Sounds like you have the funds for doing such an endeavor, I wish you the best of luck.
1. When it comes to assesing the value, I'd look at what other places are getting for their scrap and come up with a figure that's in the middle.
2. My own personal experience has been that recycle.net's the best even though their paid subscription now. Their prices when they were free were as accurate because they took in all the prices from everywhere and found the average. Worth the subscription price, plus you're open to their buyer/seller network.
3. Never heard of it but it looks like the standard when it comes to scrap software.
4. This went with my opening line - it sounds like you have funds to do it and there's no real time to buy a scrap business per say. Buying a scrap yard is like buying an auto yard - if the business has business, there will always be business no matter wht time of the year it is.
5. This one's kind of hard to answer. For the first part, social media does help especially facebook if you're willing to pay for ads as they get displayed on all of their pages or wherever their ads show up. I'd also look into local newspaper classified ads and what not. The second part deals with the general public's census on what they have to and don't have to. If there's no law or regulation that states what can and can not be thrown away, you can talk about it and offer it till you're blue in the face, but the material will find a way to get there.
6. In my short run as a scrapper(I'll eventually do it again if I can find a good enough deal on a dakota(yes I said dakota, not ranger or f-series or box van), I've found that people will give you what they want to give you and they'll give you more of it if you'll pay for it. If you do on site pickup, I'd suggest using a lift or a couple of strong guys because back in January I hauled away a dish washer that had a concrete ring in the bottom(didn't know about it at the time) and me and the brother-in-law had a heck of a time getting it into the back of the 98 f150 I had because I didn't have a lift. If you're serious about buying an already established business I would look at all angles before deciding - is it in the right location, how are the books, how's the clientel, etc..
Just my two cents on the matter,
Matt
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