I ocassionally take a stroll out to the shred pile at work and will pull out sealed tanks, non-ferrouos items and other stuff that doesn't belong in there. Today I just walked out there and pulled out 30 pounds of #2 insulated wire, about 20 pounds of clean yellow brass and some other tools that I could use. While I was there I saw a guy throwing a bunch of cast parts in there. I put a magnet to them and it didn't stick so I told him to take them to our non-ferrous yard directly across the street and we would pay him $.22 a pound. He said he wasn't concerned about it and just left. All and all he probably threw 300-400 pounds of 50% cast breakage in the shred pile leaving close to $50 on the table. Sometimes I am astounded at the stuff people throw in there! While all this was going on, some of the guys that work on the ferrous yard were hitting about 20 pay phones that one of my customers brought in with sledge hammers to extract the quarters that were left in them. Between the three of them they all made about $30 each in quarters and were walking around with their pockets full and a smile on their face.
The funny thing is, when the guy brought the pay phones in I picked one up and shook it and heard money in there. I told him that there were still quarters in there and he said he didn't care because he didn't have a key to open them. All of this happened within about 10 minutes of me being on the yard. That be said I will now write up a proposal to my boss encouraging him to hire a guy to simply work the shred pile. He would pay for himself by pulling upgrades out of the shred pile and he could also help customers unload by hand, making our customer service that much better.
Thats my rant for the day.
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