Is it just me

Lately the scrappers (not the good ones) have been out in droves. The number of times I see people on the security climbing into my truck bed to steal something has increased significantly. You can tell the good scrappers that come through the warehouse complex as they check dumpsters, but leave everything else alone. I guess the best thing now is to bring EVERYTHING inside. I literally had someone steal a pile of screws out the other day. At this point, anything is valuable to a crackhead.

Based on what I'm seeing, the number of "scrappers" started to increase when gas hit $4.50/gallon here, don't even get me started on diesel. I die a little every time I have to fill my box truck up. I'm only 24 so I was too young to do much in scrapping the last time prices increased like this. I do remember a dramatic increase in metal thefts towards the end of the increases last time though. Based on what happened last time, I think we've entered the stage of scrapping where everyone is "scrapping" to make ends meet. While this may be the case in some situations, there are also people who just want money for drugs. Hopefully this recent drop in prices will cool things down a bit. Some competition is fun, but seeing drops in volume is not.

Originally Posted by mikeinreco

Also i have tons of lower grade ewaste to break down....printers monitors etc but temps are around 95 degrees and even though I have covered sheds and building there is no A/C....I want to get rid of all of it gonna have to start earlier and work later to run thru all that crap....have not had a "real" job in 13 years and at this point I'm contemplating a "real" job or just slowly go broke over the next several years

I completely understand where you're coming from on thinking about finding a "real" job. A lot of people got really tired of working their butts of just to break even at the end of the month. After all, nobody wants to feel like they're making no forward progress. I know several people who recently moved their business to a side thing instead of full time. While it's not the end of the world to do this, it does mean you have to be extremely good at time management.

It is very frustrating having a ton of stuff to go through without having enough time to process everything. As Matador can attest, this happens to me on a weekly basis. I clear out a space and within a few days it's back to what it was before I started sorting materials. It would be nice to have more time to do the recycling, but a regular job is a guaranteed paycheck. It may suck for a while, but if everything scrapping goes to being worthless, at least I'll still have that guaranteed paycheck.