/mid builds a heavy pallet fast! A nice 1500-1600 pound cube now costs me around 20 cents a pound to ship

I would never buy mixed/unknown e waste for $.25/lb. It’s going to be really difficult to make money because you're going to get a lot of junk.

If it’s going to be all computers then sure but I'm paying $.03/lb for printers and $.01/lb for LCDs

I pay one of my yards $2 per pound for e/d/c/w.
(For the uninitiated, that’s e digital, consumer (small appliances)white box (appliances))

No questions asked
No status of quality guarantee
No f’s given.

About 50% of this stuff I bring back to the same yard at a better grade. That’s steel, some plastics, contained oils, uncompressed freon, etc
25% sits in storage for a pilgrimage to boardsort, and 25% (the non fmm) goes to my choice yard.

I’m making roughly $5 on every $1 spent over all. But it’s the laws of averages. It’s time. I’m ripping apart refrigerators, washing machines, aircon units etc. but I’m also picking up thousands of archaic computers and servers by the truck load. I got my PDP from this agreement. A WHOLE PDP. Lost in the fire but for years I was the onl private non-charity owner of a full complete mainframe. And after the fire we broke it down and sorted the scrap.

Your price is very low.
Especially because my fractions ignore the 50% or so I pull and repair and resell myself.

In the end everyone is happy. They Pa a penny a pound to three pence. I’m giving them a buck. And they are paying me )5 to take the stuff back after I did all the work that would cost them hundreds, or would get shredded into steel recovery when the weekly budget passed xyz dollars.

And I’ve pulled some really super crap from theee loads.
Like one of the ONLY 256-bit computers ever made. A beta company test of the HP constellation: which I fixed up and sold at $500 each, donated 10, and kept one. An original Pac-Man bar table. An upright balloon fight, beer time (later renamed burger time).
And on and on

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So, I'm sure I already know the answer to this but must ask anyways.
I'm assuming you're a 1-man crew & therefore I also assume that when you go to pick up material from this yard of yours @ $2/pound, you maybe go with truck/trailer? Question is., when you show up for a load of material, do they just load you from the front/top of whatever has been piled up since your last visit until your full? Or do they have a special area where they pile up the things you prefer? Or (this is the one I doubt the most) do they allow you to, I guess, walk out and point to the ones you want, then load them for you???
I don't think that most yards, mine wouldn't anyways, would have a corner of their property which they would designate just for me in hopes I come back quickly each week... Therefore, I would be really uneasy about $2/lb because I feel like I would get 90% stoves or refrigerators & maybe 1% would be computer related. I know that fridges and freezers have compressors and some copper tubing running along the outside of their cases, but without doing the actual math, I feel like it wouldn't be enough copper to offset the entire units base weight at purchase.

Sorry for all the questions, but I would like to be able to do the same, I just don't have the knowledge yet to feel comfortable about going out and offering these types of deals to local businesses, so trying to learn/clarify/understand!

The yard is a supply end super yard. They buy scrap and recyclables primarily from other recyclers, local and regional curb-side companies, and demolition. They sell to the mills and refiners. They are larger in footprint than some regional airports.
They have a team of breakers that break down everything. At better than minimum wage. So they are happy to offload any they can; workers have never complained about it either.

They also offer a small but busy consumer drop off point on the corner of their property.

It’s me, but there are 4 of us that do this as a hobby for one reason or another and for a mega load we can get more. We divide the spoils. Normally it’s just my heavy duty suv and a double-long steel sided car trailer. But we as a group occasionally will use a tractor and box trailer. The yard has lift trucks and will load pallets for us. I know a local moving company with an LT to unload for us at storage.

As end of the line, everything is really well sorted. Like boardsort they pay very well for super sorts, even from consumers. But they also buy bulk lots unsorted (pure “shred”) and that’s where we come in.
We take a few pallets of unsorted junk on the large loads a few times a year for a pick n choose the rest of the year.
Helps we take stuff they don’t want. Three of us tinker with old tec. So things like boards with mercury aren’t an issue. I have a paid service to deal with any issues safely and legally. Tube TVs? No problem. Etc.

I do this with smaller yards too at a much lower price.

Best way to start this is to simply walk in and ask. ‘Hey that pallet of computers, you buy those at shred? (Yes) I’ll give you 75c a pound if you band the pallet and fork it to my trailer.’

only downside is you need cash, at least initially.
That and don’t agree to a volume you’re not ready for. We made that mistake and have storage units as a result. Fail to maintain your arrangement and they may not care; or they may ban you outright.

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