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....