Why would a yard not carry enough cash to pay customers?

Never happened to me, but talkin inline to others that the yard just north of the one i use always runs out of money for some reason.

Happens almost every weekly at the yard i go to & they have been in business for 30 yrs. They buy so much material but only ship out the material to sell twice a week. Its not good for business for sure, but they do make a lot of money & people are still coming. Im sure they have lost some businesss from this since alot of people dont have any money saved & depend on day to day scrap money.

I've never had that happen to me in all the years I've been scrapping. Yards around here can't afford to do business like that, people would just go across the street!

We run out of money from time to time. We have several larger AC contractors that sell us their scrap, so it only takes a couple guys coming in to sell 500 pounds of ACRs and a couple hundred pounds of #2 Cu to run out our cash. When I get low, I always advise folks before they start to unload that I may not be able to cover their sale, then if they want to drop it off and pick up the money, they're welcome (and they usually do) but I always give them the choice...

Yards are like the people that operate them, some better then others.The satellite yard has to get a pass and I will tell you why, if the manager of the yard does not keep track of the day's business and finds himself short on Cash all he should have to do is call the main yard for more money,if they chose not to send him money it's the owners decision not the managers fault,that being said if the satellite yard is better for you and since they have a habit of running low on cash I would give them a call before heading there way.

Been paid in stacks of ones and change before, never had them run out of money though

the yard I go to runs out of cash some days, but I think its because they dont want to have too much on hand at once, and dont want any left at the end of the day. Checks are issued for large amounts or when they run out. Their bank is accustomed to cashing numerous checks a day for their customers

The one yard I go to gives you a print out with a bar code on it. You then take the receipt to a shack with an ATM in it, scan the bar code, and it spits out your money.

The other yard just has a crotchety old man with huge wads of cash in his pocket. lol

There is also the security aspect, of course. Here in Houston, a trend has been developing over the last couple few months, of robbing recycling yards at gunpoint. I try not to keep more than $2500.00 cash on hand at any given time, that way if someone comes in and robs us and actually outruns my #2 buckshot on the way out, I've "only" lost what I had on hand. Also, after having an employee walk out with over 2 grand in his pocket one day, I learned that "fat wads of cash" are not the way to go. I won't pay by check, this is a cash-for-product business, IMO, I like it that way, and so do my vendors. I would certainly lose business if I started to pay by check...

Even though this is an old thread, I’d like to add two possibilities that were not mentioned. 1) Offer to trade what you have in your vehicle for something they have. Then look for something really cool that you might get cheap. 2) Offer to buy something from them outright if you have cash in hand and can afford to do it. That will at least give them some money to deal with the next client or until their rep gets back from the bank with a new supply of cash.

Even if you can’t work out a deal, this may score brownie points as the scrap yard will remember you as someone who tried to help when they needed it.