Given the market, why are the newest scrappers even bothering?

Right now, people don't have the money to invest. I have an interesting metric that I use to judge the economy:

Businesses have equipment. The largest investment in equipment that most companies will make is on vehicles. If business is good, newer trucks are purchased. In a rough patch, the business will keep their vehicles longer. What I'm seeing now is pretty alarming:

Businesses are replacing their motor pools with older vehicles than they used to have. That means that money's very tight. When businesses are running square body GMs and 1st generation RAM pickups, there isn't room to be holding on. You could rent half of the main street in town. Businesses are closing. The ones that aren't are hanging by a thread. I'm one of the few lucky ones, and that's thanks to this forum entirely, not the local economy.

What's really hurt our state has been the low fuel prices. I'm personally benefiting a lot from it, but a lot of the revenue in the state is based on oil and natural gas- we're hurting. That trickles down to a lot of the people, and our yard. Our yard is shipping out everything as quickly as they can, and they're not paying for shred. The next closest yards to us are in Billings, Montana. Depending on exact location, that's 100-150 miles away.

There just isn't a silver lining out here....

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Originally Posted by Area67

I always saw low prices as the easy time to get into this trade! Very little competition and the material just starts building up all over. Back in the late 90's I was the only scrapper willing to pick up in a county of 50,000 people. 3 trucks ,7days a week on a route. I had a small charge to cover fuel. I shipped the ferrous and saved the high grade for years. Then pay-day hit and big. Opportunity is oft disguised as hard work, that is why few recognize it (Ann Landers!).

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Lots of people made money when escrap and metals abnormally went high, but it is much harder to make decent money with normal low prices for a decade or more. The middle to late 90's was a great time to make money in a number of fields, but that bubble popped.

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Originally Posted by matador

Right now, people don't have the money to invest.What's really hurt our state has been the low fuel prices. I'm personally benefiting a lot from it, but a lot of the revenue in the state is based on oil and natural gas- we're hurting. There just isn't a silver lining out here....

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Vehicles are consumables as far as I am concerned, number crunchers look at repairs VS replacement costs short and long term and go from there. When companies buy new fleets of vehicles they have too much money to blow.

Low fuel costs should make a healthy manufacturing based economy explode, the reason it doesn't is because we don't manufacture much anymore. High fuel prices make families cut back on other things, thing made in other countries it seems.

Oil and natural gas has always been a boom or bust setup and to be honest there are just not that many people employed in those industries like there used to be. When oil companies were making record profits it didn't much matter to 99% of the country since nobody saw any income from it. In my area a bunch of people who supported the oil industry with pump manufacturing, piping, drilling etc. are unemployed now but its still a small percentage of the local working population.

alloy2 and jeanbean...- Thanks for the lessons on auto parts!!! Lots of good useful info there.

jeanbean- A couple of questions for you, not a slam just the fact that you're way may not be a way for some guys (like me)

1. You obviously have the room for old vehicles to take them apart as well as some heavier equipment like an engine hoist. The latter I could buy and store in my garage, its the space for the old cars at the house that would be the deal killer. I'd have to have a building somewhere, preferably rural.

2. Sounds like you do this full time. Absolutely nothing wrong with that if that's your talent and passion. I have a good paying full-time job with benefits but the house eats up a lot of cash so any extra things I do on the side as a part-time hobby augments my "allowance" money.

3. A guy has to know auto parts and be able to know that they work to sell them. I'm limited in that extent. I can do some "mechanic" things but I'm slow and uncoordinated at it. Not my talent.

We have a big rural auto salvage yard about 10 miles away. They have a "fill-the-wheel barrow" for $45 u-pull it day once a year on older model cars (I forgot the newest year was last year). My friend was up there last year and had fun. We talked about going in and filling the wheel barrow with the stuff that would sell on ebay that were easily removable. After reading your posts, sounds like that would be worth it!

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Originally Posted by DakotaRog

alloy2 and jeanbean...- Thanks for the lessons on auto parts!!! Lots of good useful info there.

jeanbean- A couple of questions for you, not a slam just the fact that you're way may not be a way for some guys (like me)

1. You obviously have the room for old vehicles to take them apart as well as some heavier equipment like an engine hoist. The latter I could buy and store in my garage, its the space for the old cars at the house that would be the deal killer. I'd have to have a building somewhere, preferably rural.

