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

Well little scrap drop off point (honey hole) has closed down.
The guy who owns the property, he fenced off a area and put up a sign 5 odd years ago saying. [Free drop off point for cars, no household rubbish]

Right at that point he and everyone else realised they could make good money scrapping out cars.
So he hardly got any cars, but he got metal, roofing metal, fridges, stoves, washing mc's and mucho other metal, and then CRT TV's...

I got onto it and made a deal, I take nonferrous, give him my ferrous everything, keep a eye on the area, dissuade thiefs.
He had another guy with a deal too, he brought washing MCs for $20, fixed them up, sold em, $ for family, good.



But, the ferrous price dropped, he was selling his stuff as 'shred'. We don't normally get that deal here in NZ. But his ferrous is contaminated a bit and he gets tons of it, volume counts.
But a couple of months ago the price dropped again, so he got the scrap dealers to pick it up rather than do it himself.
But, well they don"'t need the metal and too much rubbish was being dropped off.

So he has closed it.

On the other hand, I have a car now. I know I can fix flat screen TVs. I have half a ton of escrap to sort and sell. I need time to work on my house. I have a lot of #2 Copper to clean down, $500 odd. I have no debts. And very little overhead$. And its comming into summer now...

I figure, clean up the escrap, sell it. Clean up my nonferrous, sell it. Make a car trailer, I have enough parts, I relise now, to do it. Even the number plates. Advertise for metal and escrap, flatscreens, see how that goes. There's no place to drop scrapmetal off to now.
Work on the house during summer. Finish it off. Get a paying tenant to cover all my bills. And then look for work, in town or out of town.

Fixing shipping containers looks like fun. Get some hours under my belt and some paperwork cleared and its a job in any major city in the world.

Because of the shifting NZ$, only Ferrous metal has really dropped in price. Nonferrous has dropped, but by, say, 15-20%. Its not that bad really.

But Ferrous has dropped right down to nothing for light metal, HMS is very low too @ US$70-$100 a ton.
With petrol being US$5+ a gallon here... That overhead can be a game killer.

I will also be able to concentrate on ' selling for more $' the stuff I have found and put aside, on our version of eBay. That will be interesting, I have never sold anything on it before. And I have lots of stuff to sell...