Scrappers
 

The township has a mandatory recycling program, which we have the honor of paying for, through a fee added to our tax bills.
I don’t do mandatory.

I’ve been giving my aluminum cans to a friend’s son for years. He used them, along with others he’d collected, to finance camps, class trips, and his first car. But he’s done growed up now.
So I’ve been bagging them up and sticking the bags down cellar, while proclaiming I was absolutely, positively, going to haul them down to the scrap dealer, on at least two dozen different dates. Yesterday I loaded them into the pickup and secured them, determined to do the deed today. You can’t tackle such a momentous achievement in one day.

This morning it’s bright and sunny as I drive all the way across the county to the place I’m familiar with, from having worked close by... 30 years ago. Yeah yeah, don’t get ahead of me, they’re still there, but don’t do metal anymore. Putting my mental rolladex in high gear, I came up with a junk dealer, two old men barely scratching out a living, on the other side of the county. I’m off, driving slow enough I won’t start shedding canage, but trying to beat the approaching storm. I arrived just after the sky started leaking. One of the old men tells me he can take the cans, but can’t give me near as much as this other place, and gives me directions... to the other side of the county. I really didn’t care about getting a few bucks more, but he was so sincere, I had to do it.

Turning into a long straight driveway, lined with odd buildings and high fences, I immediately had to stop behind a long line of assorted vehicles... the scrappers. Dump trucks and stake bodies, loaded with appliances, boilers and large loads on metal. Pickups and vans loaded with mostly copper wire and aluminum lawn chairs/siding/pots&pans/whatever. Some were pulling trailers of every description. All were waiting to drive on the big scale to be weighed, before unloading, and being weighed again. The truck driver behind me seeing I had a load of cans, walked up and told me I could turn left at the next hole in the fence, and go directly to the small load shed. I thought that was very nice of him... or he wanted to get out of his path to the scales.

The joint was jumping, and everyone knew the routine but me. Finding the scale dude everyone seemed to be genuflecting to, I confessed noviceness. A couple pointed questions, then he sent the fork-truck guy out with a big steel tub to load the cans into, and put the tub on the scale. He gave me a pink slip with my first name and a couple cryptic numbers, then points me to a building that has a line of maybe 40 people clutching their pink slips. Now it’s turned from spitting to real rain. The line barely moves.

Waiting in line I had got lots of time to, uh... absorb the ambiance. Half the scrappers were groups of 2 or 3 guys, no women, probably 75% black, 20% Spanish-ish, 25% clean, 25% filthy, and a lot of them knew each other. When I finally got to the bullet proof window they were trying to converse through, I deposit my pink slip in the steel drawer for one of the guys inside to match up with a sheet of white paper, the computer spit out with the information direct from the scale. Pretty smart way to keep everybody honest, and to eliminate the possibility of arguments from the scrappers. The first inside guy hands it to the second inside guy, and he enters the poop into a PC, which prints a barcode on the white paper, that’s given to me.

Standing in line that long, I knew they weren’t handing out the money there, so I followed the leader to another small building, with what looked like an ATM machine. Fortunately there was somebody loitering that knew how to use it. Like the catalog/internet pick up at Sears, you have to position the bar code just so, and push “any button”, then the machine gives you the money in the least possible number of bills.

I’m wet, cold, 121 lbs of aluminum lighter, and $77 dollars richer, but it was a learning experience... and fun. ;)

In Denver people have been stealing the steel grates that cover the storm sewers and selling them for scrap. They estimate that the scrappers get about $10 per grate cover and it costs the city $200 to replace each one.

So far no one has been killed or injured by the uncovered manholes, but it's just a matter of time before something bad happens.

Thats a nation wide phenomenon. Aluminum manhole covers were a good idea for reducing employee injuries. But when the price of scrap aluminum went through the roof, before the crash, they were too easy to steal. They even got a full sized bronze horse, at the old Cherry Hill racetrack.

So one truck bed of cans is $77? It almost starts to make sense to, you know, set up fake can recycling bins at major events and stuff.

Welcome to My World Bruce ,
last time I took in cans 45 lbs ish , All I got was Like $17.35,
Not Worth Wrestling the 4x4x4 steel wire Mesh Cube on to the back of my truck

There's about 31 cans to the pound, for Pepsi.