2. Sounds like you do this full time. Absolutely nothing wrong with that if that's your talent and passion. I have a good paying full-time job with benefits but the house eats up a lot of cash so any extra things I do on the side as a part-time hobby augments my "allowance" money.

3. A guy has to know auto parts and be able to know that they work to sell them. I'm limited in that extent. I can do some "mechanic" things but I'm slow and uncoordinated at it. Not my talent.

We have a big rural auto salvage yard about 10 miles away. They have a "fill-the-wheel barrow" for $45 u-pull it day once a year on older model cars (I forgot the newest year was last year). My friend was up there last year and had fun. We talked about going in and filling the wheel barrow with the stuff that would sell on ebay that were easily removable. After reading your posts, sounds like that would be worth it!

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I already tyipped in another post soem auto parts that are bucko dollars on ebay search for it. I do one car a day or evwery couple days as i found them. I do it right in my driveway. Sometimes depending on what im doing, I will literally leave it on the trailer. Like i had a f150. I cut the floor and dropped the trans on the deck all without jacking it up and never taking it off the trailer. Then on the way to the yard I stopped at my core buyer and he used his forklift to yank the motor out and into the truck. One hand washes the other kind of deal since I sell most of my cores to him.

It actually depends on my mood and the helpers mood. Sometimes I wotn do nothing, but pull alloy wheels and cats and esy stuff. Other days I will drop the entire cradle and trans/engine out of a fwd just to retrieve aluminum.

I guess without even realizing, depending how broke i am depnds how much work i will do. I have limited space and have to do one at a time.

I been wrenching since 98...almost 20 years. Was ase cert at one time and still retain my pa sate safety license. I remember the first disk brake job and somoeone had to show how me to do it. I nevert went to school and was self taught and learned from others. And just generally exp.

You hit the nail on the head with u pull it and ebay. Im planning to gear up to do ti. I think its easier than buying a whole car to get the same parts.

Just cruise ebay and you will see. I want to say it was lincoln, but not sure. I remeber seeing just the plug and some wire harness to solder into their car was going 50 a headlight. No idea why unless that particular car was buring the harness up/

I had a 95 neon i sold the ecm out of and retain the plug and harness on it. One guy solely wanted that plug and harness for whatever reason. He bideed that auction up to 150 just to get the plug lol.

Best thing I can say, is research and figure out what is in demand. Find your niche. Fine example s i saw a guy selling gloveboxes out of venture vans for 75 a pop and selling 6 a month or more. Must been going to the u yank it yard just for that. So find what is is need and sel it....

I may have done my last curb shopping this week. First my city switched to bigger trash cans that hide most of the value, then TVs will cost money to recycle, so driving farther and passing all the TVs may not be worth the fuel.

Why not dump those TVs at night at your local Apartment Community dumpster..that is what folks do here ..some come by and rip the cone off and leave the carcase

MrSteve

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Why not dump those TVs at night at your local Apartment Community dumpster..that is what folks do here ..some come by and rip the cone off and leave the carcase

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Just my opinion, if you can't do it right or know how to, or it just isn't profitable for you, I think it's best to leave TV's alone! Move on to what works for you. Please don't dump TV carcass's at night or in the day in anyone else's dumpster, that will just make a problem for someone else. Also that would be illegal in most places and we don't condone illegal activity!

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” - Plato

When it come to getting it done, improvising, doing with what they have and the above quote of Plato, a farmer does what most of us could or should remember! For most of us it all started on a farm somewhere!

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Originally Posted by MrSteve

Why not dump those TVs at night at your local Apartment Community dumpster..that is what folks do here ..some come by and rip the cone off and leave the carcase

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If you owned that complex and paid for the dumpsters, would you appreciate someone dumping garbage in them that didn't live there?

That is rude, maybe illegal and just plain wrong.

I'm just stockpiling till prices go back up. It sucks now that I aint doing this as often all the time. I go broke much quicker now then back then lol.