|
This is a basic starting point
Thrift, donation, resale, second hand, offerup.
Please don’t scrap retro games and electronics though. The retro industry lives and breathes from people like me rebuilding and refurbishing old stuff.
More modern stuff like power Tools, home av tuners… etc. good scrap if you have the time. A $0.99 hammer drill will give you $3 in scrap.
Freecycle, there’s lots of heavy awesome stuff for Free! Also see Craigslist and offer up!
You need to carry yourself though.
Secret options just for here (and in a few days of web crawlers the whole internets)
Last day of estate sales are good for striking bargains on heavy items . Go day one and figure out what you may want.
Call a scrap hauling company and ask how much that item would be to dispose of
Go back near the end of the last day and talk to the estate/auction company. Offer 10-20% more than trash haul.
Super secret—not so easy
Buy broken crap for ten cents on the dollar
This requires a few things to be known before I tell you how.
You need a LOT of space, property or storage or docks.
You need a reliable schedule and don’t EVER miss a day. You’re just like the postman: rain snow sleet, tornadoes, hurricanes, no matter you show up. The bombs are falling and you still make the pickup. Or you loose it and get blacklisted… which WILL kill other agreements you have.
You need a BIG vehicle, a pickup/suv and large trailer or a commercial truck or van.
You probably need atleast a friend or a small crew.
Never say no. No matter how higher, heavy, or downright disgusting something is, never say no.
Still reading?
Make buy broken deals.
I have agreements in local regions with 3 of the five national donation/resale companies. I pay 10c per pound weighed on my “portable” dock scale. Like I said never say no.
I get awesome tech like TVs and av and appliances etc. and a crap tin (literally) of children’s toys and clothing.
I have deals with repair shoppes where I pay up to 25% original price for damaged stuff. $1000 tv for $10? $2500 Wolf oven for $600. And $10000 servers for $1500
Handyman/repair companies and junk removal services.
I buy their haul always with a guaranteed ratio mix but a lot of stuff I have to deal with at low value or at cost to myself. I get 25% (by item quantity) or more of plugin or battery electronics in each load. This includes everything from computers to home av to power wheel chairs to refrigerators. And a lot of furniture.
The warnings at the end.
We as a family are skilled. I repair tech well beyond the point the local guy would consider. My sister has a degree in fashion design and is very skilled in textiles and paint. We fix or recover or restore, to some degree, roughly 50% of what we buy. From 1950s electronics to 1970s and 1980s video game systems to a PS5 to cell phones and computers.
And couches, chairs, benches, cabinets, sinks, toilets.
As a side note
We get paid (less than steel price) for all metal free wood we recycle. Meaning after pulling out screws nails and staples: we get apx $0.005 per pound. So that nasty couch gets stripped and we get
a pile of cloth
a pile of plastic fabric
a pile of steel
A pile of wood
And we get paid for the last too
The downside is I pay to recycle the first two.
The notes
We recycle 99.9% at a 99.9% recovery rate. We PAY to get verified and guaranteed recycling. And are good enough to pay at major discounts. We pay $50 for a $250 pallet pack price for clothing. Because (my sis again) we sort cloths by content, then by colour, then by recoverability. Pre box and mark by class content. And strap the boxes my metal to a pallet we provide.
Recycled clothing becomes new clothing or industrial fibres: rags, insulation, weight filler.
We recycle almost all of the furniture we can’t recover or restore. We get paid for metal free wood.
We rent a chipper every so often as needed. Cut the wood down to what will fit the intake. And sell the chips. That wood becomes low grade plywood, underlay, your new “manufactured” wood furniture. And yes, they take chipped particle board and plasticised wood included. Just 0 metal, and a penalty of $50 if the scanner picks up any metal.
I get paid for many plastics. I pay to recycle others. Known plastics that are source traceable are worth money and recyclers exist that take for free or pay for it. I get close to $0.01 for soda and water bottle pet. Almost $0.80 for non black ABS and over $1 for black abs
If you don’t have a license, never cut sealed cooling copper.
A: it’s illegal to do ANYTHING with it in 47 states without a license!
B: most scrap companies won’t accept your load if they notice this and you don’t have a license (with you). An of your load. In all 50 states.
C: the chemicals in this stuff are extremely toxic
So refrigerators, freezers, ice makers, self-acting ice cream makers, space coolers and aircon units etc … do not fit through the copper gas pipes. Ever. (Fines are huge from $10k-$50k if caught). And remember I said never say no?
You need to pay a junk hauler for this stuff. Because I’m sure as a scrapper you carefully removed the freon pipes from the fridge you scrapped. But no free or paid appliance company will take just the closed cooling system alone. (Got junk takes them from me for $10 each, but pricing is local to where you are)
And as I said, never say no. You have to pay to some degree
As for crews and storage and timing? I’ve had loads from local repair shoppes that fit in my suv. Some that would fit in a smart car! And loads from resale and national big box stores that required multiple 40’ box trucks and on occasion multiple commercial trailers to haul off site.
My point being don’t agree to something you can’t handle in one trip on a regular basis. That donation store is unlikely to have enough in a single week for more than a suv and possibly a trailer.
That big box boy? My largest haul required 10 class a double trailers for a single pickup from their shipping warehouse. That’s 42-48 feel long trailers. x10!
_________________
42 6F 61 72 64 73 6F 72 74 2E 63 6F 6D
|
Login
Register
FAQ