Yeah, this was primarily to get them to hell out of here. The big problem with cans is they're so fucking bulky. From here on, I've got a can smasher that drops them into an attached container they claim holds about 30 cans. Nice and neat, then dump the container in a bag till it's full.

So you had 121 pounds which makes... 3751 CANS

How long did it take you to accumulate this number?!

Probably 18 months. I always brought my cans home from work, and one or two of the guys would give their cans some days. I bought at least 95%, but did have a little help drinking them.

Once upon a time, in another lifetime, I worked in a scrapyard like that. Only not nearly so sophisticated. I shared an office with two doberman's (to keep the riffraff off me) and handed out the bucks to the scrap collectors. There were people who came in every single day, dropped off their trash can haul, and went and bought a burger or bottle. Sometimes, kids would bring in truckloads that they'd collected for camp or school or trips. Every month or so, my boss would pack it all into tight little squares and ship (literally, put it on a ship and send) it somewhere.

Very grimy job. An a'hole boss who liked to have phone sex with his whomever, while sitting in front of my desk.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane there, Bruce!

You're welcome. :D
I've had plenty of dealings with the scrap dealers over the years, but it was always big items like cars or big iron boilers. This was my first experience at the mecca of all those guys I've seen dumpster diving, or pushing a grocery cart full of scrap down the street. I saw one dude cash in about a dozen aluminum cans, and three aluminum shelf brackets. He must have walked at least a couple miles, for no more than a dollar.

The state I live in is the only state in Australia that gives a 10 cent refund on cans.

When we were kids, we used to go to AFL games and collect cans. The depot was round the corner from where I lived. You'd walk in with your bag (an afternoon's collecting and $20 worth if you the Aussie rules game had been particularly well attended) and they'd count it manually. That particular can depot has been demolished and very expensive town houses have taken its place.

Yes, some states here have a deposit on cans and bottles. If I had waited a month, I could have taken them to MA with me, and gotten about $190 for them.

Yebbut would the time it would it have taken to feed them into the machines be worth the extra $$? and were they all machine-feedable? MI has the highest deposit in the states (10c), but it's a total pain in the ass that you can't crush them befoe you recycle them.

Just taking them wasn't worth the extra money to me. Partially because they weren't crushed.

This brought up some memories. When I was a kid people used to leave their empty 7up and RC cola bottles on their front porch.

We would walk by, and when I saw the small green 7up bottle, I always thought, oh shoot that one is only 3 cents when I turn it in at any store. But when there was an empty RC cola bottle, oh boy I struck pay dirt! That sucker was worth 5 cents, which translates to, I could buy any candy bar I wanted!

A shocking (to me) side note on recycling: This story was in the evening news a few months ago. Thieves cutting into chain linked fence (with barbed wire!) and stealing pallots of crushed (used) CARDBOARD.

I was thinking, omg. It turns out that even used cardboard, when stolen at pallets/tons at a time is profitable to even a thief.

On a much sadder note on recycling, I bought a new house here almost 2 years ago. The project here was built in 2005, and I live in the last house where the farm land starts. Across my street on the other side is all farmland separating our homes via a river. Well a few months ago, I noticed all of our street lights stopped working. And we're talking about over a quarter mile of street lights, starting at my house down to the other homes- flanking the river.

When I took my dog for a walk, I noticed copper wire sticking out of the various manhole covers. I thought, wow (I was an Electrician) if I left my work site with these sloppy conditions at work, I would have been fired.

But nope. It turned out, that someone drove by in the dead of night, cut out the wires (high voltage) and stole all of the copper to sell it.

So it cost my city, who had to lay off police and fire officers because of the recession, $35,000 US dollars to repair this. And the copper was probably sold for less that $250.00 scrap. This has also been a problem in nearby cities where I live.

Just in case I've gone off topic, I used to put my aluminum cans into our recycling bin for pickup. My wife immediately put an end to that, and yells at me if she catches me doing that. So she has a large bag in the garage, I crush the can and put it in. Every so often, she recycles them and gets probably $15 - $20 cash. I never asked her what she does with the extra dough, but I figure she deserves it. :-)

Edit: Correction. The distance of the street lights is well over a mile. What made me think of this error, well, my dog just put his paw on my knee. That means he has to go out and we're covering the same walk. (the last time my dog put his paw on my knee, and gave that stupid look, and I ignored him - well he made a mess on our carpet later that night. And my wife blamed me - can you imagine that?!