Ummmm .... i dunno. I think it's all about the choices you make. You always have to ask yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze. You have to run your scrapping operation like a business even if you're only doing a few metal cans here & there. Small time or big time it's all the same. Sometimes you think you are making gain when you're actually falling behind. You always have to consider the real cost of doing business. Some jobs aren't worth doing because it costs you more to do them than you make at the yard.

You have to consider the value of your time as well. The time you put into it is something you have to keep track of if you're running it like a business. You might only be making one dollar an hour even if you are managing to turn a profit. You might make fifteen or twenty dollars an hour doing some other kind of work.



I see this every day at work. We have a community metals recycling pile at the transfer station where people drop off their scrap metal. It's also okay to pick up a few pieces here and there if you are into scrapping. I like to watch the scrappers as they're picking the pile. You can tell a lot about people by observing how they do their scrapping work. I'm seeing a lot more pickers these days now that non-ferrous prices are up. There might be 20 or 30 people coming through a day. The main problem is that there are so many people trying to do it .... nobody is making anything. Just a little piece here and a little piece there. Nobody is making enough to even meet expenses.

They don't realize it ... but it's a slipping down life.

It's kinda sad to watch cause you get to know the scrappers personally after you have been there for awhile. There's an old timer in his 80's that i'm kind of fond of. He made some bad choices in life but he always had the work ethic. He tries to make a little extra with scrapping but it really isn't working for him. He got behind on his home heating oil bill and now they won't deliver to him anymore. He's fallen a few years behind on his property tax and it won't be too much longer before the town takes his home and puts it up for auction.

It's tragic to see when bad choices and bad business decisions inevitably catch up with someone. There's not much you can do because their fate is inevitably their own.